Saw the launch right before heading to Moab Thursday morning, which was fitting considering the Mars vibes out there. Great to see how damage tolerant the system is, from the pad to engines to everything else.
For those saying this isn't a success, or a waste of resources and time, don't know much about engineering, especially modern engineering.
Analysis is worthless without real world data to close the feedback loop and update assumptions, constants, formulas, and everything else that goes into hand calcs, finite element models and simulations.
This includes stress, modal / vibe, thermal, fluid dynamics, avionics / controls, and fault tolerance. Even without digital data (which I'm sure they have terabytes of), the visual data allows analysts to update their inputs to obtain outputs that represent the real world.
Right now 1000's of SpaceX analysts and software engineers are updating models and lines of code with the latest data, which will help them better predict the next launch, and even predict failures on the latest tech builds being flown.
That's the value of testing and failing early. It's not so much to see what works in the real world. It's to update 1000's of models and simulations. Even if this didn't leave the pad, there's millions in savings for the next flight because of updates to analysis models.
Mike Shaw - Class of '03