How to embrace misfires, setbacks and flops

AFTER losing another Starship rocket last week, 10 minutes after lift-off, Elon Musk’s SpaceX published a 400-word statement. It contains eight direct references to the success of the mission, during which the most powerful rocket ever launched reached space for the first time, albeit briefly. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn,” concluded the statement.

Musk is the foremost proponent of an experimental culture of “Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat”, to quote Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur.

After an earlier launch ended in “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, Musk declared: “We don’t want to design to eliminate every risk. Otherwise, we will never get anywhere.”