There is a tweet from Elon many months prior to the first launch that says "We've decided not to build a deluge system. That may turn out to be a mistake".
They're testing and developing and learning. They're taking risks and making improvements as needed.
As the most successful rocket company of all time by a VERY large margin, I'm pretty sure they know a heck of a lot more about rockets than you and I do, I'm willing to let them make the expert decisions.
It's not up to me to "let" them do anything. I think taking risks is a solid strategy, that clearly has worked for them.
The failure of the pad was entirely, 100% predictable. It's (literally) not rocket science. How concrete responds under pressure is a super well understood thing.
Yes, and they analyzed the risk, looked at the percentage chance it would be a problem, and the impact of the problem.
Then they put the deluge system on a priority list with 10,000 other things that had to get done before the first flight and did what needed to be done, but likely skipped over the nice to haves, knowing they could always come back to them.
For all you know building the deluge system for flight one may have delayed them x months, and they simply decided to take the risk because they needed the political capital of a visible launch attempt to even keep the program alive.
I’m a bit shocked people on hn don’t understand rapid prototyping and iterative development.
You genuinely seem upset or angry that a private company did something other than what you think it should have. That’s not healthy.
What language have I used that suggests I'm upset? As far as I can tell, all I've done is point out that "what happens to concrete under millions of pounds force" is not some area full of unknowns where the outcome wasn't 100% predictable.
It was very shocking to see that they didn't have one. It's not like this was one of those secret things that NASA has done that prevents others from having success. As recently as during SLS ramp up, I remember articles covering the testing of the deluge system for SLS. They talked about how many gallons per second, and the total amount of water necessary, and all of the other blah blah blah details that a non-rocket scientist like me read and was aware of being something necessary. The fact that SpaceX did not have this was quite laughable. Like nobody ever at SpaceX raised a hand in a meeting to bring up this issue, or it was brought up but then slapped down with a "let's don't be silly" type of response? I think the latter would be worse than the former.
If I recall, they really hoped it would work without it because the idea is to launch off the surface of other planets that won't have a deluge system. Not sure if that additional context makes it seem any less crazy to think it isn't needed though.