No, not in aerospace. The common approach is to spend years designing, simulating, and then actual tests come at the very end, and sometimes you don't even test because you can't or it would be too expensive. That's what Boeing are doing with their own rockets; Mars missions until now didn't really go through an iterative process; satellites are usually manufactured only by one and they better work once in orbit.
SpaceX built an incredible custom simulator in order to design the methane engines used in Starship[1]. Right now they are experimenting with manufacturing techniques, which is much less amenable to simulation
Elon has stressed this. Design is easy, building is hard, building at scale is harder. Thus the reason he iterates on the design is to make each design iteration also an iteration in the manufacturability, not just the functional design.
You're telling me we went to the moon on the first try? We went into space on the first try? The Wright brothers were successful on their first flight?
Simulation is not the same as trial and error. There's no such thing as a perfect simulation, and imperfect simulations without real world testing and iteration result in disasters. There are many examples, but the Mars probe that crashed because of a unit conversion error comes to mind.
You're not differentiating between an iterative design process, during which failures are expected, and a monolithic one where the end product is final. When Starships blow up, Musk can build new ones and try again. When the probe crashed, that was the end of the mission and there was no more Mars Climate Orbiter. It was a one-off. This is a common problem in spaceflight.
The Webb Space Telescope is another example. If it eventually does launch and something goes wrong, we'll have paid >$10 billion for absolutely nothing. These aren't trial and error because the designs are never improved based on the errors. They're just scrapped. SpaceX works in a fundamentally different way.
They are not that different from other space startups.
> "We succeeded in launching the rocket," Zhang told the media. "The experience we gained from evaluating the rocket's flight conditions will help us remodel the rocket as well as advance new rocket research and development."
When's the last time that someone tested a series of satellites (or launch vehicles), with a number of up-front failures? Prior to SpaceX, of course. To me it looks like that sort of iterative trial-and-error design process died with the end of the space race.
For instance, looking at LandSpace - that quote relates to the launch of Zhuque-1, of which there has never been a repeat despite a maiden flight in 2018, and Wikipedia says that a second flight ever happening is doubtful. The company's second launch (and probably any after that, too) will likely be with a completely different, liquid-fuelled design.
THAT's what failure normally looks like in aerospace. Whoops, we fucked up, and so now that design never flies again, or the company goes bankrupt, or everyone panics and goes through a massive design review because everything was supposed to be perfect and now obviously it wasn't.
You make it sound that everything that may involve an "error", however small (that is, absolutely everything) is "trial and error". This is not what most people mean - I argue that interpretation would make the whole concept meaningless.
In this context, "trial and error" means SpaceX builds things out and tests them in real-life not virtually (as opposed to others that tend to validate things virtually for much longer before actually building stuff).
You jest, but he actually does it. Executing the right idea is the value, not the idea.
Everyone else is cush and doesn't want to rock the boat (SLS, legacy automaker leadership, etc). For those, innovation has no incentive. "Innovator's dilemma" [1] and all that jazz.
Disclaimer: Not a huge Musk fan anymore, "world's least worst billionaire", but credit where credit due. I don't endorse sweat shops, but he has teached a cohort to yearn for the vast and endless sea. He is a salesperson first, and he is selling the dream.
Let's be objective: SpaceX has radically lowered the cost to get to Earth orbit, and commands a majority of the worldwide launch market. They are simply more efficient than other launch providers, so much so that they are branching out into global communications (StarLink) to capture more revenue (global comms is 10x the market size of the launch market). They don't need to go to the Moon to succeed. There is no market to get to the Moon unless nation states make one. Musk is building his own market for Mars logistics demand.
> SpaceX's market share increased rapidly. In 2016, SpaceX had 30% global market share for newly awarded commercial launch contracts, in 2017 the market share reached 45%, and 65% in 2018.
Tesla, according to the opinion of a single auto industry expert, has a 7 year head start against legacy automakers [1]. They sell every vehicle they build, and combined, legacy automakers have shed almost 40k jobs in the last year as they attempt to transition to building EVs to compete against Tesla.
A reasonable person might conclude these metrics indicate an achievement of some level of success.
I don't disagree that SpaceX has been successful. I just disagree that this trial and error methodology is some radical new thinking from Musk—it's not.
Nobody says he has invented trial end error, but every single person that worked in aerospace would tell you that they simply don't work like the other companies in many ways.
And with the Starship, they have gone to an extreme that even for SpaceX seems crazy.
There are tons and tons of interviews and podcasts with experienced people who worked there. Listing to those that came over from NASA is specially interesting.
