It’s a legit way of doing it. The old adage applies
“In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there’s a huge difference.”
NASA is hyper risk averse. They simulate the hell out of everything first. This is, however, quite slow. It can also incur a lot of time based costs. SpaceX is jumping quickly to practical testing. This lets them refine and calibrate their models far quicker. It’s less efficient with hardware, but they are also going for low cost hardware, so this is far less of an issue than it would be with NASA.
It’s a legit way of doing it. The old adage applies
“In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there’s a huge difference.”
NASA is hyper risk averse. They simulate the hell out of everything first. This is, however, quite slow. It can also incur a lot of time based costs. SpaceX is jumping quickly to practical testing. This lets them refine and calibrate their models far quicker. It’s less efficient with hardware, but they are also going for low cost hardware, so this is far less of an issue than it would be with NASA.
And that’s why SpaceX were the first to put a lander on the moon.