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Quote of the Day: On Making Progress
“Anyway, it’s hard to iterate though when people are on every mission. You can’t just be blowing stuff up ’cause you’re gonna kill people. Starship does not have anyone on board so we can blow things up. It’s really helpful.” – Elon Musk
The Starship test did not get as far as second-stage ignition. That does not mean it was a failure. Rather it was the first step in testing — using a test to destruction test philosophy. The main goal of the test was to get it off the launch pad and not to get it into orbit. All components in the test were intended to be discarded. Both the first and second stages were early versions of the hardware, which had been replaced by better designs. Rather than scrap them, Musk opted to use them in a launch test. (In fact, newer versions of the two stages already exist, to be expended in the next rounds of tests.) Hardware (even launch pads) can be replaced. Time and lives lost cannot.
That is the way Musk develops things. Instead of relying on simulations (which ultimately reflect your own assumptions), he does frequent live testing to see what really happens. That is how he developed the Falcon 9. He blew a lot of them up in early testing. And people laughed at him because he kept blowing up rockets. Yet look at the result. The Falcon 9 is the most frequently launched booster in the world and is highly reliable.
One of NASA’s greatest curses is the mantra “Failure is not an option.” That is only really true under certain very limited circumstances – like getting a crew on a crippled spacecraft heading to the Moon safely back to Earth. But if it is always true, then the only way to guarantee you never fail is to never do anything. Or to take small, incremental baby steps that take forever to get anywhere (and typically result in Challenger- and Columbia-style failures anyway). Which has been NASA’s pattern since the 1990s.
Musk’s approach is to blow things up early, when humans are not on board. Build in reliability by discovering all the failure modes during the test phase. Then go into production.
How is the working out? So far this year, SpaceX has had 27 successful orbital launches. The rest of the world combined has 31. Not too shabby.
Published in Group Writing
Well said, indeed – an excellent entry into the Quote of the Day series.
I recommend this for promotion to the Main Feed.
I was listening to a podcast this morning where they talked about this referencing how many in the press were making fun of Musk and calling that mission a “failure”, and this thought occurred to me.
Modern reporters time-travelling:
Why not take your hand at a few? You do good stuff. A new month is starting and @lillyb is bound to be looking for contributions.
When failure is not an option, then success is not an outcome.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if “climate scientists” took the same approach instead of (wrongly, every time) predicting an outcome 30-years out based on dubious, and sometimes rigged, data and the “modeling,” and then deleting the evidence when we’re all still here and supposed to have forgotten, and nothing they said was going to happen actually has? (Remember the hole in the ozone layer? And global cooling? Those were what the climate bullies terrified us with in my youth, in an effort to turn us all into hysterical teenagers.)
Maybe Musk can buy NOAA and take over the IPCC.
Newsweek, 28 April, 1975 (click image for link to PDF):
I visited NASA last month and they were selling “Failure is not an option” slogans on various souvenir items. I simply gritted my teeth at the absurdity and looked away.
I know what you mean. I do that every day at work.
Sorry to be so late go this post and the comments, but I was busy giving my daughter a pep talk before a big end-of-the-year competition. While not nearly so momentous or destructive an endeavor, the idea I tried to convey was similar to yours. She might not get the result she wants, but she was definitely going to learn something that she can use to improve in the future. It’s hard watching your kids lose or “fail,” but it helps to understand that they are building resilience and skills for the future. And through those experiences, parents are, too.
P.s. She didn’t fail, and in fact, really made a great showing. But even that one performance has been years (maybe even a decade) in the making.
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This post is part of the Quote of the Day group writing project at Ricochet. Check out the QOTD posts for April here. Or signup here for May!
See @seawriter’s comment above – the signup sheet for May is ready for your to join us!
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