Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
by tamana on Thursday September 01, 2016 @12:32PM
(#12406669)
You can't say that all mistakes are worthwhile just because they reach us that we shouldn't make those mistakes... We already knew that. That wasn't research, it was a prelaunch test, and it failed.
Re:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has exploded at Cape Canaveral
by incongruity on Thursday September 01, 2016 @03:11PM
(#12408041)
That's not what we're learning. We're learning how not to make those mistakes. That yields: 1) Lower risk launches in the future through better process and better design 2) Possibly cheaper/better hardware redesigned due to the issues uncovered today.
Yes, it is probably lower ROI than that payload getting into space, but it does mean it's not a total loss and not simply a broken window fallacy.
It's more akin to if the window maker also tried to learn/test harder to break windows with each one she installed. Then, each broken window would be an experimental outcome instead of just a lost window.
When it comes to innovation, however, failure is often the impetus to more efficient design. Not only was that $200m shifted from Musk/Investors to SpaceX, et al, but it also went to informing the process and improvements for the entire project, and future projects by other companies.
We wish we could learn these things more cheaply, sure. But that doesn't mean the world or company would have been better off in the long run had the incident not occurred -- it's too soon to tell, and we might never know.