Thursday, November 21, 2019

Oops

Yup, SpaceX had a rocket blow up during a pressurization test again.

Here's the thing. SpaceX understands that when you are designing new stuff, especially for space, you have to accept that you are going to blow up a few prototypes. (And possibly kill a test pilot, although you do try to avoid that).

Their design philosophy of testing and improving rather than trying to anticipate every possible failure profile before building is what's going to get us there. It's faster, it's cheaper, and it's more efficient.

We just have to accept a few explosions along the way, and make sure there aren't any people in them. (Which is why SpaceX IS doing tons of testing on, say, launch abort and human escape systems).

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