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?
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Simply scaling does not work, as explained in other comments, but there is also another big aspect: We don’t want to be stuck with the technology from 50 years ago. We want better rockets – more reliable, cheaper, flying more often and so on.
One big development is reuse: Most rockets are completely thrown away every launch. They crash into the ocean or break up in the atmosphere. That means you need to build a full new rocket for the next flight, which is very expensive.
The Space Shuttle was the first rocket to reuse some components, but the system was so complex and the components needed so much work between each flight that it didn’t end up being cheaper than building a new rocket.
SpaceX developed Falcon 9 to be partially reusable: The big and expensive booster lands and can be reused, while the smaller and cheaper upper stage is still thrown away. They had to develop a lot of new things to make that work as no other rocket did that before. It now saves them a lot of money and lets them fly extremely often – once to twice a week recently, while other rockets of that size typically fly a few times per year at most. But they still need a new upper stage each time and the booster needs some refurbishment in between flights. To fix both SpaceX is developing Starship.
Starship is designed to be rapidly reusable, pretty much like aircraft: Land, refuel, fly again. You can’t achieve that with just minor changes to existing designs, you need a completely new design. The overall shape is new, the engines are new, even the fuel type is new. The design of the launch pad is completely new because it needs to work as landing pad, too.
SpaceX started it but now many other companies are also working on reusable rockets. The benefits are just too big to ignore.
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