when you think about some of the
greatest engineers of all time in
history you might think about archimedes
leonardo da vinci however there is
someone alive here today who arguably
still fits in that list and that is elon
musk when i was watching one of the
interviews he did with everyday
astronaut tim dodd
it got me thinking what are some of the
mistakes that smart engineers make and
thinking about it i really came up with
six mistakes that all smart engineers
make and you just don't need to take it
from me you can also hear it from the
man himself elon musk who's worked with
some of the best engineers and seen the
mistakes they've made my name's brendan
your structural engineer now let's get
into it
questioning the constraints
the
one department will
design to the constraints of the other
that the other department has given them
without
calling in to question those constraints
and saying those constraints are wrong
and you should actually take the
approach that the the constraints that
you're given are guaranteed to be some
degree wrong
guaranteed to be some bigger one huh
because the counterpoint would be that
they were perfect right which is never
as you say like what are the what's the
probably this is the platonic idea or
the perfect part zero yeah okay
basically so you could question your
constraints it does not matter if the
person handing you those constraints
well a nobel prize though even einstein
is wrong some of the time right so
uh question your constraints this is
extremely important so what is elon musk
saying here
well
it's really something i see a lot of
engineers fall into especially when
they're early on in their career not
questioning the guidance that they've
been given so director may ask you to do
it a certain way or approach a problem
in a certain aspect
doesn't mean you should approach it that
way it just means that how best they
thought it'd be approached they may not
know everything that you know so just
because they've said it to do it this
way doesn't mean you should so what you
should be doing is always questioning
the things that you've been given and
the specifications are they correct are
they missing something
or is there a better way instead of just
trusting them and going down that gut
because going to a smarter engineer is
not always the best way to come up with
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over there now let's get back to
learning if somebody can show that we're
wrong that would be great yeah um
you know if like if somebody can explain
like wow you've got a there is a way to
make your design better this is a gift
right right i would be like thank you
for this great gift
wow this is awesome it's it's definitely
like the worst thing would be like we
wanted to do some dumb design and stick
with our dumb design right
that would be insane right um so
i would love it if somebody could show
how an aerospike is the smart move now
this one is something i've seen a lot in
my career we have a lot of smart
engineers trying to push to get to the
right solution they're trying to come up
with something more efficient and more
innovative to try and prove that they're
better than everyone else being
innovative is not always best sometimes
it's not better to reinvent the wheel
yes you should be going back and looking
back about how you've done stuff in the
past and not just adopting it
willy-nilly but just don't innovate for
innovation's sake have a look at it is
there a better way can i improve on it
or is this really the best solution
the third step is simplify or optimize
the third step this is where a lot of
engineers get into the problem of trying
to be more impressive trying to solve
more complex problems instead of when
you can just simplify drill down the
results and be more efficient more
practical and expedite the solution just
because you can do something that's more
complex doesn't mean you'll have
additional savings yes you can save a
lot of money sometimes but a lot of the
time when you approach it you realize
that you've only had minor savings and
the amount of time that's taken to get
to that answer was not worth that effort
and even if you are able to have those
savings
is it harder for them to build because
you may be saving material but you may
have added a lot of additional cost so
always looking about it am i adding
complexity for complexity sake or is the
complexity needed and always trying to
simplify taking the general approach of
if if a design is taking too long the
design is wrong and therefore the design
must be modified right
to accelerate progress right um
one of the most fundamental errors made
in advanced development is to stick to a
design even when it is very complicated
and to not strive to delete parts and
processes right right it's incredibly
important
well and you're not you're definitely
not a sun cost fallacist you're like
this is clearly the new path forward
let's hop on it yeah isn't it in the
future or not if it's not in the future
who cares so what does that mean in our
designs well we should always be trying
to look what can we remove instead of
what can we add so what you should
always be trying to do instead of adding
additional things to your design to make
it work is removing things and it's only
after you've removed as many parts as
you possibly can is you're adding back
the bare minimum and if you're not
adding those back in especially when
you're looking at product design or
something else you're not doing enough
removal from your design or elements so
you'd always be looking trying to remove
elements instead of trying to add it and
add that complexity if you're not uh
occasionally
adding things back in you are not just
leading enough right the bias tends to
be very strongly towards
let's add this part or process step in
case we need it but you can you can
basically make in case arguments for so
many things and for a rocket that is
trying to achieve um
try to be the first fully reusable
rocket there's never been a fully useful
rocket people don't understand like this
is like the holy grail of rocketry okay
and
so you really need you have to run at
tight margins because if you don't run
tight margins uh you're going to get
nothing to orbit right
so
uh so you've got to delete the power
process step super important that's why
the quick lens for example do not fall
both down because that's a whole extra
mechanism that we don't need one of the
biggest traps for smart engineers is
optimizing a thing that shouldn't exist
yeah so they'll just sit there and spin
on that thing that's just like why do we
even have this in the first place
absolutely when you go through
college you're like studying physics
engineering i study physics
you have to answer the question that the
professor gives you you don't get to say
this is the wrong question right you're
right
but
in reality we have far more degrees when
you're in reality
you have all the degrees of freedom of
reality and so the first thing you
should say is this question is wrong
yeah and that's what you said last year
i mean you kind of said like it took us
a long time to frame the question even
because we didn't necessarily know it
took eight just to frame the question
yeah it's just like the hitchhiker's
guide galaxy douglas adams best
philosopher ever um this book is so deep
uh people don't understand uh but like
in the historic guide to the galaxy the
earth is a giant computer right and and
and the earth uh it comes up with the
answer
42.
yeah um and then to the question like so
what's the answer to life to use burst
and everything answers 42 and like what
the hell that doesn't make any sense
right i was like oh you the really the
hard part is the question question the
answer is the easy part need a much more
powerful computer to tell you what the
question is right and this is true what
the point which you can properly frame
the question the answer is comparatively
easy
as engineers we're always trying to
optimize things make things better
trying to improve it we can spend a lot
of time doing that optimization
it's really in our nature to try and
improve things trying to optimize it
make it faster make it better improve
certain elements we often don't sit back
and go do we actually need it kiss you
should be keeping it simple trying to
always simplify and remove instead of
optimize and only after you've tried to
look at removing it and getting rid of
certain elements is the time that you're
going to optimization as you can spend a
lot of time optimizing something you may
not need
you know what i actually tell a team is
like everyone is chief engineer this is
extremely important
and and that everyone must
understand how the broadly speaking all
the systems in the vehicle work right um
and so that you
just so you don't have subsystem
optimization because this is naturally
what happens the the product errors
reflect the organizational errors what
i'm trying to
have us all just
implement rigorously is uh
the sort of five-step process uh first
make your requirements less done your
requirements are definitely done
uh does not matter who gave them to you
it's particularly dangerous if a smart
person gave you the requirements because
you might not question them enough yeah
you might take it as like gospel like i
have to do this thing everyone's wrong
no matter who you are everyone's wrong
some of the time a lot of the time in
your head you're going if i ask
questions they're going to think i'm not
know what i'm doing they're going to
think i'm incompetent they're going to
want to look for someone else instead of
promoting me and as engineers you've got
to realize that not one person can
design a single building
as we can miss some pretty basic things
you should always be open for
discussions and asking those questions
instead of just sitting back and going
oh my god what are they going to think
about me i'm going to link to a video
here that about the 10 things that i
wish i knew earlier about structural
engineering and you're interested in
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as always stay safe keep learning and
i'll see you next week bye