Starship Launch Absolutely Wrecked SpaceX's Facilities
This is a project transitioning from cheap and easy iterations to improve steel fabrications capabilities to one where each iteration entails 200+ tankers of LOX, methane, and nitrogen, 39 Raptor engines each with 1-3X the thrust of a Merlin, and 85,000kg of steel fabricated into two stages of Starship plus all the electronics and controls.<p>And, so far, they didn&#x27;t learn from the previous time they heavily damaged the launch mount (and created a safety issue with flying debris). The fix they didn&#x27;t use, a steel flame diverter, might be adequate, but the extent of damage indicates that is far from a sure thing. Why such a minimal fix? It has to fit under the current launch mount.<p>It is a collision of iterations getting slower and vastly more expensive and a limited set of solutions SpaceX management is willing or able to accept. That&#x27;s how projects die.