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What about announcing it and doing it six times? That's the number of times we landed men on the moon. Let's not try to downplay NASA's previous successes as
by abduhl 10y ago
What about announcing it and doing it six times?
That's the number of times we landed men on the moon.
Let's not try to downplay NASA's previous successes as "lucky" and "adventurous" in order to make SpaceX seem more advanced in an engineering sense.
- mikeash 10y agoAnnouncing it seven times and doing it six times.... Luck did play a pretty big role in Apollo. This is not to discount the huge amount of work and skill that went into making most of those missions a success, but there was sometimes not a whole lot separating them from failure. Apollo 11's landing site ended up being covered with boulders and they nearly had to abort before they found a suitable landing site. Apollo 12 got hit by lightning on the way up, knocking out computers and nearly causing an abort. Apollo 13 came within seconds of exploding on launch, and was saved by a false fuel alarm shutting down the misbehaving engine. Of course, this is only to be expected when you're doing something so big and new. SpaceX has the benefit of all that experience.
- agumonkey 10y agoYou're right. Funnily my answer was an attempt at not dismissing SpaceX advances too.
- knowaveragejoe 10y agoLuck was a significant factor, however. There were _so many_ things that could have gone wrong, that is not an understatement at all. They found bugs in the AGC's software years later that could have sent 3 men to their deaths, had they occurred.