To give an example of this, the Starship they've been flying on the last few flights is already obsolete. There's a newer V2 but they wanted to burn through the rest of the V1s they had already built and get more data before flying V2.
It's been announced, and is surely being designed, but they are only building hardware for V2 right now. Most likely V2 will continue as long as they need to get dialed in what they want V3 to be, then they will switch. V2 seems to be based on the learnings from V1, and I think V3 is the real design they want to fly-- but V3 depends on Raptor 3 and probably other advancements, and Raptor 3 is still at the testing stage in MacGregor.
For instance the V2 design seems to use Raptor 2.5 which is a Raptor 2 variant with Raptor 3 style interface with the ship. So they are testing the ship design to support Raptor 3 before they have Raptor 3.
The engines are really heart of these things and drive the development cadence.
That makes so much sense. Once you find the correct parameters for an optimal flight, use the rest of the rockets to map the state space of configurations to see how much they can deviate
Interesting, so if they do not intend to recover the rocket from the water here, then this was an effective waste-disposal method for their obsolete V1 design?
I was surprised to learn that, besides the environmental impact of the leftover fuel - though methane is the least toxic of them, and decomposing electronics, the metal rocket body itself can be a boost for marine life and corals by serving as shelter. Guess the outcome depends a lot on the design and materials used.
