Then they put the deluge system on a priority list with 10,000 other things that had to get done before the first flight and did what needed to be done, but likely skipped over the nice to haves, knowing they could always come back to them.

For all you know building the deluge system for flight one may have delayed them x months, and they simply decided to take the risk because they needed the political capital of a visible launch attempt to even keep the program alive.

I’m a bit shocked people on hn don’t understand rapid prototyping and iterative development.

You genuinely seem upset or angry that a private company did something other than what you think it should have. That’s not healthy.