this is the kind of thing you use as a metaphor to describe something else:
"There were certainly things we could've done to test it and actually fire it. They would've been very time-consuming and very costly," Mike Hansen, the company's head of navigation systems, told Reuters in an interview on Saturday. "So that was a risk as a company that we acknowledged and took that risk."
On Friday Intuitive Machines had disclosed that the laser range finders - designed to feed altitude and forward-velocity readings to Odysseus' autonomous navigation system - were inoperable because company engineers neglected to unlock the lasers' safety switch before launch on Feb. 15. The safety lock, akin to a firearm's safety switch, can only be disabled by hand.
gotta cut that last fucking corner to save a little money even though you risk destroying the entire project
The fact I, someone very enthusiastic about spaceflight and space exploration, didn't hear about this mission until after touchdown is telling. This is just the icing on the cake. Like thanks for piquing my interest for 5 minutes before your own ineptitude ended the mission as soon as it started. Imma go back to feeling sad for a helicopter on Mars.
