SpaceX Recovers 99% of the Rocket Farings

SpaceX VP of Launch, Kiko Dontchev, describes the exponential success of SpaceX. SpaceX, Tesla and Elon Musk companies follow an algorithm to make things much faster and more efficient.

1. Make the requirements less dumb. Requirements are always bad. Check if requirements are needed and understand why they are needed.
2. Delete the part or steps whenever possible.
3. Optimize.
4. Accelerate.
5. Automate.

The first four steps of the process was used to eventually make recovering rocket fairings 99% successful. They tried to catch the $6 million farings at first because they assumed they were too delicate to go into seawater. The catching of farings was less than 50% successful. They found out they float well and by moving delicate parts higher up, they could just let them land in the water.

Reusability has let SpaceX increases launches from less than once per month to nearly once every 3 days.