Earlier quoted context omitted.
* blog refers to husband--should it be a "she"?
Men can have husbands, too, you know.
Unfortunately this is not true for most of the world.
Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#32I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing inherently difficult in the basics of rocket science and rocket engineering. Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land at my neighbour's backyard.
You can't compare toy rockets with real rockets any more than you can compare toy trains with real trains.
No, but I think people see rockets as magic they aren't.
I think toy trains and real trains scale differently than "toy rockets". A home-made SRM is a more powerful version of fireworks SRMs, and then there's a thin line between home-made SRM design and things you could stack on car or helicopter to fire at things. Not every rocket is a space rocket, and depending on size and cost tradeoffs required, you get more and more complicated designs, creating a spectrum from a home-made 1km rocket to Falcon 9 & stuff.
I'd say that the real problem with rockets is not that they're inherently magical/difficult, but dangerous and costly to develop. We can say a lot about great engineering that went into things like fuel, nozzles, fins, etc. etd. but the same if not more engineering went into internal combustion engines, and I don't see people saying "it's combustion engine science".
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#33I disagree with OP. I think the phrase "rocket science" is still valid as a stand-in for the performance of a complicated task with high accuracy. In terms of the effort required to create a useful prediction, I agree that many things are more complicated than rocket science (often by virtue of being intractable). However, in almost all of these things success is not as highly correlated with the performance of some mental/engineering feat. If a rocket correctly performs a non-trivial task (i.e. gets to a specific orbit/planet/location), we know with certainty that the rocket scientist created a valid physical model and performed difficult calculations on it with high accuracy (ditto for other parts of the engineering). Testing rockets is expensive and the likelihood of making one that works by trial-and-error is zero (I'm referring to rockets on the scale that put satellites into orbit, launch probes thorough the solar system, etc). In comparison, common wisdom holds that startups usually launch with poor product/market fit and pivot until they find something that works. Eventual success doesn't correspond nearly as well to the performance of mental acrobatics.
Don't get me wrong, both tasks are difficult, require "guts", and so on. But I think a direct comparison of the difficulty is disingenuous. To me, "This isn't rocket science" doesn't mean "this is easy", it means "we should be able to eventually succeed by trial&error".
@pja: your observation that "not rocket science" only became popular in the 90s jibes well with associating "rocket science" with "low margin for error", as challenger exploded in 1986.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#34I have personally always found that the phrase "It's not rocket surgery" gives a deeper and more wide-spanning explanation of the issue.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#35I have personally always found that the phrase "It's not rocket surgery" gives a deeper and more wide-spanning explanation of the issue.
I place "it's not rocket surgery" in the same class as "redonkulous" ... mildly clever the first time or two I heard it.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#36this article includes the phrase "it turns out common sense is [often] wrong."
when people collectively understand this sentence, politics will stop being such a hard problem. I'm not sure this will ever happen, sadly.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#37The rocket always lands as predicted? He didn't pay much attention to the Space Shuttle accidents, did he? Perhaps he's referring to ballistics. Rocket science generally refers to designing the rockets, which to this day sometimes blow up, lose engines, spiral off course, and suffer various other catastrophes.
They forgot a comma - "The rocket always lands, as predicted." They might blow up, but they always land.
For many rockets the whole point is that part of them doesn't - see e.g. voyager 2.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#38And I never use the Edmund Burke quote, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it". I've never liked that phrase because it's overly simplistic. The vagaries of human nature and the shear number of variables that influence world events are much to complex to model as a simple "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out" equation.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#39Entrepreneurial circlejerking at it's finest. "Rocket Science isn't hard, you should try pitching a new app to a VC."
I don't want to downplay starting your own company as something trivial. However, I think I can say getting a spacecraft to leave our solar system after 35 years of reliable operation without any physical servicing is harder than convincing a few people to buy your product or lend you some money.
Re: Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.”
#40Because it trivializes the current problem. Some everyday things are as important as getting your rocket built correctly. Like driving.
Baking isn't rocket science, but knowing about food allergies and proper preparation and substitutes can save someone's life.
Also: "It's not rocket science. You just have to... Actually, I guess it is rocket science. No fuel rods, Sheen."