SpaceX rocket launched in Texas. January 16, 2025.
How Structured Verification Turns Public Failure into Engineering Progress
The countdown reaches zero, and the upgraded SpaceX Starship, carrying a suite of ten mock Starlink satellites, rises from the launch pad in South Texas with the thunderous roar of its Raptor engines. For the first several minutes, flight telemetry streams nominal data as the massive stack climbs into the late afternoon sky above the Gulf of Mexico. Then, about 8 minutes into the mission, contact with the upper stage is abruptly lost. Moments later, the spacecraft breaks apart in a flash of orange fire. Dozens of commercial flights are forced to divert as debris streaks across the airspace, and social media fills with dramatic video of the breakup. To many observers, it looks like a catastrophic failure. To SpaceX engineers, it is a structured test event with data attached. [1]
The Public View of Failure
SpaceX’s Starship test program continues to experience highly visible failures during integrated flight tests. Vehicles have been lost due to propulsion anomalies, structural breakup, and thermal protection system issues. To the public, a rocket explosion looks like failure in its purest form.
To a Systems Engineer, the more important question is different: Was the failure discovered during operations or during verification? A failure discovered during verification is far preferable to one uncovered during operations, where consequences extend to stakeholders, safety, and mission success.
Elon Musk often embraces experimentation in language reminiscent of Thomas Edison’s famous line: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Edison framed failure as discovery. Modern Systems Engineering formalizes that intuition. Discovery is valuable only when it feeds disciplined design improvement.
By Steve Jurvetson - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153992086
In two earlier posts, I approached this issue from a slightly different angle. In "Failure and the Importance of Lessons Learned," I reflected on the idea that even experienced Systems Engineers carry at least one significant failure with them, and that the real value lies in deliberately capturing and institutionalizing the lessons learned at the close of a project cycle [6]. In "Value of Failure," I contrasted small, controlled failures discovered during evaluation with large, Operational Failures whose consequences ripple across cost, schedule, performance, and public trust [7]. In both cases, the argument was consistent: failure itself is not the objective, but disciplined learning is. If failure is both a teacher and a test of organizational maturity, then recent engineering headlines offer an opportunity to examine whether visible test failures represent disorder or structured learning.
Verification Versus Operations
The INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook defines verification as the process of determining whether the system meets its specified requirements (SEH §2.3.5.9). Verification asks a precise question: Did we build the system right? [6] It is intended to reveal deficiencies, inconsistencies, and unintended interactions before deployment.
As Bahill and Henderson summarize succinctly: “Verifying a system: Building the system right.” [7] That statement captures the heart of the matter. Verification exists to surface problems. When a test article fails during structured testing, it may represent the very outcome that Verification is designed to uncover.
The critical distinction is between operational failure and Verification Failure.
Operational failure carries stakeholder consequences, reputational damage, and potentially loss of life. Verification failure occurs within a controlled development environment, with defined objectives, instrumentation, and data capture. The purpose is exposure, not performance.
Integrated flight testing of a complex launch vehicle stresses the system across propulsion, structures, software, avionics, and thermal domains simultaneously. No amount of modeling fully substitutes for Full-Scale Integrated Testing. Subsystem interactions, boundary conditions, and real-world loads reveal failure mechanisms that analysis alone may not predict.
Reliability and Verification in Practice
This is where Reliability Engineering intersects directly with verification.
The Handbook defines reliability as the ability of a system to perform without failure for a specified time in a defined environment (SEH §3.1.8). [6] Reliability is not achieved by optimism. It is achieved through structured discovery of failure modes and disciplined incorporation of corrective action.
Reliability Growth literature describes this process plainly. In an interview discussing hardware reliability work at SpaceX, Marques Jones explained the job in simple terms: “take that hardware, figure out why it failed and then try to provide a fix for it so that it could be tested again.” [6]
That sentence is essentially test–analyze–correct–retest.
MIL-HDBK-189C formalizes the same concept: reliability improves when failures are identified, root-caused, corrected, and verified in subsequent builds. [7] Without that feedback loop, repetition is not progress. It is noise.
Turning Failure into Engineering Insight
When a test vehicle is lost, the engineering question is not whether the event was dramatic. The question is whether it produced actionable knowledge:
Was the failure mechanism understood?
Were assumptions updated?
Were models revised?
Was the design modified before the next iteration?
Verification failure becomes productive when it is connected to structured analysis. Root Cause Investigation, Failure Mode Analysis, Requirements Traceability updates, and Configuration Control convert physical destruction into engineering insight.
The Reuters coverage notes that frequent testing is intended to push vehicles to their limits and fine-tune improvements. [1] That is the theory. The discipline lies in execution. Evidence of incremental closure of test objectives, consistent corrective action, and measurable subsystem improvement signals genuine reliability growth.
Practical Takeaways for Systems Engineers
For practicing systems engineers, the takeaway is straightforward:
Are you discovering failure in development or in operations?
Are your tests designed to expose system limits?
Do you conduct rigorous Root Cause Analysis?
Are design updates traceable to discovered failure modes?
Are you seeing measurable reduction in recurring defects?
Rockets exploding during test flights are dramatic. But the real Systems Engineering question is quieter.
Is your organization structurally designed to discover failure before it becomes unacceptable?
Failure during verification can strengthen a system.
Failure during operations weakens trust.
The difference is disciplined Systems Engineering.
And disciplined Systems Engineering looks a lot like this: Test. Fail. Revise. Repeat.
Optional Reader Resource
References
Roulette, Joey. “SpaceX’s Starship Explodes in Flight Test, Forcing Airlines to Divert.” Reuters, 17 Jan. 2025, https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-launches-seventh-starship-mock-satellite-deployment-test-2025-01-16/
Martin, Paul B. “Failure and the Importance of Lessons Learned.” SE‑Scholar Blog, 12 June 2016, https://se-scholar.com/se-blog/2016/6/12/failure-and-the-importance-of-lessons-learned.
Martin, Paul B. “The Value of Failure.” SE‑Scholar Blog, 3 May 2010, https://se-scholar.com/se-blog/2010/11/value-of-failure.html.
Walden, David D., et al., editors. INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook: A Guide for System Life Cycle Processes and Activities. 5th ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2023.
Bahill, A. Terry, and Steven J. Henderson. “Requirements Development, Verification, and Validation Exhibited in Famous Failures.” Systems Engineering, vol. 8, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1–14.
Jones, Marques. Interview by Jill Anderson. “Marques Jones.” School of Engineering and Computer Science Magazine, Baylor University, 18 Nov. 2020, https://magazine.ecs.baylor.edu/news/story/2022/marques-jones.
United States Department of Defense. MIL-HDBK-189C: Reliability Growth Management. 14 June 2011.
