Comment by thrwthsnw

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.