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Comment by one_more_q | Hacker News Reader

Wait, them trying out if the concrete alone is strong enough to withstand the launch makes you wonder how close we are? I’m wondering about life support, producing fuel in Mars and a lot of other things, but the floor of the launch stand really does not bother me at all. People love to complain about spaceX and this gave them a great reason.

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I mean intentional negligence re-framed in retrospective as a scientific test is always a good reason to complain, and if that wouldn't but a dent on the trust into a company acting responsible then people would have to be quite blind tbh.

But yes the floor of the launch pad is really not something to worry about, I mean we know how to build safe launch pads since decades, we just have to do so.

Look at it another way: if they can't even get the launch pad not to catastrophically fail and endanger the facility and all of their permits, why should we trust them to do anything else more complex much better?

"why should we trust them to do anything else more complex much better?"

Because the same people previously developed Falcon 9 Block V, the safest and most reliable launcher on record?

Isn’t Atlas V also 100% successful?

True, but Falcon 9 Block V adds the partial reuse capability; while we can say that each Atlas V flew reliably once, we can say that many Falcon 9 first stages have flown reliably several times.

Yes it is part of the equation. Probably need to invent better concrete or a new concept first.

But even more the way this has been handled, or rather not handled. There is so much that can fail. All in all I doubt it will happen soon.

I remember a few years ago, SpaceX was selling seats for the mars mission. But maybe that’s just the Elon-way of doing things.

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