Let us know what you find. I find it not 'bonkers' but a great idea, and hope they are qualifying with the largest nuts found upstream, in 'go to space' grades.
Robustness and anti-fragility may not be so critical for an expendable vehicle that operates once for something like 12 minutes, but seems a key attribute for a refuel-able and reusable spacecraft?
Oh I agree it's not bonkers from the perspective of "wait you want to put people on that bomb and then explode it?"
You can make all sorts of rules about what's not allowed to happen, but often those things happen.
I'm just ... astonished if they've got a little practice room somewhere in their factory where they give each of their new rockets a nut to process... "Okay kid here's your graduation test!". A "we need screens to cope with big things and filters to deal with small things" is probably smart for any anything that's going to be reused.
A nut's probably in some ways easier to deal with than a blob of wd40 (in your lox tank).
> I'm just ... astonished if they've got a little practice room somewhere in their factory where they give each of their new rockets a nut to process... "Okay kid here's your graduation test!". A "we need screens to cope with big things and filters to deal with small things" is probably smart for any anything that's going to be reused.
That's what their McGreggor test site in Texas is for. It's a long, boring, two hour drive from anywhere or anything.
"anti-fragility" is probably not a design goal for Merlins and Falcon.
Anti-fragility means more than robustness, it means that the system is getting stronger with each adverse event, and it is not a realistic goal that ingestion of a nut should make the engine better/stronger etc.
Of course, not for individual rockets on individual flights (but self-repairing would be way cool!).
But Anti-Fragility as you define it definitely should be a goal for their overall organization and system of building and operating the fleet.
Each issue or incident should feedback into the engineering of new units and updating of existing units so that they are improved, stronger, less likely to create issues, more able to handle issues, etc. on each iteration. This actually seems to be the case at SpaceX, including this incident.
Oh yes, that is an excellent observation. The components themselves cannot be antifragile, but the development process certainly can.
Thinking about that, an important feature of that antifragility is not to risk human lives during the process if that risk can be avoided. Even though space exploration is inherently risky, any actual fatality is a huge setback.
Robustness and anti-fragility may not be so critical for an expendable vehicle that operates once for something like 12 minutes, but seems a key attribute for a refuel-able and reusable spacecraft?