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Mostly ignoring the Musk aspect. I believe their success comes down to how they go about these massive development projects. They start super scrappy, quick to

Mostly ignoring the Musk aspect. I believe their success comes down to how they go about these massive development projects. They start super scrappy, quick to iterate, build and throwaway hardware quickly. But then are experts of transitioning into a sustainable late stage development within the regulatory bounds of a highly controlled industry. They did it with Falcon, Dragon, Starlink, and I suspect they will with Starship too. They could only go about this by having a "crazy" and very rich benefactor, along with the management of COO Gwynne Shotwell.

svachalek 4y ago
It does seem crazy wasteful but in the end they are far more cost effective than more traditional companies like Boeing. Signing off on these original programs took incredible bravery but by now investors should be punishing companies that timidly launch once every five years.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It's the same lesson the software industry learned roughly 20 years ago: For an omniscient being the waterfall process might be the most efficient, for mere mortals it's more valuable to have a process that allows you to verify assumptions and find flaws as early in the process as possible, when it's still cheap to fix them.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Waste when the waste is cheap and easy recyclable. People get confused by this when they see bits of metal get blown up and fail. The cost of that metal isn't really that high at the end of the day and the bits of metal that are recovered get melted down and reused. Do you know what cannot be recycled and reused? Human effort when we spend tens of thousand of hours on something that doesn't pan out. In so many mega project we see design ideas carried on because of the sunk cost fallacy. The key to prevent this is being able to bail out as fast as possible when the idea isn't going to work, and being able to focus on what is going to work.
  - philistine 4y ago
    Those ideas that don't pan out don't get thrown away. They're used within SLS as we speak.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  "Plan to throw one away. You will, anyhow." - Fred Brooks
wongarsu 4y ago
Not only a rich benefactor, also someone who can inspire and convince others. SpaceX has gone through multiple financing rounds, the last one in January raising $750M at a valuation of $137B.
mumblemumble 4y ago
> They start super scrappy, quick to iterate, build and throwaway hardware quickly. But then are experts of transitioning into a sustainable late stage development within the regulatory bounds of a highly controlled industry. I wish something like this could happen in software, too. I have worked in a a couple regulated industries, and in all cases the firm's decision to impose the same level of governance at all levels of the software value chain was a horrible impediment to innovation. After a certain number of iterations of having to do governance reviews of spikes and PoCs that were going to be thrown away regardless of whether the idea worked, any developer who values their own time will eventually settle into avoiding true prototype and PoC work and instead dive straight into writing production-bound code from the beginning. I've wondered if we could get more innovation and more quality by allowing rapid iteration (without all the paperwork) during early development and prototyping of an idea, followed by a complete and in-depth review, documentation and certification of the final design and implementation as part of preparing it to ship to production.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  It does seem like a method that'd apply well to software. It's kind of like, "move fast and break things," except that which was broken gets fixed in subsequent iterations instead of being forgotten about as priorities are shifted to the feature of the week and becoming so deeply rooted that they won't get fixed until the next big rewrite.
  - tough 4y ago
    move fast and fix things
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
inglor_cz 4y ago
I think that motivation plays a great role. "We are going to fly to Mars!" attract different kind of engineers than "We are going to eke out 5 per cent more growth for our shareholders!" Most publicly traded corporations fall into the latter trap: find some cash cow and milk it endlessly so that the shareholders are happy, and screw any innovation. Privately owned corporations such as SpaceX can afford "loftier" goals.

svachalek 4y ago

It does seem crazy wasteful but in the end they are far more cost effective than more traditional companies like Boeing. Signing off on these original programs took incredible bravery but by now investors should be punishing companies that timidly launch once every five years.

wongarsu 4y ago
It's the same lesson the software industry learned roughly 20 years ago: For an omniscient being the waterfall process might be the most efficient, for mere mortals it's more valuable to have a process that allows you to verify assumptions and find flaws as early in the process as possible, when it's still cheap to fix them.
pixl97 4y ago
Waste when the waste is cheap and easy recyclable. People get confused by this when they see bits of metal get blown up and fail. The cost of that metal isn't really that high at the end of the day and the bits of metal that are recovered get melted down and reused. Do you know what cannot be recycled and reused? Human effort when we spend tens of thousand of hours on something that doesn't pan out. In so many mega project we see design ideas carried on because of the sunk cost fallacy. The key to prevent this is being able to bail out as fast as possible when the idea isn't going to work, and being able to focus on what is going to work.
- philistine 4y ago
  Those ideas that don't pan out don't get thrown away. They're used within SLS as we speak.
mumblemumble 4y ago
"Plan to throw one away. You will, anyhow." - Fred Brooks

wongarsu 4y ago

Not only a rich benefactor, also someone who can inspire and convince others. SpaceX has gone through multiple financing rounds, the last one in January raising $750M at a valuation of $137B.

mumblemumble 4y ago

> They start super scrappy, quick to iterate, build and throwaway hardware quickly. But then are experts of transitioning into a sustainable late stage development within the regulatory bounds of a highly controlled industry. I wish something like this could happen in software, too. I have worked in a a couple regulated industries, and in all cases the firm's decision to impose the same level of governance at all levels of the software value chain was a horrible impediment to innovation. After a certain number of iterations of having to do governance reviews of spikes and PoCs that were going to be thrown away regardless of whether the idea worked, any developer who values their own time will eventually settle into avoiding true prototype and PoC work and instead dive straight into writing production-bound code from the beginning. I've wondered if we could get more innovation and more quality by allowing rapid iteration (without all the paperwork) during early development and prototyping of an idea, followed by a complete and in-depth review, documentation and certification of the final design and implementation as part of preparing it to ship to production.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
It does seem like a method that'd apply well to software. It's kind of like, "move fast and break things," except that which was broken gets fixed in subsequent iterations instead of being forgotten about as priorities are shifted to the feature of the week and becoming so deeply rooted that they won't get fixed until the next big rewrite.
- tough 4y ago
  move fast and fix things
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

inglor_cz 4y ago

I think that motivation plays a great role. "We are going to fly to Mars!" attract different kind of engineers than "We are going to eke out 5 per cent more growth for our shareholders!" Most publicly traded corporations fall into the latter trap: find some cash cow and milk it endlessly so that the shareholders are happy, and screw any innovation. Privately owned corporations such as SpaceX can afford "loftier" goals.