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They meant "will have worked out enough of the kinks by their 5th successful launch so as to be operating at a high success rate." Lots of falcons failed, but

They meant "will have worked out enough of the kinks by their 5th successful launch so as to be operating at a high success rate." Lots of falcons failed, but you don't see anybody worried about their payload or crew on Falcon 9 these days.

bumby 3y ago
>will have worked out enough of the kinks by their 5th successful launch so as to be operating at a high success rate." I agree with the first part, but the second half extrapolates too far IMO. One successful launch tells us very little about operational reliability.
- frumper 3y ago
  And SLS is that much further behind
  - bumby 3y ago
    No doubt, but operational tempo is a different issue than system reliability.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  But the apples to oranges here is >1 launches (SpaceX, some successful and some unsuccessful) vs 1 successful launch (traditional modern aerospace). From an outcome perspective, it's hard to ever see the lower launch rate dominating from any perspective. You don't have economies of manufacturing scale, because your assembly rate is so low it doesn't make sense not to treat each as exquisite. You don't have rapid iteration on manufacturing improvements, because the tyranny of safety checks on manufacturing time balloons {time from fix to flight}, after a proposed fix is identified. And most importantly, you leave yourselves extremely vulnerable to unknown-unknowns, that you can't imagine in the design phase. For example, if NASA had been launching the shuttle more rapidly, with the bulk of those being uncrewed launches, they probably would have picked an uncrewed launch to test expanding the temperature bounds at Cape Canaveral, and Challenger would have exploded without a crew. As was, NASA's shuttle launches were so rare that there wasn't acceptable launch rate and weren't low-impact launch opportunities to do so. So they tested it on a crewed mission with disastrous results. Point being: they backed themselves into a low-volume/high-risk corner of their own strategic design SpaceX's most brilliant achievement was using Starlink to artificially boost launch demand and give them a minimally-profitable/break-even place to sink higher-risk launches.
  - bumby 3y ago
    I agree with many of your points, but it comes across as slightly biased because you don't acknowledge a single downside to any of them. >You don't have rapid iteration on manufacturing improvements, because the tyranny of safety checks on manufacturing time balloons Rapid iterations has obvious benefits. But there are also downsides because it makes it harder to arrive at a stable, reliable design, it introduces vendor issues, etc. Tesla is also known for iterating faster compared to their major competitors but it has resulted in logistics and reliability issues. IMO SpaceX's most brilliant achievement was leveraging govt contracts to work out the kinks of their designs, which could then be leveraged at a lower risk for Starlink. In effect, they let the public take the burden of the risk (because the govt is really the only entity capable of shouldering that size of a risk for an unproven quantity) and then transitioned to a private means of revenue in Starlink. (I'm not saying that as a slight btw, I think it's mutually beneficial).
    - XorNot 3y ago
      Frankly comparing Tesla and SpaceX is getting to be a tiresome argument. They're owned by one "eccentric" billionaire, but he's not an engineer, they don't share staff, facilities or manufacturing outside of "hey this alloy is pretty good". SpaceX's strategy for the Falcon 9 worked and it's one of the most reliable rockets in the world, flying the most often.
      - sidibe 3y ago
        I think the risk is that they are both driven by what the CEO finds cool which may or may not be what's most effective
      - bumby 3y ago
        >Frankly comparing Tesla and SpaceX is getting to be a tiresome argument. You're focused on the wrong takeaway. You're making this about a person, I'm talking about a process. I used Tesla because it's easy to see how one culture translates to the other. Insert any company that uses rapid iteration in place of Tesla if you prefer. The point is that there are certain circumstances where rapid iteration is useful and others less so. When reliability matters, rapid iteration may be working against you. (It's a continuum, of course, so the real question is where is that tipping point) >SpaceX's strategy for the Falcon 9 worked The point I'm driving at is there is a distinction to be made when finding out why certain iterations didn't work vs. just changing the design without fully understanding the failure mechanisms of the first. One leads to a greater understanding than the other. It's a difference in an engineers mindset and a scientists mindset.
toss1 3y ago
As long as the organization has and maintain a culture that is aggressively seeking out problems large and small, and proactively fixing aprox. all of them, you will end up with a program with a high rate of operational success. It's the X-origin vs Slope issue - steeper slope always wins. The problem is maintaining that aggressive problem-seeking culture after long periods of success
- bumby 3y ago
  This is part of the culture distinction. On one hand SpaceX is attacking problems, but IMO they often don't go towards attacking the root causal understanding. That means there's a possibility of unknown latent risk. As an example, they had issues with failures related to their COPVs rupturing. On the one hand, they addressed the problem by redesigning their system. On the other, they never really investigated fully why the COPVs were failing in the first place. Instead, NASA decided to fund that investigation on their own. One possible consequence is that their redesign didn't fully address the risk because they never fully investigated the root cause.

bumby 3y ago

>will have worked out enough of the kinks by their 5th successful launch so as to be operating at a high success rate." I agree with the first part, but the second half extrapolates too far IMO. One successful launch tells us very little about operational reliability.

frumper 3y ago
And SLS is that much further behind
- bumby 3y ago
  No doubt, but operational tempo is a different issue than system reliability.
ethbr0 3y ago
But the apples to oranges here is >1 launches (SpaceX, some successful and some unsuccessful) vs 1 successful launch (traditional modern aerospace). From an outcome perspective, it's hard to ever see the lower launch rate dominating from any perspective. You don't have economies of manufacturing scale, because your assembly rate is so low it doesn't make sense not to treat each as exquisite. You don't have rapid iteration on manufacturing improvements, because the tyranny of safety checks on manufacturing time balloons {time from fix to flight}, after a proposed fix is identified. And most importantly, you leave yourselves extremely vulnerable to unknown-unknowns, that you can't imagine in the design phase. For example, if NASA had been launching the shuttle more rapidly, with the bulk of those being uncrewed launches, they probably would have picked an uncrewed launch to test expanding the temperature bounds at Cape Canaveral, and Challenger would have exploded without a crew. As was, NASA's shuttle launches were so rare that there wasn't acceptable launch rate and weren't low-impact launch opportunities to do so. So they tested it on a crewed mission with disastrous results. Point being: they backed themselves into a low-volume/high-risk corner of their own strategic design SpaceX's most brilliant achievement was using Starlink to artificially boost launch demand and give them a minimally-profitable/break-even place to sink higher-risk launches.
- bumby 3y ago
  I agree with many of your points, but it comes across as slightly biased because you don't acknowledge a single downside to any of them. >You don't have rapid iteration on manufacturing improvements, because the tyranny of safety checks on manufacturing time balloons Rapid iterations has obvious benefits. But there are also downsides because it makes it harder to arrive at a stable, reliable design, it introduces vendor issues, etc. Tesla is also known for iterating faster compared to their major competitors but it has resulted in logistics and reliability issues. IMO SpaceX's most brilliant achievement was leveraging govt contracts to work out the kinks of their designs, which could then be leveraged at a lower risk for Starlink. In effect, they let the public take the burden of the risk (because the govt is really the only entity capable of shouldering that size of a risk for an unproven quantity) and then transitioned to a private means of revenue in Starlink. (I'm not saying that as a slight btw, I think it's mutually beneficial).
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Frankly comparing Tesla and SpaceX is getting to be a tiresome argument. They're owned by one "eccentric" billionaire, but he's not an engineer, they don't share staff, facilities or manufacturing outside of "hey this alloy is pretty good". SpaceX's strategy for the Falcon 9 worked and it's one of the most reliable rockets in the world, flying the most often.
    - sidibe 3y ago
      I think the risk is that they are both driven by what the CEO finds cool which may or may not be what's most effective
    - bumby 3y ago
      >Frankly comparing Tesla and SpaceX is getting to be a tiresome argument. You're focused on the wrong takeaway. You're making this about a person, I'm talking about a process. I used Tesla because it's easy to see how one culture translates to the other. Insert any company that uses rapid iteration in place of Tesla if you prefer. The point is that there are certain circumstances where rapid iteration is useful and others less so. When reliability matters, rapid iteration may be working against you. (It's a continuum, of course, so the real question is where is that tipping point) >SpaceX's strategy for the Falcon 9 worked The point I'm driving at is there is a distinction to be made when finding out why certain iterations didn't work vs. just changing the design without fully understanding the failure mechanisms of the first. One leads to a greater understanding than the other. It's a difference in an engineers mindset and a scientists mindset.

toss1 3y ago

As long as the organization has and maintain a culture that is aggressively seeking out problems large and small, and proactively fixing aprox. all of them, you will end up with a program with a high rate of operational success. It's the X-origin vs Slope issue - steeper slope always wins. The problem is maintaining that aggressive problem-seeking culture after long periods of success

bumby 3y ago
This is part of the culture distinction. On one hand SpaceX is attacking problems, but IMO they often don't go towards attacking the root causal understanding. That means there's a possibility of unknown latent risk. As an example, they had issues with failures related to their COPVs rupturing. On the one hand, they addressed the problem by redesigning their system. On the other, they never really investigated fully why the COPVs were failing in the first place. Instead, NASA decided to fund that investigation on their own. One possible consequence is that their redesign didn't fully address the risk because they never fully investigated the root cause.