Still not convinced that Starship's failure was actually a success?

Trung Phan shared in his weekly newsletter SpaceX's 5-step design process that ensures rapid iteration and better success in their rocket & spacecraft development.

Elon Musk shared this 5-step process in Tim Dodd's interview with him in 2021.

1) Make The Requirement Less Dumb

According to Elon, no matter who gave the requirements, they're usually dumb. "It's particularly dangerous when they come from an intelligent person, as you may not question them," - he says.

His advice: question everything, and make the requirements come from a name, not a department, to know who should take responsibility for it.

2) Try To Delete Part Of The Process

Musk says that if parts are not added back to the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are deleted. Optimizing the process is required to run on tight margins. Otherwise, "you will get nothing in orbit."

3) Simplify Or Optimize The Design

This is the third and not the first step, as "the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should simply not exist." First, you have to ask the question if something should really exist before simplifying or optimizing it.

4) Accelerate Cycle Time

As Musk says: "You're moving too slowly, go faster. But don't go faster until you've first worked out the other three things."

5) Automate

Musk claims that while this is the last step of the process, he personally made the mistake of going backwards from it, e.g., during the Tesla Model 3 battery pack manufacturing.

For the full story, check out Trung Phan's latest Substack issue.