Generally it does take awhile for a third party to understand the design decisions and their impacts then the designing person. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone working on software.
> it involved insane things like strapping a pair of headphones onto a seal and playing rocket sounds to it.
Do you have a citation for this?
>nonetheless we were required to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. I have pictures.
Then shows a picture. It sounds like another commenter is saying that the pic displayed by the Lex podcast is not the exact pic from Elon, but instead a similar pic meant to illustrate.
>The amazing part is how calm the seal was.
He said they had to do this twice.
There are actual images of a seal with headphones strapped to its head online!
https://x.com/mcrs987/status/1848070131781455911 asserts it was actually a study for the Delta IV booster, not something SpaceX had to do.
Not a "citation" as much as anecdotal evidence that dispels doubt.
Musk also famously tweeted "funding secured" for Tesla. "He's lying" is 100% within the realm of possibility.