Seeing the engineers and scientists celebrating the successful landing was one the best things I've seen in a LONG while. Very live affirming and inspiring to me!
Is part of the joy that they now have secure jobs for years to come?
Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
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Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#72Helicopters on Mars, what a time to be alive!
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#73That live stream was epic! It was great to see them so happy :)
Hard for me to imagine what it's like to spend years of your life working on a singular launch project. So much riding on what happens in a handful of moments, whether that's launch or EDL. Pretty sure I'd just start sobbing in the control room if that were me regardless of outcome.
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA also requires 10-100x more money & time to do so. Both just have very different ways of working. Both work and there are pro's and con's to either way!
How could you know? SpaceX never landed or sent a craft on a foreign body.
SpaceX hasn't been around as long as NASA. Also, remind me, did NASA develop reusable rockets?
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#75NASA's ability of succeeding at landing things successfully on the first try on foreign bodies since 1969 is mind-blowing. Meanwhile, SpaceX takes half a dozen tries before managing to do the same on a fully known environment on Earth.
Perseverance is one of the largest objects that NASA landed (along with the Apollo lander), and it's about the size of an SUV.
SpaceX is trying to land things the size of buildings.
Let's just say it's a very different problem.
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#76NASA's ability of succeeding at landing things successfully on the first try on foreign bodies since 1969 is mind-blowing. Meanwhile, SpaceX takes half a dozen tries before managing to do the same on a fully known environment on Earth.
SpaceX has a very different set of risk tolerances and approaches. Nasa is a government funded entity and the tolerance for failure (rightly or wrongly) is very low according to every thing I've read.
SpaceX being private has a much larger cushion for failure. Elon will keep funding it far longer than congress would Nasa is my guess. If SpaceX loses some rockets that's the cost of business, of course once those missions are manned it's a huge difference but until then I think it's not really comparable.
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#77Shout out to the team member with the "This is fine" plush dog on their desk.
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#78First surface photo is in too! https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg
N00b question: why is it black & white?
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#79NASA's ability of succeeding at landing things successfully on the first try on foreign bodies since 1969 is mind-blowing. Meanwhile, SpaceX takes half a dozen tries before managing to do the same on a fully known environment on Earth.
I'm sure this will be downvoted to oblivion shortly, but it's mind-boggling that the company who's turned rocket landings so routine that it's notable when they fail is being singled out as a failure.
(Update: sorry, by "this" I mean the parent comment.)
Re: Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
#80Seeing the engineers and scientists celebrating the successful landing was one the best things I've seen in a LONG while. Very live affirming and inspiring to me!
Is part of the joy that they now have secure jobs for years to come?
I think it's mostly the joy that their past decade or two of work wasn't wasted.