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It's not even about putting the life of the pilots at risk - it's about cost. It's starting to look like the lack of flame diverter was a huge mistake that will cost a lot of money and time, how do you think this will affect the whole project? What if after they fix the launchpad, it gets destroyed again, simply because some other preventable failure? How many more of these "tests" can they have without going bankrupt?

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Pouring new concrete is cheap, they’ve already done it multiple times from damage due to test fires. Each time they reformulate the concrete and it needs less repair.

After they get to orbit they can start putting payloads on board, and the tests will pay for themselves. I’d say the risk of bankruptcy is very low.

Edit: Just saw photos of the crater under stage zero. Looks like they do need a flame diverter lol.

Once they realized they needed a flame diverter, I think they traded off the cost and delay of putting one in vs the cost of just filling the hole each time.

It's totally feasible for them to keep testing and keep refilling that hole while in parallel they build a perfect launch pad with a flame diverter somewhere else. That way they don't have a gap in testing cadence.

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