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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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If something is going to blow up, its much better to happen on a test stand than on an actual product or test launch.
Best case would be doing the math beforehand, as they Didn't do with the flame trench iterations until the water pump system was added. And we know that because other people on youtube did do the math and determined even the special high temperature concrete from NASA wasnt going to be enough by itself.
They knew that it wasn't going to be enough by itself, they were predicting that it would last long enough to survive a single launch. They were already planning to replace the pad, they just figured they would do it after the first test launch.
They were slightly off in their prediction, but that's why these are test launches. Fortunately it didn't do much harm, and they were already gearing up to replace the launch pad surface anyway so free excavation.
Dude, the entire pad was gone. People in the "safe" zone had concrete raining down on them and the rocket itself was severely damaged from the takeoff.
If they had done the math before that, they would have never attempted that launch.
No, the entire pad wasn't gone. The concrete under the pad had a big hole in it, but most of the structure was intact - as evidenced by the fact that they just patched the hole and continued using the pad without having to replace the whole thing.
Nobody was hurt. The rocket was damaged, but it still managed to accomplish much of what they'd wanted it to accomplish. It was a test launch, they knew it wasn't going to cruise all the way to the finish line. They wanted to see what went wrong.
Do you really think they didn't do the math at all? They did the math, they figured they could risk it based on what the math told them, they turned out to be wrong in hindsight. Plenty of things seem like good risks that turn out to be bad ones in hindsight. They're not a bunch of yee-haw wild men who do stuff without thinking or calculating, the FAA would never be giving them launch licenses if they were.