Comment by pmontra 21 hours ago
Test flights.
My tests keep failing until I fix all of my code, then we deploy to production. If code fails in production than that's a problem.
We could say that rockets are not code. A test run of a Spaceship surely cost much more than a test run of any software on my laptop but tests are still tests. They are very likely to fail and there are things to learn from their failures.
You test components in isolation, you test integration of components, you run simulations of the entire rocket, and finally you test the rocket launch.
You’ll catch issues along the way, but you can’t catch all of them before a full launch test. That’s why there are launch tests.
This can get as far as the test plan is complete, multiply iterated under different interface conditions and thorough. And you are still relying upon the adherence of the simulated models to the physical reality.
Real tests do all of this at once with no option to escape reality.
Again, one thing is automating thorough software tests, another one is testing physical stuff.
This is the programmer fallacy if you have a bunch of code passing unit tests, it’s going to work when combined.
Thats not what he said. Unit tests are the first stage, and are very useful at isolating the problem.
Integration tests are the next where multiple units are combined.
Then there is staging.
That might still happen this year, it’s the next step in the development plan.
What makes these launches “non-production” tests is that they are not carrying any valuable payload. Blowing up rockets like this is exactly what gives the company it’s advantage over competitors who try to anticipate everything during design stages.
There was no real payload on this, so I'd argue it's closer to a QA environment than production.
It's true that other rocket companies are treating launches as production, but SpaceX has always been doing "hardware-rich" testing.
Launching a rocket is far more complex than shipping a release.
It is more like an "all or nothing" process.
I truly hope that if you ever design a rocket yourself, that you will test it. I have no idea why you'd think testing is a terrible thing to do if it has to do with rockets.
Running a code test doesn't require firing a rocket.
How would you test a rocket?