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"We've got to tunnel one of these vehicles into the ground by trying something really hard." - Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX

by speeq 12y ago

ddorian43 12y ago
please explain
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  As an experimental vehicle, you're generally supposed to be pushing the limits of what it can do to find those limits. Essentially, they're saying "no accidents means we aren't trying hard enough to break the thing".
  - Gravityloss 12y ago
    Yes. If you read interviews, they had stuff like Elon having complaints that they aren't pushing the envelope hard enough since they don't get any crashes. Maybe they tested the control system's abilities by pushing it over very quickly. I bet there's people at SpaceX who were involved on the DC-X that did a successful translation to horizontal and back in 1995. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o Hope SpaceX has enough spare hardware that they can get quickly back up to testing again. I don't see any reason they wouldn't since they have produced quite many leg sets already - maybe they were planning to moving to newer hardware iterations anyway and the vehicle was "expendable", or at least the risk with dangerous tests was more acceptable.
  - transpy 12y ago
    It's interesting how diametrically different are the mindsets of engineers in one hand and the general public on the other. When I saw the video I thought it was a very bad news for SpaceX's name and I imagine some people might think the same. Like that one time when a Tesla car got fire. I remember reading news that highlighted the dangers of electric cars, etc., but then some commentators quickly pointed out the obvious: gasoline vehicles catch fire all the time. But the point is, it's in benefit of everybody to get educated about engineering issues. I hope media outlets don't start going like "SpaceX: Too Dangerous? A rocket may land in your backyard". For me at least, it's interesting to learn that they WANT to break the thing to find the weak spots.
    - NotAtWork 12y ago
      I see a difference between SpaceX and Tesla in this regard: Tesla had a production car catch on fire with a customer using it, while SpaceX broke their rocket doing an experiment with rockets during development. It seems pretty reasonable you break your things while you're testing them out - I mean, we've all see those car crash commercials, right?
robert_tweed 12y ago
This puts "move fast and break things" into a whole new perspective. I'm glad I can joke about this because nobody was hurt. Saw the headline at the top of the frontage and it immediately brought back memories of seeing Challenger on the news when I was 9, which rather changed my perspective on space travel at the time.
- waps 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708 How NOT to do it. Not that China even bothered to check how many died, apparently.
- dclowd9901 12y ago
  Indeed, but when I move fast and break things, my website goes down, and maybe costs a few thousand in lost sales. In terms of man hours and construction, this broken thing must cost tens of millions! That's some agile.

"We've got to tunnel one of these vehicles into the ground by trying something really hard." - Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX

by speeq 12y ago

"We've got to tunnel one of these vehicles into the ground by trying something really hard." - Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO of SpaceX

ddorian43 12y ago

please explain

ceejayoz 12y ago
As an experimental vehicle, you're generally supposed to be pushing the limits of what it can do to find those limits. Essentially, they're saying "no accidents means we aren't trying hard enough to break the thing".
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  Yes. If you read interviews, they had stuff like Elon having complaints that they aren't pushing the envelope hard enough since they don't get any crashes. Maybe they tested the control system's abilities by pushing it over very quickly. I bet there's people at SpaceX who were involved on the DC-X that did a successful translation to horizontal and back in 1995. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o Hope SpaceX has enough spare hardware that they can get quickly back up to testing again. I don't see any reason they wouldn't since they have produced quite many leg sets already - maybe they were planning to moving to newer hardware iterations anyway and the vehicle was "expendable", or at least the risk with dangerous tests was more acceptable.
- transpy 12y ago
  It's interesting how diametrically different are the mindsets of engineers in one hand and the general public on the other. When I saw the video I thought it was a very bad news for SpaceX's name and I imagine some people might think the same. Like that one time when a Tesla car got fire. I remember reading news that highlighted the dangers of electric cars, etc., but then some commentators quickly pointed out the obvious: gasoline vehicles catch fire all the time. But the point is, it's in benefit of everybody to get educated about engineering issues. I hope media outlets don't start going like "SpaceX: Too Dangerous? A rocket may land in your backyard". For me at least, it's interesting to learn that they WANT to break the thing to find the weak spots.
  - NotAtWork 12y ago
    I see a difference between SpaceX and Tesla in this regard: Tesla had a production car catch on fire with a customer using it, while SpaceX broke their rocket doing an experiment with rockets during development. It seems pretty reasonable you break your things while you're testing them out - I mean, we've all see those car crash commercials, right?

robert_tweed 12y ago

This puts "move fast and break things" into a whole new perspective. I'm glad I can joke about this because nobody was hurt. Saw the headline at the top of the frontage and it immediately brought back memories of seeing Challenger on the news when I was 9, which rather changed my perspective on space travel at the time.

waps 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708 How NOT to do it. Not that China even bothered to check how many died, apparently.
dclowd9901 12y ago
Indeed, but when I move fast and break things, my website goes down, and maybe costs a few thousand in lost sales. In terms of man hours and construction, this broken thing must cost tens of millions! That's some agile.