SpaceX Design Philosophy
The SpaceX design philosophy is the kind of "move fast and break things," test and test and test, and learn new things all the time. It's the design philosophy that got us from never ever constructing a rocket out of steel to the world's first rocket mass production line, the world's first commercial rocket made of steel (I think), the world's first full-flow staged combustion engine, methane as a fuel—which is unique as it's easy to manufacture, especially on Mars, compared to the more common fuels like hydrogen or kerosene—(working towards) the world's first fully reusable upper stage, (working towards) the world's first fully reusable booster, the world's first booster catch, and the world's first orbit and recovery with a non-ablative heat shield, I think?
The list goes on and on and on, and it's all made possible by optimizing manufacturing and testing to destruction. Things don't have to wait on everything else; prototypes are rapidly made and deployed, and every part gets to be iterated on at the same time. Also, the thing is, SpaceX still hasn't actually caused any deaths that I'm aware of—they are quite safe. If you gave Nasa and Spacex the same $$$ Spacex would do much more with that because they can take risks that Nsas can't.
