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The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

newyorker.com

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Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#151

Post by sellyme »

dylan604 wrote: post #143
sellyme wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally said "100%".

You honestly believe that the NBA has never had officials go soft on calls for their star players, or not call the rules for how many steps without putting the ball on the floor, or the whole under the ball carrying or whatever the rules are they decide not to call? You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere? You think a sports player didn't make a catch? You think spo…

> You honestly believe that the NBA has never [...]

I've never watched the NBA, so I'd have no idea.

> You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere?

Just so you're aware, there are numbers between 0% and 100%.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#152

Post by chipotle_coyote »

monocasa wrote: post #129
IggleSniggle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SpaceShipTwo is an inherently risky experimental test craft—with death always waiting on each side of a narrow envelope—and it always will be. Management is willfully ignorant of this. This comment reminded me of another story from a previous aerospace era (blimp cruise liners aka airships), the summary of which is: > A British Lord wanted to build the best airship in the world – and so he had two rival design team…

Hmm, that certainly colors a rumor I've heard about Apple. That they'll have two or three teams compete on a new product... but they won't tell the teams that they have competition until final demo day.

I know that was effectively true at Nokia in the 2000s, but that was more a sign of corporate dysfunction than a deliberate "battle to the death". (I worked at Nokia in 2010, and the last project I was on turned out to be one that was literally being worked on by four other people across the world, as it turned out.)

I don't think I've ever heard that about Apple, though, at least as standard (even unofficial) operating procedure. There's sometimes competing internal concepts -- the iPhone's operating system probably being the most famous example, with Scott Forstall's team basing theirs on OS X and Tony Fadell's team basing theirs on Pixo OS -- but I don't think they were being kept secret from one another.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#153

Post by anonymousiam »

Good article, but I did not like the way it referred to Scaled Composites as a company "contracting" for Virgin. IIRC Burt Rutan (founder of Scaled Composites) began the whole program (Spaceship One. etc.), but became associated with Branson later, and that eventually led to an acquisition. I suppose that like many others, the acquisition deal required the re-writing of history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#154

Post by noisy_boy »

belter wrote: post #17
mc32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other flaws too. Like pretending to bike to the spaceport on the day of, but it was actually filmed the week before and when called out, they said, oops, you're right, sorry! It's like when Guy Fiery in his hot rod. He pretends he rolls up to the place in his 70s hot rod, but actually it's just rolled out of the truck that lugs it around from location to location and he opens the door, sits, gets filmed get…

That was not the only fakery :-) At correct time: https://youtu.be/H6EbDCxotdg?t=488

Thanks for sharing that - very enjoyable :)

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#155

Post by Sargos »

mabbo wrote: post #67

This highlights why having automated pilots in spaceships is so critical. Software can be tested more thoroughly than humans, and cannot override safety protocols. If the rules say to abort, the software aborts. Humans get to say "I think we'll be fine", and put lives on the line.

In this case the human pilots were right. The red light was mostly a bureaucratic instrument that wasn't really a safety risk for the mission beyond getting in trouble with the authorities by going over an arbitrary line. The spaceship and crew landed safely and even the article points out that they were never in any real danger.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#156

Post by rpmisms »

Sebb767 wrote: post #149
rpmisms wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge difference. Deviating from a flight plan, even majorly, is orders of magnitude less dangerous than glancing at your phone on the highway. Airspace is really big, and flying into area outside their flight path is so unlikely to hurt anyone as to be laughable. The ballsy part that deserves respect is pushing the envelope on safety, executing perfectly, and playing it off like it's nothing.

> Deviating from a flight plan, even majorly, is orders of magnitude less dangerous than glancing at your phone on the highway. No. These safety margins are expensive and they are there for a reason. Airliners don't expect a f-ing rocket to shoot by and just the air disturbances caused by it can seriously hurt or kill people. > The ballsy part that deserves respect is pushing the envelope on safety, executing perfect…

It was an altitude variation, it didn't stray from the accepted longitude and latitude. It also didn't leave the cleared airspace.

> It does not deserve respect because it risked the safety of other people

That's correct, it didn't endanger anyone else.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#157

Post by dylan604 »

sellyme wrote: post #151
dylan604 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly believe that the NBA has never had officials go soft on calls for their star players, or not call the rules for how many steps without putting the ball on the floor, or the whole under the ball carrying or whatever the rules are they decide not to call? You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere? You think a sports player didn't make a catch? You think spo…

> You honestly believe that the NBA has never [...] I've never watched the NBA, so I'd have no idea. > You think no officials of any sport did or didn't make a call because of some bet somewhere? Just so you're aware, there are numbers between 0% and 100%.

Any number >0 means something was not real

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#158

Post by rkagerer »

bryananderson wrote: post #36

I recommend Schmidle’s recent book “Test Gods” if you are interested in Virgin Galactic and test piloting. Schmidle is not an engineer and I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into Virgin Galactic’s design choices, but it is a great book about (among other things) the tensions that emerge when a complex technical project is overseen from a distance by utterly nontechnical, PR-oriented upper management. The company’s co…

This may be a smidgen off-topic, but any good books to recommend about either the Apollo program or SpaceX that do delve a little deeper into engineering challenges and design choices?

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#159

Post by lanevorockz »

Too much narrative and too little facts. I don’t care how much the journalist hates space travel, just get to the point. All that rumble means, he personally believes that “a more risky” correction for a red light was taken because the pilot was afraid of Branson being angry. A bit of a silly argument when you are talking about life and death situation.

Re: The red warning light on Richard Branson’s space flight

#160

Post by Mengkudulangsat »

mabbo wrote: post #67

This highlights why having automated pilots in spaceships is so critical. Software can be tested more thoroughly than humans, and cannot override safety protocols. If the rules say to abort, the software aborts. Humans get to say "I think we'll be fine", and put lives on the line.

A random cosmic ray burst can't bit-flip a human brain. Software works best supervised in a coddled environment.
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