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I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

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Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#11

Post by nabla9 »

ziffusion wrote: post #7
nabla9 wrote: post #3

Good talk, worth watch. 15 rockets!

Hey - you put in the time. Can you please help the rest of us out and post a TLDR?

TL;DR:

- Apollo simple, Apollo success.

- Artemis very complex, many unknowns.

- Stated reasons for doing things are clearly not the real reasons.

- Providing honest negative feedback seems to be the the key to success.

- Artemis engineers might fear talking honestly.

---

Personal comment: The timeline was fubar from the beginning. Remember when VP Mike Pence made a surprise announcement that NASA goes to the Moon 2024 surprising NASA director. Then NASA committed to it and scrambled to adjust everything.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#12

Post by darksim905 »

ziffusion wrote: post #7
nabla9 wrote: post #3

Good talk, worth watch. 15 rockets!

Hey - you put in the time. Can you please help the rest of us out and post a TLDR?

In the time that it took you to ask several people for the TL;DR, you could've watched the video.

I guess I summarize things different than others, but at the 32:00 minute mark, he talks about what he was actually scared about:

NASA is essentially, a business (my addition) -- that does not know how to communicate. The left hand very much does not know what the right hand is doing. He brings up a fantastic example of how many rockets are required for a particular phase of a mission and showed how multiple people gave different answers without even realizing their launch date is set in stone.

In essence, issues abound.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#13

Post by junofan »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #5

He seems really worried about offending people and hurting his relationships with NASA execs. I wonder if NASA people are more prickly, less, or the same in terms of taking negative feedback as compared to programmers and hackers. I suspect since we spend all day with compilers telling us we made silly errors, we're a bit more inured to criticism than the general public.

I don’t know about NASA, but in my few encounters with stuff at the federal level the people involved seemed way more concerned with interagency battles than anything related to the mission. To the point where it the top priority was to fuck over Bob from the Department of Whatever by scuttling his project before the next Big Meeting. I guess fighting the same battles for forty+ years could lead to a form of org debt.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#14

Post by dmillar »

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts.

Some longer takeaways:

- Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic refuel in orbit (this seems like a biggie).

- Communicate a lot. Why aren't people talking about the seemingly giant increase in complexity to accomplish the same mission we had in the 60s (land on the moon)? People need to have safe/comfortable way to raise questions and concerns.

- Have many layers of redundancy. Apollo had 6-7 backup procedures for what to do if they couldn't launch the lander off the moon.

- Test. small tests, big tests, real tests, skin-in-the-game tests. Some tests can be eliminated by simplifying or, in the case of big systems/tests, doing small tests on the riskiest components.

- Humans have ingrained biases. Will be situations astronauts haven't experienced where their instincts may be wrong.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#15

Post by grecy »

dmillar wrote: post #14

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts. Some longer takeaways: - Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic…

> We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why?

Because if we do it the same way we did 50+ years ago, we learn absolutely nothing and the whole thing is a pointless waste of money.

In order to progress and learn and improve you must do things you've never done before. You must be ambitious and you must attempt things that are difficult and will probably take many attempts to master.

This logic is exactly the same as saying "we've been burning toxic liquids for generations to get around. Why are we making things complicated with all these batteries and electric motors".

The whole point is improvement.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#16

Post by [deleted] »

grecy wrote: post #15
dmillar wrote: post #14

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts. Some longer takeaways: - Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic…

> We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? Because if we do it the same way we did 50+ years ago, we learn absolutely nothing and the whole thing is a pointless waste of money. In order to progress and learn and improve you must do things you've never done before. You must be ambitious and you must attempt things that are difficult and will probably…

[deleted]

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#17

Post by shahar2k »

grecy wrote: post #15
dmillar wrote: post #14

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts. Some longer takeaways: - Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic…

> We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? Because if we do it the same way we did 50+ years ago, we learn absolutely nothing and the whole thing is a pointless waste of money. In order to progress and learn and improve you must do things you've never done before. You must be ambitious and you must attempt things that are difficult and will probably…

This strikes me as a moment where you should watch the video there's a moment specifically at 41:40 where he basically says what you're saying and it's an integral part of his point

I find that a lot of people myself included like to argue against an imagined version of something they hear second hand often not going to the source material to realize they're standing on the same side

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#18

Post by nijuashi »

ziffusion wrote: post #6

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE someone post a TLDR. The dude is pleasant to listen to, but he goes ON and ON and ON about his life story and what not. Please just give us the bullet points.

He’s basically saying the complexity of current Artemis mission design is indicative of lack of communication, mainly due to politics. He points out some of the obvious problems that isn’t being discussed openly (e.g., large number of untested refueling procedure which needs to be done to get one vehicle to the moon). He is trying to persuade the audience to challenge the current way of doing things, and look to the past successful Apollo programs to see why they were so successful.

I did skip some life story part when watching the video - but the talk was not bad at all. You can use the FF button and use 1.25x speed if that helps. I think it was worth my time.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#19

Post by jtokoph »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #5

He seems really worried about offending people and hurting his relationships with NASA execs. I wonder if NASA people are more prickly, less, or the same in terms of taking negative feedback as compared to programmers and hackers. I suspect since we spend all day with compilers telling us we made silly errors, we're a bit more inured to criticism than the general public.

People are way more willing to accept negative feedback and direction from a computer than a human. It’s one of the major benefits of code linters and CI. It’s not embarrassing to be told by a computer that you messed up.

Re: I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

#20

Post by inglor_cz »

dmillar wrote: post #14

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts. Some longer takeaways: - Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic…

"but we have never attempted a cryogenic refuel in orbit (this seems like a biggie)"

Isn't this a consequence of having Sen. Richard Shelby in de facto control of cosmic spending for decades?

AFAIK Shelby was notorious for vetoing any project that included refueling in orbit. Fortunately, he finally retired at the ripe old age of 89.

(If longevity research pays off, we may never get rid of such entrenched people... or in 100 years or so.)

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