Edward asked, “Why does Musk announce schedules on development testing?”

I think that in the case of Starship/Superheavy, Musk is announcing these deadlines to apply political pressure on the administrative state and the Biden administration (that is allowing or forcing that administrative state to slow-walk launch approvals). Making it clear that SpaceX is ready fast shifts the blame to the regulators, when launches don’t occur as hoped.

Of course, for this to work Musk needs a journalist class that reports these facts, rather than covering for the administrative state or the Biden administration. Too bad most journalist no longer do their job.

This is rather typical of the schedules and timelines that I always worked with. The schedules we worked to assumed that no problems came along as we worked. Working to tight schedules like this tended to help us meet milestone deadlines, because problems often came up and we needed time to solve them. Starting with a tight schedule gave us that extra time. The same seems to happen with SpaceX, except that Musk tends to announce his problem-free timelines to the public, as though he truly believes that the company can meet them.

What we don’t see are many of the problems that come up. Despite a reputation of being open, they really do not tell us very much. They have very small properties, so those who watch what they do are able to see a whole lot more than with other aerospace companies, whose action takes place far from roads and other public venues. A lot of the SpaceX watchers are willing to speculate on what SpaceX is doing and why. “Speculate” may be the wrong word, as many of these people seem to know something about the engineering, so maybe “hypothesize” is a better word, as that means an educated guess.

SpaceX does have an amount of openness. They have publicized their test landings on their autonomous landing ships (called barges, at the time), but another company did not broadcast similar video of their own test landings. SpaceX’s development failures were shown to the public, but other companies were not so eager to show their own failures. At the time, we compared SpaceX’s rocket development with the U.S.’s rocket development six decades earlier. The U.S. broadcast its own tests, and their failures, on live television. The Soviets only announced their successes after the fact, and Soviet failures came out as rumors long afterward.

The timelines that Musk announces are another way of being open, and they seem reasonable, but only if problems do not arise. One difference between operations and development is that most of the problems have been worked out by the time the rocket has been operational for a few launches, and development searches for the problems that have yet to be solved.

Why does Musk announce schedules on development testing? Maybe he feels pressure from SpaceX fans. Announcing seemingly reasonable schedules certainly puts pressure on SpaceX employees to perform.

Gliese 710 is on its way in—so we have time :)

And this—is why I hate most businessmen and their lawyers.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60066.0