On Wednesday night, SpaceX’s Starship rocket erupted into flames shortly after takeoff, marking another high-profile failure in Elon Musk’s “fail fast” development tactics. But to Musk, failure isn’t a bug but a feature. His core philosophy in rockets and government reform? Break things, learn fast, iterate. The beleaguered rollout of the Department of Government Efficiency followed a similar plan.

That mindset might launch rockets, but it won’t as easily drain a swamp.