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John Glenn has died

dispatch.com

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Re: John Glenn has died

#61

Post by andars »

photogrammetry wrote: post #44
bernardom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other classic (and definitely an HN-appropriate book) is "Failure Is Not an Option," which gives an awesome look at the engineering and management challenges they faced from Mercury to Apollo. https://smile.amazon.com/Failure-Not-Option-Mission-Control/...

The title, it should be disclaimed, is not what the astronauts or flight controllers believed. It's a poor abbreviation of the following: "No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz#.22Failure_is_not_a...

I've read the book, and Kranz definitely says at least once that the phrase "failure is not an option" is a good summary of what the flight controllers believed. Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean by your comment?

Re: John Glenn has died

#62

Post by cmdrfred »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

I second the black bar.

Re: John Glenn has died

#63

Post by Lucas123 »

John Glenn was a true American hero.

He was a U.S. Marine fighter pilot who flew 59 combat missions over the South Pacific during WWII and 63 combat missions during the Korean War. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism or extraordinary achievement six times! In Korea, he got the nickname "magnet ass" because he attracted so much enemy flak on his missions.

Oh yeah, and then he went on to become a test pilot, the first American to orbit the Earth, a five-term U.S. senator, and the oldest man to ever enter space.

If you're ever looking for someone for your kids to look up to, this is the man.

Re: John Glenn has died

#64

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

>This deserves a black bar (IMO)

Why would YCombinator give him a black bar? Did he bootstrap a lean startup using microservices in Haskel and basic income while building relationships with angel investors for the next round and ensuring a long runway for a pivot into another market? No? Then Hacker News doesn't care.

This is Investor News. Angel News. Money News. Not Hacker News. Not "give a crap about science". Everyone would rather fellate Elon Musks's half-ass into rockets and electric cars instead of pay tribute to a legitimate American hero.

Re: John Glenn has died

#65

Post by butter_NUT »

kumarski wrote: post #54

I grew up next to mission control and many of my neighbors and friends' parents were involved in Mission Control and/or Astronauts or both. Oddly, in the middle of nowhere Texas - Clear Lake. This gave me some interesting run-ins with cosmonauts, astronauts, physicists etc... I was lucky enough to meet John Glenn on 3 separate occasions. The first time, I discussed Plutonium 238 and my worries for satellite power giv…

Man, in what world is Clear Lake TX out in the middle of nowhere??

Re: John Glenn has died

#66

Post by dmcginty »

jjcm wrote: post #48
giodamelio wrote: post #19

I think he deserves a black bar if anyone does.

I certainly wont complain if we do put up a black bar for Glenn, but at the same time I feel like the black bar should represent a death of someone who directly contributed or was actively a part of the hacker community. While Glenn was immensely inspirational, he never really felt like a part of who we are.

Black bars are essentially free; I never got the reason to ration them. While Glenn may not have been a part of the hacker community, he's an international icon of science, technology, and space exploration. I would guess a nontrivial number of people here have been positively influenced by John Glenn, and I'm sure every single person here has at least heard of him. I believe a black bar would be appropriate, as this is the only opportunity that we have to honor his passing.

Re: John Glenn has died

#67

Post by noonespecial »

rmason wrote: post #14

John Glenn was one of my boyhood heroes. I remember as a young boy listening to reports of him taking off and making those three orbits of the earth. My uncle gave me a crystal radio shaped like Glenn's Friendship 7 capsule that ignited a fierce passion into radio that led to a ham radio license and a lifelong interest in science. It was a time in America when the future seemed endless, anything was possible. A lot h…

>It was a time in America when the future seemed endless, anything was possible.

Somewhere between "We choose to go to the moon" and "if you see something, say something" we traded all of our hope and optimism for fear and suspicion.

I'm just hoping for hope again.

Re: John Glenn has died

#68

Post by walshemj »

cmdrfred wrote: post #62
ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

I second the black bar.

Thirded

Re: John Glenn has died

#69

Post by celticninja »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #64
ChuckMcM wrote: post #60

This deserves a black bar (IMO) John Glenn was very influential on me as a student. He gave a talk at my high school about how learning as much as you could prepared you for the unexpected. He certainly put that to the test (as all of the astronauts then and now) do. The stakes are high, the resources limited, and time for a solution is finite. God speed John Glenn.

>This deserves a black bar (IMO) Why would YCombinator give him a black bar? Did he bootstrap a lean startup using microservices in Haskel and basic income while building relationships with angel investors for the next round and ensuring a long runway for a pivot into another market? No? Then Hacker News doesn't care. This is Investor News. Angel News. Money News. Not Hacker News. Not "give a crap about science". Eve…

A very confusing point badly made.

Re: John Glenn has died

#70

Post by andars »

vkou wrote: post #23
astrodust wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The occasional American disaster made it crystal clear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

That doesn't entirely count as a space disaster as it was in training. More importantly, everyone of them expected 'You're going to burn-up and die in launch/re-entry/all your air vents in space/your engines will misfire, and you won't return home' as big, serious risks of their work. Nobody expected 'You're going to burn-up and die as a result of getting into a closed room, and pushing a few buttons', to be in their…

Important to note that the "closed room" was the Command Module on top of a Saturn launch vehicle.
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