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?

Question

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

Answer 1

NASA is a government org and is not motivated by profit. Their system of building things is – build it to the point it works then stop. They goal is stability and reliability. SpaceX is a profit motivated company so their goals are different. They want to reduce launch costs so they invested in a lot of failures to build out a reusable lander. Likewise, there are a lot of new technologies on ~~Spaceship~~ Starship. They are going through this process of innovation in order to be efficient.