Bollocks.
They have former NASA engineers on staff, they have the budget for computer simulations, they could have engineered their way out of it. They just chose not to, or chose to try and see if they could get away with it.
They're not going to be launching anything this summer either. Repairs and clearance will take longer than that seeing as FAA has to investigate them now for that stunt.
Exactly.
From what I understand, they saw not insignificant pad erosion at a 50% thrust(which BTW would be right in the range of a Saturn V). How could this not have happened?
NASA knows what they're doing, or rather I should say NASA engineers(and eingineers at their contractors) know what they're doing and have a remarkable success rate when they're listened to. We saw what happened in January 1985 when a few were sounding the alarm bells and "go at all costs" was a higher priority. Years of ignoring valid concerns about foam strikes during launch bit them again in 2003.
It almost feels like Space X just throws out the book. For all the talk of them breaking new ground, etc, they seem to forget about fundamentals that have been known for a long time.
Unfortunately this ham-fisted "I'll do what I want to do and no one knows any better than me" seems to show up at every other company their egotistical man-child CEO operates. If he'd get over himself and actually listen to the people around him, he might actually be able to keep a website operating or launch a rocket without destroying the launch pad. Instead he seems to just ignore or fire everyone who contradicts him.
If nothing else good comes out of this, I'm just glad to see that it seems as though a lot more people now are looking critically at how Space X does things and starting to see the serious issues that are there. As obnoxious as the Tesla fanbois on this site and other places or, and with that the broader group of people who think this charlatan running the show can do no wrong, the Tesla fans have NOTHING on how nasty the ardent Space X fans can be.
Thank goodness this rocket wasn't carrying a crew-that's the one and only silver lining I see in this,.