Thanks for such a deep explanation, especially for those of us who know nothing about launching space rockets.
> Remember that the management culture was one of the hottest topics in the investigation of the Challenger disaster. Perhaps it's a good idea to revisit the findings of that investigation, as well as the venerable and effective Apollo design philosophy.
IIUC, the goal of SpaceX's "Agile" approach to lower the costs of putting payloads into orbit via launch vehicle reuse by amortizing the R&D and equipment cost over multiple profitable launches. They are searching for the cheapest route to achieve large payload space launches.
NASA's goal in the Apollo program was to spend whatever was necessary in order to match and surpass the Soviets' accomplishments. While I don't doubt they were scrappy when necessary, I suspect that the reputational cost of repeated failures (to the country and individuals) was such that it was worth investing time into "getting it right". When fatal failures happened, it was treated as a national disaster and the dead are today considered heroes: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-1/
Today nobody would even consider risking their lives (nor be asked to) in the way that the Apollo astronauts did, perhaps because the goals (for profit or the mars-fantasy) are considered to be less virtuous.
Perhaps the quality control doesn't need to be as high when you perceive there is less at stake and you can just do it again and again (until the money runs out). That's not to say that this approach won't eventually work, but the motivations and guiding narrative seem to be really different than in the past.
> Remember that the management culture was one of the hottest topics in the investigation of the Challenger disaster. Perhaps it's a good idea to revisit the findings of that investigation, as well as the venerable and effective Apollo design philosophy.
IIUC, the goal of SpaceX's "Agile" approach to lower the costs of putting payloads into orbit via launch vehicle reuse by amortizing the R&D and equipment cost over multiple profitable launches. They are searching for the cheapest route to achieve large payload space launches.
NASA's goal in the Apollo program was to spend whatever was necessary in order to match and surpass the Soviets' accomplishments. While I don't doubt they were scrappy when necessary, I suspect that the reputational cost of repeated failures (to the country and individuals) was such that it was worth investing time into "getting it right". When fatal failures happened, it was treated as a national disaster and the dead are today considered heroes: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/apollo-1/
Today nobody would even consider risking their lives (nor be asked to) in the way that the Apollo astronauts did, perhaps because the goals (for profit or the mars-fantasy) are considered to be less virtuous.
Perhaps the quality control doesn't need to be as high when you perceive there is less at stake and you can just do it again and again (until the money runs out). That's not to say that this approach won't eventually work, but the motivations and guiding narrative seem to be really different than in the past.