Comment by adgjlsfhk1
2 days ago
The part that makes no sense to me is why they are going starship scale rather than falcon 9 scale. Had they done their prototyping on a rocket with 9 engines on the first stage and 1 on the second, they could have gotten to raptor 3 (and a falcon 9 replacement) while blowing up way fewer engines, launch complexes, etc. There's a reason Spacex started with the falcon 1 rather than the falcon 9. It's a lot cheaper to blow up fewer engines and smaller rockets while you're developing a new rocket engine.
The biggest part of this test campaign is learning to build Ships and Super Heavies quickly and efficiently. They are not just testing Starship, they are also testing and iterating on Gigafactory.
Time costs money as well. Im guessing the cost is irrelevant compared to a faster timeliness.
part of my argument is that if your test platform is 1/4th the size, you get much faster iterations. the path they took meant that every test destroys 39 engines, a huge amount of rocket fuel, and all of their construction. A falcon 9 design (9+1) with raptor engines would let them already have a falcon heavy capacity vehicle because everything about a smaller scale vehicle is way easier
They already have a falcon heavy capacity vehicle - Falcon heavy. I guess I am confused about what you think they would get out of testing with a smaller platform. It seems like most of their focus is specifically figuring out how to make a large platform work. What do you think would translate?