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That wasn't some college guys blowing up a lab, this was a pretty costly failure. Surely the reliability of the engines could have been tested without the spac
by guenthert 4y ago
That wasn't some college guys blowing up a lab, this was a pretty costly failure. Surely the reliability of the engines could have been tested without the spaceship part of the stack. Someone took shortcuts and paid for it.
- the_mungler 4y agoNot really. How would you test a rocket engine at low atmospheric pressure? You can't exactly stick a rocket engine in a vacuum chamber and light it. Then once you're launching something into space, you may as well have a first stage to go along with it. Are you saying they should have launched the booster stage by itself? Why? What would they learn from that? Would you ever expect them to launch a booster on it's own in practice?