4 ms·

> Engineering 101 teaches that when in doubt err on the safe side. Nonsense. You can't discover limits if you always stay within them. Commercial engineering,

> Engineering 101 teaches that when in doubt err on the safe side. Nonsense. You can't discover limits if you always stay within them. Commercial engineering, sure. But R&D is by definition the process of exploring an unknown parameter search space. And considering that spaceX have achieved what STS has failed to do with 1/10th of the STS budget, I'd say they're not doing terribly badly with their chosen R&D strategy. You seem to have a deeply ingrained misconception about what R&D actually entails and how it's different from both commercial engineering and designed experiments. Erring on the safe side is what they're doing with their manned missions. Cargo missions are medium risk and occasionally do dirt-cheap launches to deliberately try risky scenarios. R&D ops is deliberately high risk and low process overhead. They rather someone just try something and see what happens instead of spending 6 months writing an experiment plan and getting it validated etc. as you would see in the pharma industry for example. I'm not sure why you're struggling to comprehend this fairly simple and fairly standard strategy.

rumanator 6y ago
> But R&D is by definition the process of exploring That's vacuous bullshit. You explore the limits you've set to explore. If your goal is to check how far you can drive a vehicle before it blows up then you plan a destructive test, which involves specific steps to collect the data you need such as peppering the system with sensors thought with your experiment in mind. That's engineering 101, and aerospace engineering isn't Jackass. Getting a flat tire is not engineering nor research.
- risyachka 6y ago
  In R&D things blow all the time. You just usually don't see it. In labs when they are looking for new drug or vaccine - thousands of variants fail. And it's ok. When you are developing anything new - you do thousands of try and fail. IF you don't - then you will even ever invent anything new. The best you can do is a little bit upgraded iteration. And here a few fails and it is disappointing? Nope. Its the only way to discover something new.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > In R&D things blow all the time. There are world's of difference between a prototype accidentally blowing up because a design fault was unnoticed up to that moment, and this absurd spin on this accident about how these accidents are sought after and desirable. They aren't. They are always problematic and a setback, and in some projects even project-killers. So, enough with the bullshit about how this accident is good news. It isn't. Even if the project can easily recover from this setback, it's still a setback.

rumanator 6y ago

> But R&D is by definition the process of exploring That's vacuous bullshit. You explore the limits you've set to explore. If your goal is to check how far you can drive a vehicle before it blows up then you plan a destructive test, which involves specific steps to collect the data you need such as peppering the system with sensors thought with your experiment in mind. That's engineering 101, and aerospace engineering isn't Jackass. Getting a flat tire is not engineering nor research.

risyachka 6y ago
In R&D things blow all the time. You just usually don't see it. In labs when they are looking for new drug or vaccine - thousands of variants fail. And it's ok. When you are developing anything new - you do thousands of try and fail. IF you don't - then you will even ever invent anything new. The best you can do is a little bit upgraded iteration. And here a few fails and it is disappointing? Nope. Its the only way to discover something new.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > In R&D things blow all the time. There are world's of difference between a prototype accidentally blowing up because a design fault was unnoticed up to that moment, and this absurd spin on this accident about how these accidents are sought after and desirable. They aren't. They are always problematic and a setback, and in some projects even project-killers. So, enough with the bullshit about how this accident is good news. It isn't. Even if the project can easily recover from this setback, it's still a setback.