system

“SN4’s demise is almost irrelevant.”
Summed it up nicely, Russ. SN4 spent more time on the test stand and completed more testing than any of the previous SN#s. As a result, SN5 is probably ready to roll to the pad as soon as they get it fixed up, SN6 is well advanced, and SN7 components have already been spotted in early assembly. Certainly a very hardware-rich test program.
Peter Beck of Rocketlab mentioned recently in an interview that he believes his company has hit the perfect balance of ‘paper-testing’ and ‘hardware testing’, in that they have been able to move quickly with great success without being bogged down in analysis before building on the one hand, or needing to ‘expend’ too many vehicles in making things work well on the other.