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

The whole reason we have these launches is because we have already studied everything we can in computer simulations and in scaled down scenarios.

We have to look at the full sized vehicle because there are inevitably going to be complications that arise when we actually build the thing and scale the thing up. Some materials may not be quite what we thought they would be in simulation, some stresses might be a little higher in places than what we expected, that sort of thing.