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Iterative design is faster and arguably better. But you have to be willing to fail. //
This "fail early, fail forward" strategy allows a company to move more quickly and improve its design along the way. It also results in public failures, such as the all-explodey rocket Wednesday. //
For casual observers of spaceflight, this "iterative" design philosophy is very different from the much slower, linear design process used by traditional aerospace partners for large development projects. Under this more traditional process, a company—or, historically, NASA—seeks to avoid the risk of a rocket failing before it is perfected. Years are spent designing and testing every component of a vehicle before it is assembled for a full-scale test. As a result the process is much slower and more costly. //
It is easier for a company like SpaceX working on a self-funded project like Starship to do this than a government agency, noted Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. "You have to let people see you fail, and you have to push back when the critics use your early failures as an excuse to shut you down," he recently said. "This is why it is hard for national space agencies to adopt it. The geopolitics and domestic politics are brutal." //
MrTeapotSeniorius Lurkiusreplyabout 8 hours agoReader Fav
DanNeely wrote:
It was. OTOH Saturn 1 was highly iterative; with almost every launch prior to the 1b series being a different configuration as they went from a first stage with a mass simulator on top, to a first and second stage with a simulator in place of a payload, to flying a boilerplate Apollo capsule; all while fiddling with the rest of the stack below.
I had the opportunity to hear a bunch of Apollo engineers talk when NASA celebrated 50 years since Explorer 1 was launched. They wanted Saturn V to be iterative to, but to meet schedule, they decided to gamble instead. In general though, all the NASA contractors are highly dependent on simulation and systems integration labs. The perception is that's cheaper than blowing hardware up, but I'm not certain that's true. //
greybeardengineerArs Centurionreplyabout 8 hours agoReader Fav
VidasDuday wrote:
Fail fast. Fail often. Succeed sooner.
Edit: As I recall, the Saturn V stack was also a combined unit and integration test- smoke or blow.
The Saturn V stages were also tested individually. And sometime didn't pass.
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