[adgjlsfhk1]

The part that makes no sense to me is why they are going starship scale rather than falcon 9 scale. Had they done their prototyping on a rocket with 9 engines on the first stage and 1 on the second, they could have gotten to raptor 3 (and a falcon 9 replacement) while blowing up way fewer engines, launch complexes, etc. There's a reason Spacex started with the falcon 1 rather than the falcon 9. It's a lot cheaper to blow up fewer engines and smaller rockets while you're developing a new rocket engine.

[NetMageSCW]

The biggest part of this test campaign is learning to build Ships and Super Heavies quickly and efficiently. They are not just testing Starship, they are also testing and iterating on Gigafactory.

[s1artibartfast]

Time costs money as well. Im guessing the cost is irrelevant compared to a faster timeliness.

[adgjlsfhk1]

part of my argument is that if your test platform is 1/4th the size, you get much faster iterations. the path they took meant that every test destroys 39 engines, a huge amount of rocket fuel, and all of their construction. A falcon 9 design (9+1) with raptor engines would let them already have a falcon heavy capacity vehicle because everything about a smaller scale vehicle is way easier

[s1artibartfast]

They already have a falcon heavy capacity vehicle - Falcon heavy. I guess I am confused about what you think they would get out of testing with a smaller platform. It seems like most of their focus is specifically figuring out how to make a large platform work. What do you think would translate?

[adgjlsfhk1]

I think that trying to make a large platform work with engines that aren't reliable and on a fuel system that you don't have experience with is a really dumb idea.

The raptor engine is a pretty giant advance over the merlin engine and methane seems like a reasonable fuel, but testing of the engine has been consistently held back by issues they're running into due to scaling up the rocket so much. Starship has only had 12 test flights in 3 years (vs 50 launches since january for falcon 9). Had raptor testing taken place on a smaller vehicle it seems pretty likely that they already would have a falcon heavy replacement in service that could be launching real payload.

[s1artibartfast]

I see where you are coming from. I dont think they are interested in relpacing falcon heavy. I have not heard anything about that. what would the point be?

from my perspective, the large platform is the goal, and engines are in service of that. It is hard to imagine that this would would advance the timeline of startship. It seems like there are substantial technical challenges around the fueling system, as well as re-entry, and potentially engine restart in space. Any of these could be fatal, so they need to start working on them as soon as possible, even if the engines themselves arent perfect.

[testing22321]

If they had a 1/4 scale test platform, they wouldn’t be testing what they need to learn.

They wouldn’t be testing how to transport, generate, store, load and offload massive quantities of liquid oxygen and methane quickly and reliably.

They wouldn’t be testing the simultaneous ignition of 33 engines, the massive fuel demands of that (which appears to be very difficult), and blasting the pad with 33 engines.

They wouldn’t be testing the structural loads and stresses of max Q of such a massive vehicle.

They wouldn’t be testing tank slosh and pressure issues of massive tanks.

They wouldn’t be testing the heat loads on the shield with huge mass.

All the manufacturing too would be learning how to do things on such a large scale.

In short, they simply wouldn’t be learning the lessons they need to learn to make this work.