[wonderwonder]

This is one end of the extreme, the other is spaceX. New tech companies are very capable of iterating quickly and producing well tested reliable hardware far better than existing versions of it.

An extreme but absolutely relevant and potentially devastating example of the current system is the F-35.

[baybal2]

They did not "iterate," SpaceX, from the start, had a very senior engineering team which they got on a wave of layoffs in aerospace undustry, and NASA basically doing their V1 work.

[xoa]

>They did not "iterate,"

SpaceX has absolute massively iterated in every single thing they do, what the heck are you talking about? The Falcon 9 more than doubled it's payload from v1.0 to FT Block 5, and gained first stage landing/reusability through a host of iterative improvements. Starship's development has been all about hardware rich iteration with plans to enable it right down to the basic material level. They've been big on MVPs and then iterating from there.

[baybal2]

> They've been big on MVPs and then iterating from there.

They were not "big on MVP"

Their engineers from the start delivered a very solid vehicle tested, and re-tested probably more than NASAs own rockets.

All improvements they had since were enhancements over the original masterplan, nothing like "throw it on the wall, and see if it sticks"

[wonderwonder]

Not really a convincing argument. Had most of those engineers worked on reusable rockets before? It's like saying stripe, netflix, uber, or Facebook did nothing new because their software engineers had written software before. No one is suggesting that the company needs to compromise of novices in the field, only that they are a new aggressive organization that seeks to upset the status qou.