Comment by wolvoleo
6 days ago
In the space shuttle disasters the hardware had at least been used more than once. A huge lot of this one is only tried and tested on paper.
And the idea that 'if we throw this much money at it, it really must be fine' I don't buy either. Look at how that worked out for Boeing.
For all my feelings about Musk I would much rather step into a rocket that has exploded in all kinds of imaginable situations before so they know how the materials and design actually behave in real world scenarios. I do really think that is the way to go.
I do not even remotely trust his management anymore. It looks very much like corner cutting. Cut until it fails and back off a bit is not a good approach when you need some redundancy.
> For all my feelings about Musk I would much rather step into a rocket
Definitely, but we still have to figure out if Musk is such a genious or NASA is full of retards.
Neither is true IMO but musk just picked the right development model.
Big space never did this because the current megaproject cost plus is just what they want, a blank check.
Witn SpaceX Musk was mainly wasting his own money especially in the beginning. So it made sense. It just makes sense, it's not even a 'shortcut'.
Ps yes he did get some grants but not beefy unlimited ones.
Another thing SpaceX has going for it is when their tests fail everyone just points and laughs at Musk. When a NASA launch fails the taxpayers don't want to pay for it any longer.
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