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India had a good run. The technical deficiencies and unsophisticated working environment would eventually result in failures such as these.

talonx 9y ago
Care to cite any sources for these "technical deficiencies" and "unsophisticated" working env?
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Source: Missile with an apparently very very low failure rate fails once. Them damn Indians and their shoddy engineering is certainly to blame. It's just stereotyping/racism. Flagging/downvoting would be appropriate here.
krapp 9y ago
> India had a good run. The technical deficiencies and unsophisticated working environment would eventually result in failures such as these. Odd. When SpaceX loses a rocket, do you write that off as American technical deficiency as well?
- gaius 9y ago
  When things go wrong for Western companies people absolutely do blame it on cultural factors, yes. Beancounters, pressure on quarterly earnings from Wall St, to name a couple of examples. SpaceX through the sheer force of Elon's will has kept some of this at bay, but he won't be able to forever, and the cold winds are already blowing at Tesla.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    "Through sheer force of Elon's will..." you don't really believe a word of that, right?
    - gaius 9y ago
      Why not? A charismatic CEO can get away with a lot, in terms of investors giving them more leeway. Sometimes this is good, like Steve Jobs, sometimes it is bad, like Elizabeth Holmes. Eventually tho' SpaceX will be as constrained by demands for quarterly earnings figures to start making bad, short-term decisions, just the same as most Western corporations.
      - jccooper 9y ago
        Only if it's Musk demanding quarterly earnings figures. SpaceX is privately held, with overwhelming control by Elon himself, and much of the rest by his friends. While eventually he might be diluted out of control by (very large amounts of) additional investment, that's not going to happen any time soon, and is predicated on being significantly unprofitable for a long time.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - krapp 9y ago
    I'm not certain technical deficiency or lack of sophistication are valid cultural factors to criticize in the case of India's space program. Having the latter implies the former aren't really issues.
    - gaius 9y ago
      It wasn't technical deficiencies that killed the UK space programme, was it? Or was it?
rsynnott 9y ago
There's never been a series of rockets with a significant number of launches that _didn't_ have a failure or two.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Depends on how you define a "series." Atlas V has no outright failures (there were two anomalies: one placed the satellite in a different but acceptable orbit, and the second still got the satellite to the intended orbit) in 72 launches. Atlas II had no failures in 63 launches. But that is unusual and your overall point still stands. Orbital rockets are inherently difficult and failures are to be expected.
sctb 9y ago
Hacker News would do very well without uncivil handwaving generalizations like this, they spark flamewars and we learn nothing. The guidelines ask that you post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

talonx 9y ago

Care to cite any sources for these "technical deficiencies" and "unsophisticated" working env?

StavrosK 9y ago
Source: Missile with an apparently very very low failure rate fails once. Them damn Indians and their shoddy engineering is certainly to blame. It's just stereotyping/racism. Flagging/downvoting would be appropriate here.

krapp 9y ago

> India had a good run. The technical deficiencies and unsophisticated working environment would eventually result in failures such as these. Odd. When SpaceX loses a rocket, do you write that off as American technical deficiency as well?

gaius 9y ago
When things go wrong for Western companies people absolutely do blame it on cultural factors, yes. Beancounters, pressure on quarterly earnings from Wall St, to name a couple of examples. SpaceX through the sheer force of Elon's will has kept some of this at bay, but he won't be able to forever, and the cold winds are already blowing at Tesla.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  "Through sheer force of Elon's will..." you don't really believe a word of that, right?
  - gaius 9y ago
    Why not? A charismatic CEO can get away with a lot, in terms of investors giving them more leeway. Sometimes this is good, like Steve Jobs, sometimes it is bad, like Elizabeth Holmes. Eventually tho' SpaceX will be as constrained by demands for quarterly earnings figures to start making bad, short-term decisions, just the same as most Western corporations.
    - jccooper 9y ago
      Only if it's Musk demanding quarterly earnings figures. SpaceX is privately held, with overwhelming control by Elon himself, and much of the rest by his friends. While eventually he might be diluted out of control by (very large amounts of) additional investment, that's not going to happen any time soon, and is predicated on being significantly unprofitable for a long time.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- krapp 9y ago
  I'm not certain technical deficiency or lack of sophistication are valid cultural factors to criticize in the case of India's space program. Having the latter implies the former aren't really issues.
  - gaius 9y ago
    It wasn't technical deficiencies that killed the UK space programme, was it? Or was it?

rsynnott 9y ago

There's never been a series of rockets with a significant number of launches that _didn't_ have a failure or two.

mikeash 9y ago
Depends on how you define a "series." Atlas V has no outright failures (there were two anomalies: one placed the satellite in a different but acceptable orbit, and the second still got the satellite to the intended orbit) in 72 launches. Atlas II had no failures in 63 launches. But that is unusual and your overall point still stands. Orbital rockets are inherently difficult and failures are to be expected.

sctb 9y ago

Hacker News would do very well without uncivil handwaving generalizations like this, they spark flamewars and we learn nothing. The guidelines ask that you post civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html