You can only say your spaceship exploding is a learning experience so many times because you're supposed to be learning what happens when it gets to space.
@Gustodon well they're learning how these brand new technologies operate as they are getting to space in the first place.
At this point they have had two flights that operated within expectations. SpaceX said ahead of the flights that they didn't expect them to get to orbit, so they accomplished their goals of learning how to operate these systems.
@Gustodon I don't know if you know what trolling is.
Like, when an engineer builds the bridge that you cross to get to the store, you know that's not trolling right?
Well that's what we're looking at now.
@ScriptFanix yes, an awful lot of bridges failed before engineers learned how to build them better.
@ScriptFanix well right.
SpaceX built on the knowledge of other efforts that came before and progressed the technology to new stages, building on that. And they absolutely ran computer simulations.
But once you forge new ground like this there is no substitute for experimentation.
And that's exactly what we saw: they are developing new and improved technologies based on the existing work that pushes the field forward, which requires trial to explosion.
There is just no other way to progress the technology, but humanity will be better off for those lessons being learned.
@ScriptFanix well they satisfied the legal review to say that they didn't unduly endanger any rare species.
We have safeguards in place through which experts analyze their plan, and they can't operate without satisfying the experts about issues like this.
@volkris Troll harder. 🙄