The blinkered souls who saw the SpaceX second Starship test as a failure — and there are more than a few of them — are to dim to realize one of the fundamental laws of science and engineering. Failure is your friend, and the only true sin is making the same mistake twice.
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10 replies on “Failing Their Way to Mars”
Man, I love you three. Thanks again.
Amen!!!
As a surgeon, I cannot relate to this episode. “Failure” means I lose my house, threaten my career, damage my reputation, and can’t sleep for a couple of years wondering what I could do differently.
It applies to you but indirectly. Other people before you have made the mistakes so that you could learn what works and faithfully implement the proceedures you do as a surgeon.
For you it’s the same as for an aircraft pilot. Where the common saying goes “Learn from the mistakes of others, you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Except that in your case it would be “The mistakes of others allow you to do things right the first time so that you don’t harm someone needlessly.”
SSDD
I had 3 years as a chemical engineer and 20+ as a programmer. Only once did I have a program compile cleanly and do exactly what the end result the way I wanted on the first try. (It was very simple.) I always missed something otherwise. Sometimes it was a stupid mistake. (a misspelling for example) Sometimes something came up that I didnt think about. But with time, the number of attempts lessened before success.
If I had a not simple program compile and work as planned on the first try, i would wonder what I missed.
“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from making mistakes. Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes. Most of us must be the other people.”
And you learn better when you make a mistake yourself .And make a big one.
You learn from failure because when something breaks or things aren’t as they should be, your brain switches into troubleshooting learning mode and draws from past experiences for reference. If everything is going smoothly, your brain is on autopilot. Unless something interests you or needs immediate attention, one takes the moment for granted. Cliffs Notes version, we become lazy and complacent without challenge; idle hands are the devil’s workshop.
Of course the benefit and meaning of real diversity is having a group with sufficiently wide experience so as to mentally discover and address as many of the “unknown unknowns” into ‘known unknowns” as possible. Since one of the better known knowns is how much money is available to spend on a given project; and it is never enough.
For such a technical endeavor, we might well wonder just what a poet, art historian, or political philosopher might offer. Perhaps only other histories and data that keeps the technical team’s spirits up.
But as Philip Crosby said, quality (and greater reliability) is free, once you have the data and knowledge to make and control the processes involved. Making a correctable mistake over and over is what gets expensive.
Learning new stuff can be fun. I just wish I remembered more of it! 🙂
I suppose if the US governmental restrictions became too onerous, Musk would take Space X and his team to some other country and launch as frequently as he desired from there.
Love watching the shots of the people cheering inside Space-X when RUD occurs knowing that it was inevitable and that they now have Terrabytes of data to learn from.
I recall back in HS taking an Advance Physics class and Dr. C. kept harping on the basics. What do you know? (m, s, t, d, etc.) What are you seeking (unknowns)? Set up the equations of known and unknowns. About halfway through the year (we were 16 year olds) he introduced the concept of unknown unknowns. This concept separated the engineers from the business majors.
Same thing in my first principles of engineering class in college. HS was pre-Rumsfeld. Donnie’s problem was he was talking to English majors who couldn’t grasp the concept of things you didn’t know you didn’t know. So they found it easier to make fun of his language rather than try and understand something they couldn’t grok. (threw that in for Steve’s literary reference)
“My Friend Failure”, one of Bill’s best Firewalls.
Thomas Edison said he knew over a thousand ways NOT to make a lightbulb.