Yesterday marked the second attempt at landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean. Not an easy task, and many were not surprised when the mission failed for a second time.
0/2 kinda sucks.
But let's put this into perspective.
Allow this baseball fan to use a baseball reference. Having a batting average of around .250 in today's league is an acceptable feat. That's 1/4. Which means that you only reach the base 25% of the time. Most players do worse than that.
Let's talk inventions. Thomas Edison, hailed as one of history's greatest inventors, was said to have failed thousands of times in creating a mass-producible, practical lightbulb. Let's call that 1/10000.
Suddenly 0/2 doesn't sound so bad. And I'm confident that in a few months we'll see that ration climb to 1/3.
Failures should not be taken lightly or shrugged off, but neither should they be dwelled on, lest our obsession on the negative drives us to quit. We learn much from our failures, and Space X's engineers will undoubtedly take a lot away from these missions.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison
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