> Instead of simulating an entire mission from launch to docking, “the team decided they would rather run multiple tests with chunks of the mission,” Mullholland said. “Going forward, for every flight, we will do launch to docking and undocking to landing in addition to the other tests we were doing in our qualification testing.”
Given the amount of money and lives at risk, this level of process short-cutting is mind boggling.
I suspect this is a result of schedule pressure. The legacy AE firms were falling way behind SpaceX and I'm guessing they felt the need to play catch-up and didn't want to "waste" time on testing.
Given the amount of money and lives at risk, this level of process short-cutting is mind boggling.