Comment by 14
1 day ago
Even NASA years into their existence has suffered catastrophic fatal failures. Even with the best and most knowledgeable experts working on it we are ultimately still in the infancy of space flight. Just like airlines every incident we try and understand the cause and prevent it from happening again. Lastly what they are doing is incredibly difficult with probably thousands of things that could go wrong. I think they are doing an amazing job and hope one day, even if I miss it, that space flight becomes acceptable to all who wish to go to space.
I you are referring to the two Space Shuttle accidents, both of them could have been avoided with just a little bit more care - not launching in freezing temperatures for Challenger, and making sure insulation foam doesn't fall off the tank for Columbia.
The history of rocketry goes much further back than the space shuttle. The shuttle was supposed to be a step towards reusability but didn’t succeed or progress the way they thought it would. Starship is continuing that dream of full reusability and their approach is working. You can’t plan everything on paper when it comes to hardware especially when attempting things that have never been done before, you just don’t have the data in that case. You have to build prototypes and test them to destruction. All manufacturers do this.
In hindsight yes. The trick is knowing which of the thousands of things to do are necessary. And yes, that’s how you end up with preflight checklists