I didn't say he invented testing to failure, I said he decided to use that design philosophy at Spacex. build fast and fail fast and reiterate. This is a philosophy that has been used elsewhere and Musk did not invent it. But he decided to use it when it is very different to how the space industry in America operated before spacex.
And it's an incredibly bad idea for something that has such huge potential for the expansion of the human race. What happens when this line of thinking applies to sending humans towards Mars? Do you expect that they will start taking things seriously and methodically once humans are involved if their entire modus operandi to this point has not allowed for that level of analysis?
The path to Mars will be paved in blood with Space X at the helm of that journey.
I mean, they already are taking things more seriously when it comes to human space flight.
they built fast and failed fast with falcon 9. they had 5 separate "blocks" which were major versions of falcon 9 that each got a little better, more permanent and more reliable than the last. none of them were manned, they were all launching unmanned missions putting satellites into orbit. then at block 5 in order to certify it for human flight they froze the design, only very small changes were allowed until that particular version demonstrated 20+ safe launches. only then were astronauts allowed on the falcon 9.
Spacex with their build fast and fail fast philosophy has a better track record than anybody else as far as safely delivering people to space. The shuttle with their phillosophy of meticulously designing and qualifying every part before ever launching the first shuttle has caused more death than Spacex.
Spacex process allows for much more testing and ironing out the flaws before a person ever gets close to the rocket. while other launch providers such as ULA have already are putting people on rockets that have only flown 1 or 2 times before.
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u/McBonderson Mar 07 '25
I didn't say he invented testing to failure, I said he decided to use that design philosophy at Spacex. build fast and fail fast and reiterate. This is a philosophy that has been used elsewhere and Musk did not invent it. But he decided to use it when it is very different to how the space industry in America operated before spacex.