Why do we still expect “successful failures” on rocket launches and not just scale up or scale down the same design on successful rocket ships and launch pads to make bigger or smaller ships with more stable structural material?
In: 1598
When I was small I could throw a Hot Wheels car from the back porch onto the grass and the car wouldn’t have any noticeable damage. It just fell from about 100x its own height and landed without a scratch. But if my dad’s car fell from 100x its height it would be totaled. Even if it fell from the back porch onto the grass, about equal to its own height, there would be a lot of damage if it landed on its top or side.
It’s pretty easy to break a popsicle stick in half but it’s much harder to break one of those halves in half. It’s nearly impossible to break one of the resulting pieces in half again without using tools.
u/armcie described the square/cube principle very well. Combine that idea with the popsicle stick theory and you can understand why bigger things can be so much more fragile than they first appear. Doubling in length means an eight fold increase in weight and volume and in the braces and brackets and supports needed to keep the thing together.
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