3 ms·
I think that totally underwrites the behavior of Elon Musk how I see it. Even if engineers know better that there are problems with certain design decisions and
by PinguTS 10y ago
I think that totally underwrites the behavior of Elon Musk how I see it. Even if engineers know better that there are problems with certain design decisions and things have to be redone, Elon overwrites and say: "just do it, we will fix it later." That basically to be able to run its marketing machine that he is the innovative guy.
It is this IT thinking principle of MVP with knowing design flaws. "But we will fix the flaws later." which is different from the engineering principle. In the engineering principle if design flaws become obvious, yes things gets delayed, because it has to be redone to eleminate the design flaws from the beginning. Because we know, things you can fix early may delay, but it is cheap. Things you need to fix later are expansive. Like if your production is set up and running and then you need to change things, you need also to change production.
He has shown this behavior with the Autopilot in the Tesla. Now it also becomes obvious for SpaceX: "Industry officials have known about problems with cracked blades on Falcon 9 versions for many months or even years. But cracks continued to be found during tests as recently as September 2016, Robert Lightfoot, NASA’s acting administrator, confirmed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this week."
- _ph_ 10y agoWell, considering that they fly 10 of those engines with every Falcon9 launch, and so far only a single of them has actually failed (and just shut off), it does not seem to be an actual problem so far. It might be interesting to see if this changes as the engines are reflown with the recovered first stages. If this might create an actual safety hazard for manned missions, it all makes sense to postpone a final solution till you are getting close to doing the manned flights. No reason to delay cargo missions for something that might affect manned rating.