Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "" video.

  1. ​ @andreabindolini7452 which is because they spent years in ground qualifications and testing, where SpaceX spends months in ground Qual, and then does flight testing. You learn more when you do full scale flight testing, because no computer model will accurately predict everything. And if SpaceX had just decided to build a non reusable rocket they could have had first flight success as well, but because this is designed for reuse, it's much more complex, so more to go wrong, which requires flight testing.
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  2. ​ @maskie4189 the pad got damaged on the first launch because Elon didn't want to wait for the water deluge system which was already under construction, and they knew it would sustain some damage, it was just more than expected. But they installed the deluge system and it works fine now. The second launch had upgraded quite a few things that they learned from the first launch, and then they found several other issues that they improved on the third launch. And all the issues are related to it being fully reusable, because the entire rocket is designed differently to achieve this goal. If they weren't going for reusability, the rocket would use composite tanks and simple engines and not need all this extra complexity. And if they were not working on reusability, then the third launch would have been a success, because it launched and reached orbit just fine, it was on the reentry that it burned up, but guess what? Every other orbital class rocket before Falcon 9 also burned up on reentry! And every second stage, even for F9, has also burned up, so it's only a failure to successfully reenter, the launch was a success. In any case, SpaceX is pushing the envelope with the sole focus on making a reusable rocket, and they are doing it by launching rockets to test them, not waiting until they are positive it won't blow up, which is why they haven't bothered putting a payload on yet. This lets them move faster because they aren't afraid to break things. But the most important part of this, is that none of the failures have been identical, and each flight they have gone further and made more progress, and if they continue that trend, they will be reliably going to orbit before BO, and then start getting success recovering the rocket as well. Remember, people were saying the exact same things about Falcon 9 when it started flying and blowing up, and now it's the only Human rated rocket in the US, and they are using reused rockets to launch astronauts, so while you may not like their design and testing methods, they are effective and they have a proven track record of being able to pull off things that people say are impossible.
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