It just blows my mind that someone can create a successful space program from scratch and still people think "but he'll probably get tripped up by this tiny thing that even I noticed! Just waiting for company to go belly up."
(a) Elon isn't all of SpaceX, there is a whole managerial and engineering infrastructure there, which is primarily motivated by scientific, not aesthetic, needs. So, they choose the best design based on their calculations.
These solar panels are clearly designed for looks, an important business consideration, so the idea that they may have knowingly traded off on the engineering/science side is a real possibility. That is a real decision people can make and none of the parents claimed the company was doomed. It may even be a decision that makes business sense and results in more sales. Many decisions about how houses are built are based on aesthetics and not engineering concerns, which is why they don't look like warehouses.
(b) even in engineering-based organizations, misaligned incentives can silence science-based concerns. NASA, an organization that also successfully created a space program and had some of the best engineers in the world, ignored repeated warnings from an engineer about a tiny thing that would have prevented the Challenger disaster.
The doors were new, they were complicated, they took time. I don't think they revealed any fundamental engineering weaknesses of the company, just a reminder that anything new is hard.
Is having the engine block not spontaneously catch fire new and complicated?
I love this game!
You remind me of how Americans talk about how the US is the best country in the world, and then compare themselves to Nicuragua or Afghanistan or Somalia or thereabouts. Sure, you can beat the astonishingly dysfunctional, but how do you compare against your real peers?
(Disclaimer: Musk knows what he's doing in space, to say the least, even though his car company is astonishingly dysfunctional. I hope he has the sense to keep SpaceX and Tesla independent!)
It's even more mind-blowing that you think Musk is infallible, and that he's poring over the schematics of every in development.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/07/10/200775748/...
In general, SpaceX seems to be much more competent and much better-run than Tesla. My guess from thousands of miles away is that Musk is just temperamentally better suited to space than to cars. Space exploration is in its infancy, still a bleeding-edge field where every product is more or less a one-off, while car manufacturing is mostly about logistics, quality control, and the effective management of routine in general. I get the impression that SpaceX is the most efficient of all companies and agencies involved in space, even though Tesla is a strikingly inept car manufacturer; I just hope Tesla doesn't drag SpaceX down with it into bankruptcy...
It's silly to act like something is above questioning because Elon Musk and Tesla are involved.