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The problem of rocket blast mitigation has been studied for 70 years. It is not a newly discovered thing. They launched the biggest rocket ever made without an

• kersplody 3y ago
  Or even having publicly documented probable risk of forgoing blast-mitigation measures in their launch permit. Debris flew well outside the approved range.
  • btilly 3y ago
    That has to do with the size of the debris. In a back of the envelope approximation, an object 10x as big in every dimension has 1000 times the mass and experiences 100 times the air resistance. And therefore flies about 10 times as far. (Only an approximation, there are other factors. For example gravity acts the same on both.) Nobody anticipated the debris would include large chunks of concrete. And therefore it was able to travel much farther than expected.
• btilly 3y ago
  We generally do blast mitigation to minimize damage to the equipment around the pad. The calculation was that the equipment was built in such a way that it would survive. And indeed the equipment only suffered minor damage, and that was from the unexpected flying debris, not the blast. I'm not aware of a previous case where the concreate launchpad shattered similarly to this. The closest thing to this possibility that I am aware of being discussed in advance was the possibility that the whole rocket could explode on the pad in a large fireball. Which existing blast mitigation techniques would not have helped with much.