The Hill by Chris Impey 5/29/2023
When SpaceX’s Starship exploded not long after launch last month, it was generally seen as a failure. But for SpaceX, and for science and technology in general, failure can be the key to success.
Move fast and break thingsSpaceX founder Elon Musk was sanguine after his big new rocket suffered a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” He embraces the tech sector’s “move fast and break things” ethos, first espoused by Mark Zuckerberg. He knows that the engineering data gathered from the short flight will help track down problems and improve the outcome the next time Starship launches.
This type of rapid innovation cycle has worked for SpaceX. The company’s first rocket was the Falcon 1. Its first three launches were failures, followed by two successes — a fairly low success rate. Then Falcon 9 became the workhorse rocket for a decade, with just two failures in 232 launches, for a phenomenal success rate of 99 percent.
Government space agencies move more methodically than SpaceX. Funded by the taxpayers, they can’t afford too many high-profile explosions. But even they learn from failure. In the first few decades of Mars exploration, half of all the missions failed, which prompted NASA scientist John Cassini to speculate that a galactic “ghoul” was dining on spacecraft aimed at Mars. But since 2000, the success rate has been nearly 80 percent. We’ve become accustomed to nimble rovers, sky cranes and helicopters operating seamlessly on the red planet.
More:
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4021083-spacex-and-the-science-of-failure/
