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Musk was pretty clear in an interview that he does want things to blow up. He wants the testing to push and exceed the limits so those limits become well define

Musk was pretty clear in an interview that he does want things to blow up. He wants the testing to push and exceed the limits so those limits become well defined. It sounds quite reasonable.

kanox 6y ago
I doubt this was a deliberate beyond the limit.
- missosoup 6y ago
  That's the point - they're discovering the limits. The other way to do this would be to over engineer, have more conservative testing, etc. But Musk has been clear that they've explicitly chosen a strategy of fast iteration, and breaking things instead. And that's one of the primary things that gives them an edge over NASA.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    are you an aerospace engineer or someone just trying to find a positive take on the forth explosion?
    - missosoup 6y ago
      You don't need to be an aerospace engineer to be aware of the spaceX R&D strategy which has been spelled out pretty clearly by Musk and others in various interviews. I'm not saying the failure was intended, I'm saying the reason there are so many failures because they opted to go hard and fast, while government funded shops like NASA can't afford to have such a high failure rate because of the optics and politics. This modality to R&D isn't at all unique to aerospace and is more of a business/management issue so I'm not sure why you think an engineer would have anything more meaningful to say. As Kelly Johnson of skunkworks said, you can't have innovation unless you are prepared to see failures.
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        This sounds reasonable, but as always, A -> B doesn't mean B -> A. Failures are not clear evidence that the innovation strategy is working as planned.
        missosoup 6y ago
        The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. If there's a clear path to get to where you want to go, then you don't need to innovate. Innovation is the act of exploring the unknown regions of the problem search space. No, there's no guarantee they picked an optimal strategy. If such a guarantee were possible, they wouldn't need to be trying and failing in the first place. What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant. And that's very well understood by now. Various r&d folk from NASA have also said that they wish they could go harder and faster. But because they're micromanaged by congress, every failure is very expensive politically.
        jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
        > The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. Definitely not true. > What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant. If budget is unlimited, perhaps. In real life, not so much.
        redis_mlc 6y ago
        You and rumanator don't know what you're talking about and you seem puritanical to boot. If a rocket never fails, it means it's too heavy (overdesigned.) That's why Musk is ok with failures early on - he wants that data. So whether a destructive test is intentional or not, it does provide data for the next iteration. It's irrelevant if somebody "plans" or "hopes" for a new rocket to work tomorrow. It either works, or doesn't.
        rumanator 6y ago
        > The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. This assertion is utterly absurd. These guys aren't the jackass crew just figuring out what to blow up next just for kicks. Please, do not add more noise to the discussion.
davidivadavid 6y ago
Was he? I recall him getting pissed off that SN1 exploded. He doesn't want things to blow up for bad reasons.
- gonesilent 6y ago
  Because SN1 was a ground handling equipment failure. This might be the same type of failure. I think Elon wanted this one to fly high. SN4 raptor20
  - kiba 6y ago
    I am pretty sure that was poor design, not poor testing procedure. One of the other iteration definitely did failed due to poor procedure.
  - tigershark 6y ago
    Well.. technically it did fly high..
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
No, he doesn’t. What happened here is that they failed to predict the limits, which means their model was worse than they thought it was. It happens all the time in many fields. It is still a failure because it means you are not quite there as much as you thought you were.
rumanator 6y ago
> Musk was pretty clear in an interview that he does want things to blow up. I get that fanboys are excited and they see the Musk world through rose-tainted glasses. But SpaceX was planning on flying this vehicle. And it exploded. How does anyone anywhere believe in that? Obviously this outcome was not planned. If anyone wants to fly a vehicle to test other stuff, they don't want it to blow up prior to it.
- missosoup 6y ago
  I'll reiterate a point I made deeper down: obviously the failure wasn't planned or intended. But the overall process of being failure tolerant and having a high rate of failures, was. You can spend your resources on doing careful modelling and over-engineering and conservative testing to always stay within limits, or you can go fast and loose and discover those limits the kinetic explodey way. SpaceX chose the latter strategy. Also, not a fanboy. On a personal level the guy's a prick. But the strategy that SpaceX is employing is sound and tested. It's the same R&D strategy that was employed by Skunkworks, which is arguably the most successful aerospace R&D story in the entire history of our species.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > You can spend your resources on doing careful modelling and over-engineering and conservative testing to always stay within limits, or you can go fast and loose and discover those limits the kinetic explodey way. SpaceX chose the latter strategy. Again, this baseless assertion is just plain wrong on many levels, and flies in the face of basic engineering practices. At best, you're confusing a consciencious choice of allocating piles of resources to avoid bottlenecks and time constraints, such as losing a prototype which is a project death sentence to your general aerospace research project, with plain old incompetence. Engineering 101 teaches that when in doubt err on the safe side. Your assertion is the exact opposite because... Because what? What do you believe is the trade-off of wasting time and resources trying to fly intentionally half-baked designs that define the critical path of the project? Please spend a moment thinking about what you've said to try to see how absurd it is to waste time and resources for nothing at all.
gpm 6y ago
He does want things to blow up, but he vary rarely wants this thing to blow up. If things don't blow up, they're spending too much time being careful, since the cost of being reckless at this stage of development is less than the cost of things blowing up on a regular basis. If this thing blows up, well now that was just unfortunate. That was a not-entirely-free test article or lawn ornament and now the test failed so they can't be sure that it blowing up didn't hide another issue 10 seconds down the line. Obviously it would have been better if the person on the ground just remembered to check the whatchyamaculit before the test and prevented it from blowing up (which doesn't change the fact that it's not worth it to pay people to check every whatchyamaculit at this stage of development).

Musk was pretty clear in an interview that he does want things to blow up. He wants the testing to push and exceed the limits so those limits become well defined. It sounds quite reasonable.

kanox 6y ago

I doubt this was a deliberate beyond the limit.

missosoup 6y ago
That's the point - they're discovering the limits. The other way to do this would be to over engineer, have more conservative testing, etc. But Musk has been clear that they've explicitly chosen a strategy of fast iteration, and breaking things instead. And that's one of the primary things that gives them an edge over NASA.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  are you an aerospace engineer or someone just trying to find a positive take on the forth explosion?
  - missosoup 6y ago
    You don't need to be an aerospace engineer to be aware of the spaceX R&D strategy which has been spelled out pretty clearly by Musk and others in various interviews. I'm not saying the failure was intended, I'm saying the reason there are so many failures because they opted to go hard and fast, while government funded shops like NASA can't afford to have such a high failure rate because of the optics and politics. This modality to R&D isn't at all unique to aerospace and is more of a business/management issue so I'm not sure why you think an engineer would have anything more meaningful to say. As Kelly Johnson of skunkworks said, you can't have innovation unless you are prepared to see failures.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      This sounds reasonable, but as always, A -> B doesn't mean B -> A. Failures are not clear evidence that the innovation strategy is working as planned.
      - missosoup 6y ago
        The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. If there's a clear path to get to where you want to go, then you don't need to innovate. Innovation is the act of exploring the unknown regions of the problem search space. No, there's no guarantee they picked an optimal strategy. If such a guarantee were possible, they wouldn't need to be trying and failing in the first place. What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant. And that's very well understood by now. Various r&d folk from NASA have also said that they wish they could go harder and faster. But because they're micromanaged by congress, every failure is very expensive politically.
        jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
        > The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. Definitely not true. > What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant. If budget is unlimited, perhaps. In real life, not so much.
        redis_mlc 6y ago
        You and rumanator don't know what you're talking about and you seem puritanical to boot. If a rocket never fails, it means it's too heavy (overdesigned.) That's why Musk is ok with failures early on - he wants that data. So whether a destructive test is intentional or not, it does provide data for the next iteration. It's irrelevant if somebody "plans" or "hopes" for a new rocket to work tomorrow. It either works, or doesn't.
        rumanator 6y ago
        > The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. This assertion is utterly absurd. These guys aren't the jackass crew just figuring out what to blow up next just for kicks. Please, do not add more noise to the discussion.

davidivadavid 6y ago

Was he? I recall him getting pissed off that SN1 exploded. He doesn't want things to blow up for bad reasons.

gonesilent 6y ago
Because SN1 was a ground handling equipment failure. This might be the same type of failure. I think Elon wanted this one to fly high. SN4 raptor20
- kiba 6y ago
  I am pretty sure that was poor design, not poor testing procedure. One of the other iteration definitely did failed due to poor procedure.
- tigershark 6y ago
  Well.. technically it did fly high..

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago

No, he doesn’t. What happened here is that they failed to predict the limits, which means their model was worse than they thought it was. It happens all the time in many fields. It is still a failure because it means you are not quite there as much as you thought you were.

rumanator 6y ago

> Musk was pretty clear in an interview that he does want things to blow up. I get that fanboys are excited and they see the Musk world through rose-tainted glasses. But SpaceX was planning on flying this vehicle. And it exploded. How does anyone anywhere believe in that? Obviously this outcome was not planned. If anyone wants to fly a vehicle to test other stuff, they don't want it to blow up prior to it.

missosoup 6y ago
I'll reiterate a point I made deeper down: obviously the failure wasn't planned or intended. But the overall process of being failure tolerant and having a high rate of failures, was. You can spend your resources on doing careful modelling and over-engineering and conservative testing to always stay within limits, or you can go fast and loose and discover those limits the kinetic explodey way. SpaceX chose the latter strategy. Also, not a fanboy. On a personal level the guy's a prick. But the strategy that SpaceX is employing is sound and tested. It's the same R&D strategy that was employed by Skunkworks, which is arguably the most successful aerospace R&D story in the entire history of our species.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > You can spend your resources on doing careful modelling and over-engineering and conservative testing to always stay within limits, or you can go fast and loose and discover those limits the kinetic explodey way. SpaceX chose the latter strategy. Again, this baseless assertion is just plain wrong on many levels, and flies in the face of basic engineering practices. At best, you're confusing a consciencious choice of allocating piles of resources to avoid bottlenecks and time constraints, such as losing a prototype which is a project death sentence to your general aerospace research project, with plain old incompetence. Engineering 101 teaches that when in doubt err on the safe side. Your assertion is the exact opposite because... Because what? What do you believe is the trade-off of wasting time and resources trying to fly intentionally half-baked designs that define the critical path of the project? Please spend a moment thinking about what you've said to try to see how absurd it is to waste time and resources for nothing at all.

gpm 6y ago

He does want things to blow up, but he vary rarely wants this thing to blow up. If things don't blow up, they're spending too much time being careful, since the cost of being reckless at this stage of development is less than the cost of things blowing up on a regular basis. If this thing blows up, well now that was just unfortunate. That was a not-entirely-free test article or lawn ornament and now the test failed so they can't be sure that it blowing up didn't hide another issue 10 seconds down the line. Obviously it would have been better if the person on the ground just remembered to check the whatchyamaculit before the test and prevented it from blowing up (which doesn't change the fact that it's not worth it to pay people to check every whatchyamaculit at this stage of development).