Of course you could do a water or air-pressure leak test on the plumbing pretty easily, and you would likely do that on the first 30 engines...
But if you have confidence in your build process, maybe the juice isn't worth the squeeze on (say) a direct contact ultrasound void check on every square millimeter of the part.
It's all about "how expensive is it to run the test" vs "what is the likelihood the test catches an issue" vs "what's the cost of failing while everyone is watching?"
Same reason SpaceX went from dry-dress-rehersals to wet-dress-rehearsals to separate-static-fire-before-launch to hold-down-for-three-seconds-before-launch... The hold-down -before-launch is an integration test that covers everything the previous tests do, so eventually you can start removing redundant tests.
In rockets/aerospace, where the failure of any one of a thousand different parts means instant disintegration, checks are always worth the squeeze. Everyone talks about building rockets on the cheap and accepting a slightly-higher failure rate, but in reality that doesn't work. Even a tiny increase in component fault rates translates to total mission failure once multiplied across thousands of vital parts. The answer isn't to not check but to find ways to more efficiently and more thoroughly check each part. This is only more true if one considers reusable rockets where components will be expected to participate in multiple launches.
This is simply inaccurate. You can spend months and hundreds of millions of dollars running scanning electron microscopes over all of your parts - no one does this, because it's not "worth the squeeze". The question is where to draw the line, and I have no idea what your opinion is there.
To make matters worse the failure modes don't only affect the launch vehicle itself. A failure of a rocket likely means a total loss of the payload. It also runs the risk of damage/loss of the launch pad, support structures, and hapless down range victims.
Rockets contain a significant amount of stored chemical energy, enough to get the payload mass into a stable orbit of the Earth. If you release all of that energy at once as an explosion it will cause a significant amount of damage. Rockets aren't something to goof around with and make assumptions about safety.
The problem with that idea is that you won't be legally allowed to launch again until you root cause and fix the failure, which can take months (or years if you're Blue Origin). Also, your insurance rates tend to go up a lot when your rockets blow up regularly, which tends to push customers away.
In practice it doesn't work.
Notes: Astra said they were going to pursue this strategy. It was not well received by potential customers and they basically had to walk it back.
What are you talking about? SpaceX's Falcon 9 is arguably the most reliable rocket ever made. They've launched hundreds of times in a row without failure.
If your point is that they're blowing up Starship prototypes, well... they're in the middle of a development program and they're not flying customer payloads.
Now they are launching an landing[1] safetly, but it's boring and the news show a cute puppy instead.
So for most people the rate of explosions vs launching is skewed.
[1] It's crazy that landing rockets is boring now.
Only if you want to launch from US. I guess with a 160 countries there will some with the right area for a launch pad with way laxer requirements.
Good luck with that.
Exploding rockets are a very serious public safety risk since they're >90% propellant. Even Russia grounded Soyuz until they root caused its launch failure. From what I can gather China has the same policy, although they're very quiet about any launch failures that happen, so it harder to tell.
The rocket itself is purely a delivery system for a payload after all.
In many cases the cargo is more precious than the rocket so you need reliable rockets.
But it isn't about destroying a bunch of them. Cut corners on checks and you very quickly blow up all of them. Any slight increase in the failure rate of individual parts, saving a few pennies, multiplies exponentially across the entire rocket into total system failure. So the money-saving approach is actually to test test and retest, to cram down the failure rates so low that the cumulative rate become acceptable (about 1%).
Unless this was something like a cruise missile dropped at altitude where a failure isn't a big deal.
Also, failures might reduce the accuracy of the missile, leading to potential civilian causalities.
If failure isn't a big deal, then the weapon should no have been used. An ALCM costs millions. The destruction it causes is part of a larger battle plan. Should it not work properly then friendly forces may die. Should it work properly then enemy forces may die. The effectiveness of such a weapon is never not a big deal.
If system A costs 1k quid but only works 50% of the time, while system B works 99% of the time but costs 10k quid, system A actually makes a lot more sense. On average you are going to spend a lot less money for the same outcome.
ready to build many Webb telescopes?
Day 1 patches for space travel?
Thanks, I hate it.
You create a process, you test that process so that you understand its limits, and then you make sure to follow that process.
Now I don't know if 3D printing rocket parts actually works and I have my doubts but this startup is currently testing the process and they will figure out its limits. That's the whole point of R&D.
Carbon fiber is a fickle beast and is prone to such failures so that alone worried me, but it was incredible for me to learn that they expected some sort of early warning from cracking.
The problem is that warning sign comes at around 10ms or less before the actual disaster
> "What we heard, in my opinion ... sounded like a flaw/defect in one area being acted on by the tremendous pressures and being crushed/damaged," Stanley wrote in the email, a copy of which has been obtained by CNN.
> "From the intensity of the sounds, the fact that they never totally stopped at depth, and the fact that there were sounds at about 300 feet that indicated a relaxing of stored energy /would indicate that there is an area of the hull that is breaking down/ getting spongy,"
It's more impressive that the sub continued to work while giving warning signs for 4 years.
https://abc7.com/titan-submersible-2023-incident-titanic-oce...
They seem to have run fewer tests on the new hull, though. From the outside, it looks like one of the lessons they learned from earlier tests was that tests can create bad news, so if you're optimizing for the best reports back to investors you should stop running tests.
https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/Hierarchy_of_Contro...
This is a driver assist program. There is no way such a program, that is subordinate to the driver and depends on the driver being in control, can protect the driver from not doing their part, and driving.
They can put whatever disclaimers in the manual but their branding is giving a different message. It's a message Tesla wants the customer to hear: "sit back and relax, the car drives for you."
The branding does not communicate that the driver needs to be just as aware and engaged as they would be if they were driving on their own, and be ready to take control of the vehicle at any moment.
Compare this to GM's "Super Cruise" branding. The message I get from that is "cruise control, but better." Cruise control is a long established feature, drivers have plenty of experience with it, and they know that it is definitely not going to drive the car itself. They know they're still going to have to pay attention because the car is going to do some of the driving tasks but not all of them. The car is making no implicit or explicit claim that it will drive for you.
"Full Self Driving" and related features like "Summon" make implicit claims in how they're named and presented. The driver absolutely has responsibility but Tesla is trying to play both sides of the coin with their branding vs their actual liability.
When a product's naming and branding is well aligned with its actual utility, it builds trust with the customer. The customer doesn't feel like the seller is trying to pull a fast one on them.
Tesla chose their branding direction and Elon chooses to make his "optimistic" predictions that have made it sound like true self driving is right around the corner for years. That people take this impression away is no fault of anyone but those that put the impression out there in the first place.
The naming, whatever you may think of it, is massively overrided by the strongly worded warnings and instructions that are abundantly and repeatedly displayed to the driver, that effectively and unambiguously convey to the driver that they must be attentive while using the driver assist features.
Second, who do you think was ultimately the one at fault for the excessive radiation doses caused by the Therac-25 machines: the machine technician operating the machine or the machine manufacturer? If it isn't the technician then I don't understand your argument because you can just find/replace every instance of driver in your post with technician.
Creating Agents is a lot harder.
This Time It’s Not Different At All
Tool - Pretty much everything humanity has made to date. It does a preprogrammed thing or provides mechanical advantage. But it does not act on novel decisions it is making.
The terms come from an AI safety expert that Lex Friedman interviewed recently. [1]
Tesla FSD is almost an agent, though it asks a human to be ready to take over at any time.
Secondly, it is already established and disclosed that the driver assist cannot self-drive. This would be comparable to a Therac-25 machine being sold as being incapable of limiting radiation output, and then not limiting radiation output.
There is absolutely no other company in the world where a predictable and disclosed shortcoming of the driver assist combined with the failure of the driver to fulfill their responsibility to be in control, would be blamed on the driver assist program.
Both Musk and Tesla are far from perfect, but the lengths that people go to to attack them is obviously agenda-driven and a result of emotions.
Your analogy makes no sense given that the risk is always on the driver whether there are driver assistance features or not.
Even in accident cases, remember that the Teslas involved are not new - they have had dozens or hundreds of successful drives before the accident.
("Self-Driving" alone could be reasonable in certain contexts, but insisting on "Full Self-Driving" is a flat-out lie in plain language. Saying " Alan is fully capable of driving the car." means that he requires zero monitoring and/or intervention; same for the "Fully..." phrase.)
It's "we'll take the profits from selling it as something that it is not.".
While simultaneously they take every step to ensure that when things go wrong when it inevitably turns out to NOT be what they claimed, the entire burden and responsibility is not on them, but on you.
Like I said in the other comment:
There is absolutely no other company in the world where a predictable and disclosed shortcoming of the driver assist combined with the failure of the driver to fulfill their responsibility to be in control, would be blamed on the driver assist program.
Both Musk and Tesla are far from perfect, but the lengths that people go to to attack them is obviously agenda-driven and a result of emotions
No, not even close, dead wrong spurious insults. For many years, I held Musk in very high regard, and you can find I've even posted extensive defenses of him here on HN. My changed views are a direct result of observed behavior.
No, the fact that the driver assist disengages is NOT what I am pointing to as the attempt to shift responsibility.
Tesla is selling and loudly insisting that they can use the term "Full Self-Driving". Tesla advertises and charges(ed?) 5-figure-USD amounts for fully autonomous self-driving capabilities that would allow the cars to be used in competition with Uber/Lift but without drivers. This money was charged for features that were supposed to be available in the previous decade. Yet now, in the middle of the 2020s, there are no such features available.
Moreover, they are so far from delivering such features that your argument is that any accident is fully the fault of driver attention being less than 100%. So, clearly, the features related to "Full Self Driving" or "FSD" do not exist.
Moreover, everything about the actual implementation, including instructions to be always vigilant, UI warnings about no hands on the steering wheel/yoke, alerts to re-engage, auto-disconnect, live data collection so Tesla can prove what mode was engaged, what level of control, etc., etc., etc. all point to the requirement for the DRIVER TO BE FULLY ENGAGED. They also ensure that the situation is such that if the driver fails to be fully engaged, it is the driver's fault/responsibility.
When the driver MUST BE fully engaged
(as you argue and I just documented),
the car is NOT "Fully Self-Driving".
The two conditions are by definition mutually exclusive.
The fact that Tesla is trying to have it both ways is exactly as I said:
They want the profits from the false advertising that it is "Fully Self-Driving", but ensure that when it turns out to be false, all consequences are on the customer.
There's nothing emotional about that fact pattern. I've even said above, that I think it'd be perfectly OK for Tesla to say "Self-Driving" as that does not directly imply that you can fully disengage because the FAD is "Fully" engaged.
I'm not the only one who thinks that language means something, even though Musk does not, and you think that calling out a blatant lie and possible fraud must be emotional.
Sorry for the length, if I'd had more time, I'd have written a shorter post
No one who drives a Tesla thinks that the driver assist features are intended to or capable of autonomous driving. The naming, whatever you may think of it, is massively overrided by the strongly worded warnings and instructions that are abundantly and repeatedly displayed to the driver, that effectively and unambiguously convey to the driver that they must be engaged while using the driver assist features.
If you want to criticize the naming for being inaccurate even if they argue it's intended to be a forwarding looking statement of aspirations, I would accept that criticism as arguably justified.
But that the driver is fully aware of their responsibilities is beyond any doubt.
Blaming Tesla for its autopilot disengaging 0.1s before impact in a number of accidents is therefore unjustified.
NO they did not. If I was like you, I'd over-generalize and say that "you are just like every other right-wing nutter who only believes a limited view of the world and must slam any other view, regardless of how disconneced from the facts..."
But I won't. I'll explain that my view changed when Musk went from delivering as much or more than he claimed, as was the case with early SpaceX and Tesla. to massively over-promising and under-delivering, e.g., now nearly a decade late on his FSD, so late on Starship that his first cricumlunar customer already bailed, making inflated promises about AI, lying about OpenAI, delivering Cybertruck a half-decade late and with crappy quality, etc., etc., etc. One particular turning point was when he argued about software engineering in public with one of Twitter's lead engineers, and it was obvious to me (with some background in commercial software) that Musk was nothing but bluster and bullshit; it became clear he is not a master engineer, he's a master manipulator. I have far less respect for the latter.
As you can see, it has absolutely zero to do with whatever 'anti-establishment' carp you are ranting on about. But you seem to enjoy your fact-free life more, so carry on.
All his faults came into laser focus, and a disproportionate share of coverage became negative in its slant.
Nothing in his entrepreneurial strategy changed since 2018. Ordinary people just don't appreciate how ideologically biased mainstream news media is, so are taken in by the change in how they choose to portray him.
Yes he has, we're in agreement.
> The entirely left-wing establishment news media
You opened your mind too far here and your brain may have fallen out.
Have you heard of Fox News and the Murdoch empire? Could you explain how either Murdoch isn't part of the US establishment news media or how it is that he's "left-wing" ?
Where do you think the media and political power concentrates in the US? The Republican party or the Democratic Party?
89% of cities with a population > 100,000 in the US have a Democrat mayor. All of the public sector unions support the Democrats. All of the news guild, and most of their members, support the Democrats.
Almost all of academia supports the Democrats. Law firms donate five times more to the Democrats than to Republicans. The political class is intimately linked to the legal profession.
>Yes he has, we're in agreement.
I'm not surprised you agree with me on the one negative thing I've said about him. Entirely predictable.
Arguing that your 'champion' has ALWAYS been a liar — that argument does not mean what you think it means
>>don't appreciate how ideologically biased mainstream news media is,
"The liberal media" is the biggest lie ever. It may once have been the case, and while some still wear liberal clothes, 90% of the news media, including 'local' media, is owned and run by only SIX corporations. While some operations have unions, they are virtually powerless to even slow down massive newsroom layoffs, and the corporations that aren't flat-out right-wing yellow sheets (e.g., Fox, [0]), are nevertheless all-in on pro-'conservative' politics as both the corporations and their owners & leaders dislike being taxed at higher rates.
>> so are taken in by the change in how they choose to portray him.
Right, so all people are mere sheep being "taken in" by the evil news media, except for you... As you rant on in every more circular ways, that becomes less and less convincing, and in fact look far more like you are the one taken in by RW populist rags who flood the zone with lies and opinion designed to flatter your biases.
The fact is that your hero, who we agree always lied, initially delivered some really great advances, and initially had the reputation of an engineering wizard, has in more recent years failed to deliver on decades-old 'promises', and has shown himself publicly to be less of a master engineer and more of a master manipulator. His focus has obviously changed from engineering to social media nonsense.
I can see that from his own writings. I did not need any news media whatsoever to observe this. Many other people also can view this. Except for you.
Consider taking your own advice, stop reading the media, and start going to the actual source data.
And yes, providing many arguments that saying two opposite and mutually contradictory things in marketing vs actual operations is somehow OK, actually convinces us that no, it is systematic lying and definitely not OK. The marketing is fraudulent and the operations are proof of that.
[0] Fox, which settled for $787 million for repeatedly lying about elections, and literally argues in court that no reasonable person would believe their announcers)
He's not my champion. I generally like him, but disagree with him on some issues. I defend anyone against clearly agenda-driven attacks, whether I support them or not.
>>90% of the news media, including 'local' media, is owned and run by only SIX corporations.
Is that why the media conspired to hide the Hunter Biden laptop story during the elections?
The corporations cannot override their unionized employees, because of labor laws and collective bargaining agreements.
And the corporations themselves are often dependent on the labyrinth of regulatory restrictions inhibiting competition, and government contracts, for their bottom line, so are by no means biased toward political parties that defend free market principles.
>>Right, so all people are mere sheep being "taken in" by the evil news media, except for you...
I think the people who have turned on Musk have been taken in, and I haven't. Naturally I think I'm right. Now what I think doesn't matter. What does is the evidence I provide, like the coincidence of public opinion and news media coverage turning against Musk precisely when he began vocally criticizing positions espoused by the political left, like advocating censorship of views critical of tbe Democratic party, and minority viewpoints on COVID and gender pronoun use, on the largest social media sites.
>>The fact is that your hero, who we agree always lied, initially delivered some really great advances, and initially had the reputation of an engineering wizard, has in more recent years failed to deliver on decades-old 'promises',
Tesla hit sales records precisely before and during the period when the mainstream/establishment turned on him. Tesla became the most successful US automaker in a generation, and for a time, was the most valuable automaker in the world. And all while building only fully electric vehicles.
SpaceX made enormous strides in reusable rockets, with record numbers of launches of Falcon 9, and significant advances on its fully reusable Starship space vehicle, in exactly the same period when you are claiming he was falling short.
Look at this graph of number of space launches per year:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...
The massive increase in US launches was solely due to SpaceX. To put it another way: the US restoring its leadership in the pivotally important space industry was entirely due to Musk's company.
Sp no, your arguments don't stand to reason. His behavior and performance would not explain a significant portion of the population turning against him.
The establishment, which includes all the left wing news guilds which dominate news media, turning against him for his anti-establishment comments, would.
>>I defend anyone against clearly agenda-driven attacks
Well, you have clearly massively misidentified my comment, from the start to the last comment.
I have no conspiracy theory or agenda. I simply observed, over time, from Musk's and Tesla's OWN STATEMENTS that he and Tesla insist that "Full Self Driving" is a legitimate claim (despite failing to prove it in court and settling to avoid a verdict) and that this is in contrast to the requirement that the driver be '100% in control at all times'.
One of those is a plain language lie. It does not require a conspiracy theory or agenda to point this out.
Yet you are more clearly pursuing your own agenda and conspiracy theories.
I've many times defended Musk on here, but no longer do as I have more information.
In contrast, you just posted this conspiracy theory:
>>like the coincidence of public opinion ... Tesla hit sales records precisely before and during the period when the mainstream/establishment turned on him.
This is not evidence, it is a theory that there is a conspiracy against Musk. Your claim is that it is not real people, but some cabal of unionized journalists (btw, only about 17% of journalists are unionized) that conspired to print lies to turn people against Musk.
You overlook entirely the most likely explanation, which is that Musk's own statements, often designed to be outrageous, speak for themselves.
Musk obviously chose his side and insists on being extremely blatant about it. I've never seen a CEO tell everyone to "Go fuck yourselves" on a public stage, or most of the other blatantly attention-seeking comments Musk has made.
The fact is that Tesla's primary customers are environmentally-conscious, which goes with more left-leaning politics, yet Muck choose the right-wing side, who typically deny climate change issues and hate electric cars.
He can have his opinions, but as he's not a politician, it was an extremely stupid business move to broadcast them so strongly. Or, maybe it's brilliant and he'll sell more Cybertrucks the more truck-driving RW customers than he'd ever sell Model-Xs to LW customers. But it does not look like it's working out that way.
But zero of this requires a conspiracy of the 1/6 of journalists who are unionized.
And it's laughable to accuse me of being media-agenda driven when I haven't lived in a household with a cable subscription for 2+ decades, and I treat all news media with great suspicion and work hard to find more accurate sources. While I've defended Musk on HN for his innovations at SpaceX, I also noticed that his executives have said that they have a team dedicated to handling Musk, creating a bubble around him to insulate the organization from his toxicly disruptive influence. There are thousands of other examples.
As the famous quote goes: "When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do?"
If the misimpression created by the marketing term is corrected by the explicit and repeated warnings and instructions given to Tesla drivers, then the marketing term cannot be blamed for inattentive driving.
>This is not evidence, it is a theory that there is a conspiracy against Musk.
The coincidence is the evidence here.
>The fact is that Tesla's primary customers are environmentally-conscious, which goes with more left-leaning politics, yet Muck choose the right-wing side, who typically deny climate change issues and hate electric cars.
So you are, in fact, supporting my point, which is that the attacks on him intensified due to the political views he expressed.
Like I said:
"Both Musk and Tesla are far from perfect, but the lengths that people go to to attack them is obviously agenda-driven and a result of emotions"
Trying to blame Autopilot accidents on Tesla instead of inattentive drivers is example of that.
>btw, only about 17% of journalists are unionized
Which major newspapers and TV networks in the US are not unionized?
>He can have his opinions, but as he's not a politician
In a democracy, everyone is supposed to express their political opinions.
And I've articulated why I think that in this case.
In short, saying it’s “Full Self Driving (Supervised)” is not really enough.
The falsehood of the "Full Self-Driving" claims are generally known to existing customers, therefore it is ok to lie to new customers.
The name of the driver assist program even if inaccurate, did not mislead any of those drivers, as any driver who uses these features is amply informed/warned that the features do not provide autonomous driving and don't obviate the requirement of the driver to remain fully engaged at all time.
Tesla are trying to have it both ways. They ADVERTISE and promote that it is "FULL Self-Driving" and "FSD", while simultaneously doing everything post-sale to ensure the driver is responsible for failures of FSD.
I wasn't originally in that camp, but your arguments are convincing me that Tesla does in fact bear some responsibility for the crashes, despite the facts you point out that Tesla post-sale promotes driver attention.
Despite all Tesla's efforts towards driver attention, Tesla ALSO broadcasts conflicting messages which do give the impression that FSD is more capable and safe than it is. What percent responsible? I don't know, but I think it's above 5%, especially for new drivers, who have been more exposed to the sales pitch and less to the documentation.
There is no credible case to be made that any Tesla driver is unaware of Tesla's stance, that the driver assist features cannot provide autonomous driving and that the driver must always remain engaged.
The warnings are absolutely clear and reiterated so they could not be missed. If you want to challenge that notion in court, be my guest.
I mean, you do realize that there is a class action against Tesla for misleading customers with the names of their products, right? This is actively being fought in the courts. That alone should prove that people feel misled by the marketing.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-must-face-vehicle-owner...
> There is no credible case to be made that any Tesla driver is unaware of Tesla's stance, that the driver assist features cannot provide autonomous driving and that the driver must always remain engaged.
You’re free to believe what you want, but this is far from the closed case you are portraying it to be. In short, that’s just like your opinion man.
But more to the point: being misled into purchasing it is entirely different than being misled while driving it, and blaming an accident on thinking the auto assist didn't need their attention as a result.
That is not what the lawsuit is alleging.
It stands to reason that if there was anything approaching a credible case that any driver thinks they don't need to be engaged while driving a Tesla, because of misleading naming of its driver assist features, some law firm somewhere would have organized a lawsuit on behalf of accident victims by now.
So the evidence supports my position.
> If you want to challenge that notion in court, be my guest.
I pointed out that it is, in fact, being challenged. Right now. And has already been several times before, with Tesla settling out of court specifically to prevent any repercussions from a guilty verdict.
If you wanted to talk about successful cases, then that should have been your argument. At this point, you’re just moving the goal posts.
Mix that with Elon had a habit of commenting on crashes [2] to keep good marketing about FSD. And like who cares if it was "Auto lane control" vs "Autopilot" that let somebody drive the car from the passenger seat but Elon made sure to let everybody know "Autopilot" wasn't engaged.
[1]: https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-invest...
[2]: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/elon-musk-says-autopilo...
If the only true part is that the system disengages at some point, then "kind of" is much too generous for that kind of rumor-mongering.
But if I ever see some real proof I'll spread it far and wide.
The other problem is that it cracks all the time and they get louder as they get deeper, so it's not just if it cracks it is if it cracks enough or more than expected. Which straw will break the camels back. It is just such an insanely awful metric.
On the hypothetical assumption that I had some faith in the models at what point will I have the life or death fight over whether or not that last loud crack was statistically significant.
Recent one-year-lookback story by Wired.
As I remember he talks about the sound detection thing.
And then test and go back to see what kinds of defects were apparent in the photos.
The layers are really thin, so manually inspecting them would slow down the printing process drastically. Then, ultimately, what even can you do if there's a defect? The layer has been laid already. If material is missing somewhere, you could have the machine go back and add it, but if there's excess material somewhere, or it's in a form that the machine can't fix, there's not a lot to be done, particularly in applications like rocketry, where your structural strength tolerance are very tight.
right, but this is a problem in any modern precision machining, and it has been (mostly) conquered to a degree that we can produce very precise things in an almost entirely automated fashion.
>If material is missing somewhere, you could have the machine go back and add it
laser sintering is easier to audit than a normal fdm style print in a lot of ways if you care to take the time to do it. The process can be paused fairly easy with the right machine and right environment, the product can be weighed mid-process, it can have all sorts of vision and laser metrology done to the product midway through production; whatever -- and the mid print failure rate is astronomically lower than extrusion based methods.
it doesn't seem that unbelievable to me.
The most common form for metal precision production is powder bed fusion
You deposit a whole layer of powder and a laser melts the desired parts
I'm not sure that's sufficient to eschew any other non destructive testing, but it is great information.
Differential cooling is an issue, and is one that isn't apparent until the layers have already been printed.
If their process actually works, whatever they are doing isn't trivial.
But _only_ testing in prod is bad.
ETA: Just to sharpen the point, this is clearest when considering digital noise and error correction. It is easier for error correction codes to indicate a corrupted message than it is to provide the correct message.
An accurate measurement of signal-to-noise is just some power levels and basic knowledge of the shapes of the signals. It's easy to figure out and doesn't help you read back your data. It helps you configure appropriate transmission settings and doesn't do much else.
There are various types of non-destructive testing that could be integrated into a larger scale 3D printer for post-production analysis, and it's a direction I'm surprised there hasn't been more movement in.
Anyone who's previously worked with 3D printing knows that this simply does not pass any kind of a sniff test. Both preventing and detecting internal defects is one of the, if not the hardest problem in 3D printing. There are many large companies trying to find ways to reliably solve just this problem alone. Saying that this method doesn't require any checks after production is simply false.