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

A space ship has 2.5 million moving parts, all of which need to be manufactured to very precise specifications in order to function properly. You can computer model everything you want, but you can’t model defects. That’s what launches like this show.