31–40 of 79 posts
Is this the first time a spaceship disembarked from a space station and landed back on the ground, all while unpiloted?
Is this the first time a spaceship disembarked from a space station and landed back on the ground, all while unpiloted?
I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not too wrong as it made it back to Earth. > Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? NASA lost enough people during their "higher risk tolerance" epoch that they don't want to go through it again. Challenger and Columbia were such huge traumas each time...
> Not too wrong as it made it back to Earth. The contractual requirement was for max 1-in-1000 probability of loss of crew on re-entry. Let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that due to these thruster issues, the actual probability had increased to 1-in-100. In that scenario, it is totally expected that Starliner made it back to earth in one piece – there was a 99% chance it would happen. Yet simultaneously, 1…
I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
you have to pretend to be stupid, otherwise the bogeyman gonna come for you
it really is mind boggling, but here we are, we have arrived into the zone of full retardedness in 2024
youtube is full with "look how idiot I am, although I serviced this nuclear reactor, but still..." kinda videos:
I spent 55 days creating this "whatever"
I broke my new ferrari next day, that I spent 200 days repairing
...
and the list goes on
maybe the aliens are riled up that they will lose control over Earth, or smth like that, and they now beam the full retard signal :D
I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
> I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? I think SpaceX has been doing a great job of that, with Crew Dragon. > Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Yes, but also fewer options. This is the first time NASA has ever had a choice between two completely different American spacecraft to return crew on. It is like if you own two cars, an…
https://qz.com/elon-musks-spacex-and-tesla-get-far-more-gove....
Is that not “cost-plus?”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(I worked at SpaceX) Two words: flight heritage. Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc. Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars. Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't alw…
You mixed up Marce Recognisance Orbiter (still in Mars orbit) with Mars Climate Orbiter (part of Mars due to unit mixup).
I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
Although that happened over 50 years ago, and we can’t make the same exact designs, the physics is the same and well understood. Technology has evolved, and has given us more tools. Similar cultures can be made again that support that kind of work. What’s missing is we need better cultures. I’ve been in engineering cultures that are dominated by management desires to cut costs and deliver on schedule. Engineering exc…
I wonder if the fear suppressed the natural behavior of Jim McNerney and others, keeping them from sowing division within the company because of the perceived danger from outside?
Here are some other examples, where today these might sound like an excuse for aggressive business behavior, instead of a unifying mantra --
Andy Grove, "Only the paranoid survive"
Dick Cheney, "Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose."
(Yes, yes, he's outing himself as unprincipled; I'm quoting him intentionally since people were still being people all throughout; does this show the larger populace wide zeitgeist?)
John F. Kennedy, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
I think it's interesting how the same thought can sound different when my mind is set in different contexts.
I'm genuinely curious what has happened in the past 50 years that we can't iterate on already successful concepts? Did we have a higher risk tolerance back then? Is Boeing genuinely this bad? Not to sound too cliched, but we put a man on the moon. We put a CAR on the moon. Why can't the successors of those same companies be trusted to retrieve two people from LEO?
All these changes mean, pretty much, that we need a new capsule (or more radical design, e.g. Starship).