The value of rehearsals

       We humans can plan very well, and anticipate most everything...but not necessarily everything.

            Yet after all "that", we often have wedding rehearsals as a custom and usually a good planning factor, too.

            Now having a rehearsal does take time. And at one time it was just taken for granted that the time to do a rehearsal was planned in.  It could have been an amphibious landing, or even a gun salute, but it was rehearsed just to get the boo boos out, and anticipate the surprises.

            Even the new Airbus A380 is now undergoing wing repairs amounting to around $334USD (about a third of a billion dollars), so inadequate rehearsals ( called flight testing in the new talk) was apparently done poorly, or not at all. Now that is a lot of money.

            One can go on and on.  How about computer software and beta testing. All too often the first buyers find the bugs that a good rehearsal (testing) plan should have detected. Let the buyer beware, but also expect sales to suffer, too. Why should anyone pay money to do somebody else's rehearsal?

            And along that line, the USA's failure at Desert One decades ago included not having a rehearsal for security reasons, and the overall commander being later promoted. Why I don't know? If the military can't have a rehearsal for security breach reasons, then that is another problem best solved another way.

            Last, it is reported that the raid to kill Bin Laden was well rehearsed, including well constructed models, so some hope for the future does exist.