Comment by somenameforme
6 days ago
Testing in simulations and testing in reality are radically different. I hadn't actually heard anything about this until now but I'd be surprised if they're giving themselves more than a 10% chance of success, assuming it's an orbital test. Looking things up, it turns out that the booster is named "So You're Telling Me There's a Chance", and that is probably not entirely tongue in cheek!
The chances of the rocket reaching orbit on the first attempt are not too bad. Ariane 6 did it and only failed on the third engine relight.
Nailing the landing is a lot trickier, but if they have any early problems they would ditch it in the sea. They would have to have a problem just before landing for the rocket to take out the barge. If you want to count tipping over as a crash, that would make it more likely, but still less than SpaceX because of the soft landing and more legs.
Those barges can withstand a ridiculous amount of force - it'll be standing at the end of the day regardless of what happens. But I generally agree. I think the orbital test is likely to succeed, but landing on the first go - that would be simply epic. There's just too many unknown unknowns to go straight to success IMO, but I'd love to be proven wrong!
I guess you were wrong, they scrubbed. But do you really think the barge would survive a direct hit? I mean it might not sink but all the equipment on it would be very broken, would it not?
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