On the other hand a lot of SpaceX's success can be attributed to applying modern software development methodology on spacecraft. They are very much doing agile development, betting on velocity enabling fast iteration.
That has lead to some of the best rockets ever developed, and the largest satellite constellation by far. But part of the secret sauce is creating situations where you can take risks. Traditionally anything space-related deals in one-offs or tiny production volumes, so any risk is expensive. A lot of SpaceX's strategy is about changing this, whether that's by testing in flight phases the customer doesn't care about, being their own best customer to have lower-risk flights, or building constellations so big that certain failure scenarios aren't a big issue (while other scenarios still have to be treated as high-risk high-impact)
I recall an early deep-dive into their safety architecture on the falcon 9, which was basically "throw 3 COTS processors at it and reboot anything that doesnt work, and fail fast during development". I remember they explicitly avoided rad-hard processors as well.
I would love to update myself if anyone has a good source.
For better or worse, it's hard to argue with results.
maybe they are in a 'sweet spot'. spaceX is not on the bleeding edge of anything; rather they are optimizing existing solutions. incremental design changes, in a problem domain that has been studied for decades, and is well known, will provide results. "web dev" for an e-commerce platform will show great improvement with an agile, move fast development process.
change the fundamental nature of the propulsion, or a step change in the technology, and it may be more effective to go with an engineered approach.
'engineered approach' --> before the item is built, a very good idea of how it is going to work has been determined. using math and science.
That has lead to some of the best rockets ever developed, and the largest satellite constellation by far. But part of the secret sauce is creating situations where you can take risks. Traditionally anything space-related deals in one-offs or tiny production volumes, so any risk is expensive. A lot of SpaceX's strategy is about changing this, whether that's by testing in flight phases the customer doesn't care about, being their own best customer to have lower-risk flights, or building constellations so big that certain failure scenarios aren't a big issue (while other scenarios still have to be treated as high-risk high-impact)