From what I’ve been reading today the rapid unscheduled disassembly is, surprise, all elons fault. Most launches have flame diverters so that the exhaust flames are properly distributed. Elon said no, causing the flames to go back at the engines. Genius
It’s actually a very distinctive aspect of SpaceX’s business model/engineering culture that they conduct these high-visibility, full-scale tests on hardware that’s not really ready for prime time. In a more traditional aerospace company, they would never run a test like this, because it would look terrible if it failed. The result is that you end up with a final product that takes longer to develop, costs more, and is overengineered in some places (because they couldn’t prove they could solve a particular problem without the overengineering) and underengineered in others (because they didn’t realize a problem existed and didn’t test enough to find it).
From early reports, it seems like one possible cause of the failure is that the launch pad was underengineered, so the exhaust blasted a bunch of concrete rubble everywhere at launch, which wrecked the engines and doomed the flight. Obviously that’s bad, and it’s probably true that a traditional aerospace company would have just replicated the Saturn V launch pad and not had this problem. But, if their attempted solution had worked, they shave some cost and build time off of every pad they build in the future. And there are doubtless many more “this might fail but if it doesn’t it will be great” design choices they made, some of which probably worked.
You can think this approach is smart or not. When they were trying to get Crew Dragon certified, I heard some reports that there were issues because NASA (quite appropriately) insisted on a less try-it-and-see approach. But it’s just not the case that Elon is a replacement-level billionaire who happens to be unusually vocal about what a right-wing asshole he is. Actual interesting business decisions are being made.
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Perhaps apocryphal, but I heard Henry Ford asked the engineers what parts never break and then had them made more cheaply/poorly because they were over-engineered. Sounds similar enough. But Henry wasn’t doing in service of a vanity project that hopes to get 12 people to Mars before the ecological collapse that it’s contributing to.
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You wouldn’t be able to get the government and private investors to fund your vanity project. I mean, you could if the circumstances beyond your control were right. Almost anybody could. This means Elon is good at business.
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sucks that ford’s pet projects were local nazi newspapers and such
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Another way in which they are similar.
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I paid [to silicon valley] to tell Silicon Valley to go screw itself
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I created a gimmick Twitter account yesterday and it asked me to choose all sorts of interests and at least one account to follow. So I did. It was stuff like sports, video games, etc., non-political things.
Aside from the one followed account, the vast majority of the posts in my feed are right-wing bullshit and Elon Musk.
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The strategy you’re describing (build an over engineered product, then make it more efficient based on experience) is basically the opposite. And it can’t really be implemented in aerospace because volumes are much lower than cars and there’s not really an acceptable rate of failure. (That might not be exactly true for aircraft, but FAA certification will probably prevent you from tinkering around once you’re in operation.)
More importantly though, figuring out that it’s desirable to operate this way is a different, easier task than creating an organization that actually operates the way you want. The people making the actual judgment calls have personal incentives that are very different from Elon’s.
Elon wanted to clear the launchpad so it wouldn’t be destroyed but it looks like they have to start over anyway. No flame diversion or water deluge was a bad choice and Elon probably knew or should have known that. Whatever.
If I’m travelling in that rocket or have a highly valuable payload, I’d prefer they do the extra testing. Just me.
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Kristi Yamaguccimane is a tremendous handle.
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Not hardcore!
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https://twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1649844744728477699?s=61&t=NDU-QUzHHKI06YFnvWsG1g
https://twitter.com/tonyatamanuik/status/1649836654469709826?s=61&t=NDU-QUzHHKI06YFnvWsG1g
In before Elon charges you to block people.
$4.99/mo to block people
$9.99/mo to be block-resistant
$14.99/mo to block the block-resistant
$24.99/mo to be unblockable
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Blue checkmark is a protected status
https://twitter.com/UsingCigarettes/status/1649832498040274948?t=IkvVnExJ6znuulAvI10fHQ&s=19
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