Dan Rasky: SpaceX's Rapid Prototyping Design Process

[@myothersoul1953]

FYI, Pica is Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator and is used in heat shields. I had to look it up.

[@CraigHair]

Great interview. Loved the litte examples. Thanks Dan and NASA

[@brianpaine7021]

Good engineering approach = productive engineering.

[@alexpoorman8161]

Sounds like the old days of NASA

[@rogerwalsberg]

Working for a private company is like that. Your previous employer worked at "the speed of government".

[@ForrestDix]

Important question. Does the TPS lab have TPS reports?

[@petersilva037]

Great video. Great information about methods. Some people have commented: there is no hint of what TPS is... I'm guessing: Thermal Protection Shield/Systems ? given PICA is for heat shielding... son of the shuttle tiles...

[@noli-timere-crede-tantum]

"World-class TPS production facility. Yeaaah, that would be greaaaat." -Bill Lunberg

[@jamespaul4351]

We need many more people like Dan!

[@themagiceye6723]

The had to "setup a TPS Lab". I hope they've got their TPS report cover sheets all sorted ahead of setting up the lab ;)

[@ssotirov]

wellcome to software development methodologies applied in the hardware world :)

[@sjurduri]

Very Mythbuster approach :)

[@erikengheim1106]

Very interesting but I would have loved to hear Dr. Dan Rasky contrast the SpaceX way of working with that of more traditional companies in the space industry. For those who don't work in the industry, we don't necessarily know what the "normal" approach is. Based on what I've read it seems like the follow a waterfall method, where everything is specified in detail upfront and there is little room to change plans or experiment. But it would have been nice to hear concrete examples of how these differences play out in practice.

[@absalomdraconis]

Erik Engheim : In their defence, the waterfall method is highly effective for straight-forward iterations of existing designs, which is what they normally do. It's also part of why noone has released a flying-wing airliner.

[@qstunrr]

Jared Maddox what do you mean by "this is why no one has released a flying wing airliner"?

[@absalomdraconis]

q : Well, I actually said that it's part of why, because another reason why is that flying wing airliners would have fewer window seats, and window seats are popular. As for how _this_ is related, the waterfall method of development is best suited to modification of already existing designs, so developing a flying wing airliner would be inherently slow, and somewhat artificial, because there currently aren't any flying wings airliners, thus forcing the waterfall method to start by completely redesigning the majority of the structure: this is inherently a much bigger job than just producing a new design of conventional-fuselage aircraft, since for conventional designs you can just start with an already existing design, make a few major changes, and "percolate" the consequences of those changes through the design.

[@rafardzrba]

Im glad to know when and where PICAchu was born...

[@jahnkaplank8626]

Yeah.... If you could just get me those TPS reports...., that would be greaaaaaat......

[@yungrawi]

bro was rocking arcteryx in 2016

[@venkateshbabu5623]

Rapid prototype is like a hit or miss and just not too much of a time. Works better for quick company. Start ups.

[@Videomikeh]

Granted, they pose it as SpaceX being a contractor but as soon as NASA realized SpaceX was for real, and could do things much cheaper and faster than they could, and NASA had it's astronauts go before congress and say that SpaceX would fail and that they were unsafe, they used their government muscle and lobbying to make sure anything SpaceX did would be as a contractor to NASA. NASA has been good for SpaceX in the sense of using their launch pads, and testing facilities. My hope is that SpaceX can drive NASA to be more cost oriented and cut out much of the bureaucracy that makes them overcharge for everything.

[@absalomdraconis]

Videomikeh : If getting a budget increase wasn't like pulling teeth from an unrestrained grizzly, NASA would probably _already_ be cheaper. Aaand the space shuttle probably would have been replaced in the late 90s/early 2000s.

[@Videomikeh]

Yes, I agree. And for sure, if it weren't for NASA and their years of work, SpaceX could never have been created I don't think. I do feel that NASA often didn't do their best to keep a budget either, and for many years they were given a blank check and that caused them to have incentives that weren't necessarily dollar conscious.

[@FlipBoxStudio]

Best case scenario is SpaceX gradually buys out NASA and privatizes all US space operations. No point in the government holding onto an Agency that they continue to constrain and reduce the budget on. I believe in due time this will happen. Specially since SpaceX has proven that they are more than capable to run space missions even better than NASA ever could.

[@endlessspace.8776]

The directors scientists and Engineers don't care about costs they are making a lot of money by taking there time. Its all about their Jobs they have lost the desire to explore space and don't care anymore.

[@peter4210]

Nasa is cucked by the politicians and the burocracy. Elons buisness seems to be highly efficient, even in the private industry

[@texastriguy]

So a day of time was lost because some idiot was gaming the specs? This is exactly why SpaceX is getting things done at record low prices - because they are straight and honest with each other. A limit of XX degrees Kelvin is the truth, not some faked number because teams lacked trust among one another.

[@danieltady9626]

not 100% correct... Kelvin doesn't have degrees. its just Kelvin. "273 K"

[@texastriguy]

Daniel Tady "Degree" is indeed am abstract concept. And I guess being an absolute scale you are semantically correct. However it doesn't alter the point of my comment...

[@natemoorman4562]

Well, underestimating is often how Safety margins are created, so it's not all bad.

[@alphab318]

very intriguing!

I thank god for you guys.

[@wodenoftheangles3339]

Insightful stuff.

[@raymondheath7668]

Very interesting!

[@natemoorman4562]

I have a government job and most of the slowness is caused by waiting for the private sector to get shit to us. Don't blame us.

[@penbrun273]

also, FAR regulations do not make it easy. i worked for a government contractor on the accounting side and i could not believe how incompetent some government employees were. they really needed to retire or shift to other work.

[@PTuffduty]

what's PICA?

[@TNTHammer]

Read the last sentence in description. It's the type of heatshield SpaceX uses for Dragon 1 and 2 capsules.

[@jmatt98]

I love ❤️ Pico on my burritos 🌯

[@akram4179]

Whats a Pika? Did I spell it right?

[@x0acake]

+akram4179 Here ya go: www.spacex.com/news/2013/04/04/pica-heat-shield It's a heat shield

[@akram4179]

Thanks!

[@AKlover]

Curious could you use this stuff for body armor? Ablative Ceramic pretty much fits the description of body armor. Manufacturing process too expensive???

[@mosesainsz7002]

yes

[@AliothAncalagon]

Making body armor inpenetrable is not the hard part. The hard part is to make it light and comfortable. Such a shield would be worse than different solutions in that regard.

[@joshua.snyder]

Must have been just before he became warden of Shawshank.

[@skalar-haubitze1619]

Everything okay, as far as i can see.

[@laprepper]

Trust but verify :) Funny butter story ;)

[@miiserli]

This video is very badly titled. "Rapid prototyping" is an established engineering term with a widely accepted usage, and what Dr. Rasky describes has little to do with it. He's really just talking about an efficient design flow process. Because of this video title, I keep encountering confused fanboys in online forums claiming that SpaceX is the only company that uses rapid prototyping, and it's hilarious.

[@joaopedrorodriguesdefaria8398]

escudo pica esse daí hein kkkkkk

[@marioavgherino8383]

The story that he mentions regarding the two groups having differing opinions regarding temperature standards shows perfectly why NASA is such a tremendously inefficient organization. Typical government entity, can't do anything quickly and efficiently.

[@4133634]

Sir, you are incorrect, there are many gov. agencies that are highly efficient, medicare is a prime example. their operating overhead is about 2% and is far below any private ins. companies which run at about 30% overhead. For every $1 NASA gets, up to $14 gets returned to the private sector. Make an effort to do some research

[@SunMoonBrothers]

4133634 making a research u re asking too much

[@eric3434]

This guy was just used to the speed of government progress. No wonder him seeing private business progress for the first time was so shocking.

[@penbrun273]

bureaucracies are notorious for that. after ww2, the us government was hyped to advance in the sciences and funded tons of projects to make them happy. you had an all around buy-in from congress and the executive branch. then the politics changed and so did the urgency for nasa innovation.

[@make125mobile]

I always thought that this approach is normal for engineering...

[@UnidentifiedAerialPhenomena0]

take all the nasa money and give it to spacex please

[@theAppleWizz]

No Nasa does really important work that no private company would do.

[@brokensoap1717]

No

[@rodneylwright7341]

Looking online, I find PICA is an eating disorder... surely not what you are describing. So, when doing such videos, please start by defining your terms or acronymns.

[@TNTHammer]

Or you could read the video description... might help if you had some intuition... Or common sense. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@kusomuchogusto5742]

Cookie cutter scientists

[@sausage4mash]

you'd think there must be a better way of doing heat shields, anyways great insights with this video, thnx .