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The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan. If there's a clear path to get to where you want to go, then you don't need to innovate. Innovation is the act of exploring the unknown regions of the problem search space. No, there's no guarantee they picked an optimal strategy. If such a guarantee were possible, they wouldn't need to be trying and failing in the first place.

What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant. And that's very well understood by now. Various r&d folk from NASA have also said that they wish they could go harder and faster. But because they're micromanaged by congress, every failure is very expensive politically.



> The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan.

This assertion is utterly absurd. These guys aren't the jackass crew just figuring out what to blow up next just for kicks.

Please, do not add more noise to the discussion.


> The whole fundamental concept of innovation is that there is no plan.

Definitely not true.

> What there is clear evidence of, is you generally reach your goal faster if you're more risk tolerant.

If budget is unlimited, perhaps. In real life, not so much.


You and rumanator don't know what you're talking about and you seem puritanical to boot.

If a rocket never fails, it means it's too heavy (overdesigned.) That's why Musk is ok with failures early on - he wants that data.

So whether a destructive test is intentional or not, it does provide data for the next iteration.

It's irrelevant if somebody "plans" or "hopes" for a new rocket to work tomorrow. It either works, or doesn't.




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