Recent news suggests that SpaceX are pivoting to hot-staging instead of the flip maneuver for getting Starship away from the booster. Looking at the Titan II hot staging it seems like it would be a violent and explosive event. How could this be mitigated? A hardened cover on top of the booster would be a significant weight penalty. Do the expected gains really outweigh the additional weight?
I don’t know much about the Titan II but some of those early rockets couldn’t support their own weight and relied on internal pressure to maintain structural integrity. If they lost pressure they’d crumple. We already know the Superheavy booster is more robust than that so maybe with just some internal cooling it can survive hot staging.