I know its literally rocket science and a lot of very complex systems need to work together, but shouldnt we be able to iterate on a working formular?
In: Engineering
When we build things of earth, we generally work to a tolerance of “this needs so much strength, make it ten times stronger”. This makes everything very reliable.
A rocket that is more than 1.5 times heavier than it needs to be will simply never fly. Or require so much fuel and complex engineering that it will make the cost prohibitively expensive.
This forces engineers to work to fine margins. If you’re guessing you need a strength of 10, so build it with strength 100, and you were wrong and it actually needed 11, no one will ever know.
If you did the same but built it with strength 11, your rocket just blew up.
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