SpaceX’s entire development philosophy is “test early, test often and learn from failures”. This is a much quicker pace than simulating every imaginable failure scenario and leads to faster progress in development.
This is a catchy statement, not an actionable philosophy. There’s many ways to do it, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX is doing it poorly.
There’s a lot of value in brainstorming every imaginable failure scenario. It’s industry standard to do so in fact with HAZOPs. There’s failures that you may not necessarily see in testing – especially those that are rare but catastrophic. This is a field that should be acutely aware of that given past events.
There’s also a right way to do testing and a wrong way to do testing. You typically consolidate tests and do several at a time, depending on the stage in the project. And you don’t typically risk precious equipment in doing so.
From the sounds of it, they don’t have a robust safety program, and they’re hemorrhaging money and resources through poor testing philosophies.
This is a catchy statement, not an actionable philosophy. There’s many ways to do it, and it’s entirely possible that SpaceX is doing it poorly.
There’s a lot of value in brainstorming every imaginable failure scenario. It’s industry standard to do so in fact with HAZOPs. There’s failures that you may not necessarily see in testing – especially those that are rare but catastrophic. This is a field that should be acutely aware of that given past events.
There’s also a right way to do testing and a wrong way to do testing. You typically consolidate tests and do several at a time, depending on the stage in the project. And you don’t typically risk precious equipment in doing so.
From the sounds of it, they don’t have a robust safety program, and they’re hemorrhaging money and resources through poor testing philosophies.