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

Because square-cube law.

Weight increases cubic to dimensions, while material cross section that gives the strenght to things only grows quadratic. So do many values. Many do square and many do cube up.

As a general rule, the bigger you go:

-the easier to achieve speeds, long ranges, big payload.

-The harder it is to achieve structural strenght, rigidity, agility, accelerations.

If you scale up a mosquito it won’t work. If you scale down an airliner it won’t work.