David Senra

Iteration only works if you can afford many attempts.

This is where SpaceX's hardware-rich approach becomes essential.

This is what Elon says about this.

A high production rate solves many ills.

He has said this repeatedly.

He continues.

Any given technology development is how many iterations do you have and what's your time and progress between iterations.

So if you have a high production rate, you can have a lot of iterations.

You can try a lot of different things.

If you have a small number of engines, then you have to be much more conservative because you can't risk blowing them up.

SpaceX builds many cheaper prototypes, hardware-rich fleets of test articles.

They'd rather have 10 rough versions to blow up than one polished version they're afraid to break.

This can lead to specific design decisions like using stainless steel for Starship, which is cheap, easy to weld, and can be welded into a tent, by the way, instead of carbon fiber, which is expensive and requires giant autoclaves.

Vertical integration really helps enable this.

When you own the factory, you can build fast without waiting on vendors.

When you own 3D printing capability, you can produce parts on an ad hoc basis.

When you can manufacture Raptor engines at high volume, losing one to a test failure doesn't set you back months.

SpaceX is big into simulation as well.

This moves atoms to bits where possible, letting them pre-screen designs before blowing things up.

But real tests remain primary.