That part of the story has always been one of the craziest to me. If i bought a fiberglass speedboat, and on my first trip heard load cracking sounds from the hull, I don’t think it’s now well seasoned and stronger, I assume its cracked and needs repair. The fact that Stockton Rush thought that carbon fibers would be different to glass fibers when it comes to this, is mind-boggling.
There are none so blind …
“I have money so I’m the smartest man in the room and rules don’t apply to me.”
You ragging on Elon Musk?
Credit where credit is due, Elon Musk is apparently smart enough to not eat his own space-faring dogfood. To this point, he hasn’t bulled his way into any SpaceX mission, even though they’ve been competently engineered, and seems to be patient enough to let Starship mature appropriately.
Stockton Rush was too cheap and impatient for “iterate, iterate, iterate”.
He waa certainly unencumbered by doubt.
More importantly, Musk has somehow been able to hire competent engineers and competent senior managers at SpaceX and leave them alone to do what they do best. Unlike some of his other crazy ventures, which he’s either bungled or which are too insane to ever be implemented.
He was also ignoring basic common sense. The idea that eliminating “weak” fibers makes the hull as a whole stronger only makes sense if you’re replacing the failed fibers with new stronger ones.
Yeah, that theory is like the old Cliff Clavin theory of the bison herd getting stronger by the same methodology, and the parallels he drew to weaker brain cells being killed off by drinking alcohol, thereby making the brain stronger…