I thought this was an absolutely masterful explanation of engineering design thinking. If I may, I would also like to add to this list another thing he mentioned: "each requirement must have a name attached to it."
I believe he was referring to the first step. And "Name" was really "a person" as opposed to "a department." This was his way of saying DRI all the way down to each individual requirements, to force someone to be accountable for it. His example was that SpaceX interns previously listed requirements, that were later assigned to a department (e.g. avionics), and when prompted, no one in that department really knew why it was there.
* the quip about people spending a lot of time to optimize something unnecessary,
* the quip that you must be wary about recommendations made by smart people, because you will tend to trust smart people too much and they can still make mistakes.
Also leadership through humbleness and vulnerability: "I myself made that mistake, I followed the process exactly backwards and wasted a lot of time."
Also leadership by storytelling. Don't say what you want, tell a story that shows people what you want, so they can envision themselves doing what you want.
"If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted."
I am struggling to understand this one.
Is he saying that you should remove parts on a routine basis, like a "remove parts/processes" meeting every month and then re-adding them back in once you find they're needed.
Or is he saying when you get a list of requirements, remove parts/processes related to those requirements and then re-add them once you find they're needed?
He’s talking about physical parts and manufacturing processes. For example laser etching a part number might might not be worth it. If nobody can justify why it’s needed then why not skip it.
> Musk overviewed his five step engineering process, which must be completed in order:
> 1. Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it does not matter who gave them to you. He notes that it’s particularly dangerous if someone who is smart gives them the requirements, as one may not question the requirements enough. “Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” He further notes that “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.”
> 2. Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted. Musk noted that the bias tends to be very strongly toward “let’s add this part or process step in case we need it.” Additionally, each required part and process must come from a name, not a department, as a department cannot be asked why a requirement exists, but a person can.
> 3. Simplify and optimize the design. This is step three as the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist.
> 4. Accelerate cycle time. Musk states “you’re moving too slowly, go faster! But don’t go faster until you’ve worked on the other three things first.”
> 5. Automate. An important part of this is to remove in-process testing after the problems have been diagnosed; if a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing.
I remember watching "Everyday Astronaut" live with less than 1000 other people. Today, the numbers are over 100K. He is a great guy, who is very interested in and passionate about everything around space exploration and his articles and videos go very deep, the same for answering questions live. Only if more YouTubers were like him.
Shouldn't they have been wearing helmets when filming that segment? It was a quite busy work site with high altitude work (so a risk of dropping tools etc).
In the beginning of the video they were high up and I feared Elon could fall to his death and that would bring "all of human's progress to a halt". They not only work 24 hours and 7 days a week (In 12 hour shifts: 3 days and 4 days in a row, then 3/4 days off), but they also rush things, with tight deadlines, ofc. top-notch workers/engineers, but still. No fatalities while working like this (I googled it the other day) - It all looks dangerous.
He is very proud of it in the video, combing through it with his hand all the time. Especially with his current new hair-style: Short on the sides, long on the back and top - a rebell, cyberpunk, cybertruck-t-shirt on.
He looks great,... today. Gone are the years where he was bullied keeping his nose in the books and -though coming from a modelling-family (his mother)- being (looking) rather nerdy/"average"... a bit sleepy (when he was younger), going from a "nerdy" looking teenager to losing his front-hair as a young man.
I envy people that can fix their appearance with a beauty surgery. Most can't and of those that try, a lot do not look so good afterwards.
I was surprised how Elon talked "in depth" about technology and engineering in this video with Tim, since Elon often uses relatively simple things to talk about to reach the masses, like "rockets must be fully reusable", "we need sustainable transportation (and they are electric cars)", etc. Elon likes to use simple language and paint big pictures. But he (and his team) must have evaluated thousands of interdependent complex factors and found the one solution (e.g. Methane-propelled Starship) before reaching to these simple "big pictures" (which he then likes to talk about and present to the public) and ofc. it's the right thing to do and there is nothing wrong with it.
Elon is the new Steve Jobs, informing and educating us about the future, just like Steve did it. This time with cars and space exploration, which is just "next" (Steve Jobs informed us about the iPod and the iPhone). When Steve wiped out Nokia with the iPhone, I thought that someone from Silicon Valley would do the same for cars and there are a couple of contenders now with Tesla leading. But it's a big market with a lot of companies, and instead of wiping one out, there are just many suffering now - more or less, or still doing fine.
Though there are very much details, which he is aware of and trading/evaluating... at least with his engineers and which he does in this video, which is nice, refreshing and new information (for us and from him).
I really like Tim Dodd, though he comes from a background of "I wasn't good at school and am still excited and knowledgeable about rockets today [and so can you(everyone)]", he is sometimes over-explaining simple things imho. I have also the feeling that Tim Dodd might be a sub-par interview partner for Elon in this video, but Elon manages it fine and I think he likes Tim for everything he achieved despite not having an academic background.
Tim Dodd reminds me of Andy Weir. They're both trying to explain things that are fairly complicated to an audience which is interested but might be starting from zero. That's actually really hard to do and then they add to the degree of difficulty by not being afraid to release the minimum viable product to that end.
For me it makes both of them fun to watch because you can see them getting better. As a novelist Weir is - in my opinion - improving his craft with each novel. Same with Dodd when it comes to the videos he's making. Both really impress me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw