Re:SpaceX is now building a Raptor engine a day, NASA says
by bumby on Friday November 04, 2022 @09:05AM
(#33465942)
This comes from someone who's previously worked as a process and reliability engineer, and one of those was in automotive manufacturing. One of my degrees is in industrial engineering, so I'm very familiar with Deming.
What you're saying is true, with one important distinction we may disagree on:
>"but that you can manage with software"
This is a take that seems accurate on it's surface but belies a lot of additional problems. Leaning on software for improving reliability can be a dangerous path. It's tempting because it's cheap and easy to iterate on. Software doesn't wear out like mechanical components. But software makes reliability pretty tough when you constantly iterate because it tends to fail at interfaces. Not only do the number of these interfaces tend to grow exponentially, they are notoriously difficult to test fully. Nancy Leveson has some good articles that demonstrate this distinction.
Since this thread is about aerospace, you can see where software failure caused catastrophic failures by lulling engineers into complacency about how it can enhance reliability. Ariane V, to Falcon, to CST-100 all have examples of how software can not fulfill its promises to increase reliability and often it does the opposite. Don't confuse the ability to move a design change faster with an inherent ability to make things more reliable.
What you're saying is true, with one important distinction we may disagree on:
>"but that you can manage with software"
This is a take that seems accurate on it's surface but belies a lot of additional problems. Leaning on software for improving reliability can be a dangerous path. It's tempting because it's cheap and easy to iterate on. Software doesn't wear out like mechanical components. But software makes reliability pretty tough when you constantly iterate because it tends to fail at interfaces. Not only do the number of these interfaces tend to grow exponentially, they are notoriously difficult to test fully. Nancy Leveson has some good articles that demonstrate this distinction.
Since this thread is about aerospace, you can see where software failure caused catastrophic failures by lulling engineers into complacency about how it can enhance reliability. Ariane V, to Falcon, to CST-100 all have examples of how software can not fulfill its promises to increase reliability and often it does the opposite. Don't confuse the ability to move a design change faster with an inherent ability to make things more reliable.