7 ms·

Reading about the specs and the planned degradation of the gyros is a very interesting exercise in planned reduction of a service. They know the gyros will eve

Reading about the specs and the planned degradation of the gyros is a very interesting exercise in planned reduction of a service. They know the gyros will eventually give out and they have contingency plans around what kinds of science they can continue to do even when they're down to 1 gyro. Very impressive. I'm always discouraged hearing people say NASA is wasting money and science and that's just not true IMHO.

pmorici 8y ago
You can achieve impressive results and still be "wasting money" if there were more cost efficient ways to achieve an equivalent result. I don't have an opinion on NASA but that could be the point of view those people are coming from.
- Entalpi 8y ago
  The problem with having non-science people run an organisation of science people is self explanatory. In the Netherlands they have outsourced the organisation and managment of health care to the doctors themselves (roughly speaking). It is often cited as one of the main reasons the Netherlands rank #1 in health care ratings over the years.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    In the US, the American Medical Association is run by doctors and they artificially limit the supply new doctors by capping the number of medical schools. So sometimes having the fox guard the henhouse is not the best way to save money.
    - epmaybe 8y ago
      The AMA doesn't directly govern the number of medical schools in this country. That would be the LCME (Liaison Committee on Medical Education), which is sponsored by the AMA and American Association for Medical Colleges. It's also important to note that the number of medical schools isn't really artificially limited by the LCME, as they will accredit most any medical school that meets the accreditation standards. On top of that, medical students in the US have to undergo a residency before becoming fully licensed physicians. These residencies are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), a separate organization. However, while the ACGME can accredit these programs, the majority of funding for training resident physicians comes from the federal government (department of health and human services, center for medicare and medicaid services), and is capped by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (modified in 1999 to accommodate the rural physician shortage). Today, this costs the federal government around $11 billion each year for all of the residents in the country. The real question, then, is who we can point to as the bottleneck for new doctors in this country. I found this article enlightening, but it may be behind a paywall: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28919221 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28919221
      - marcoperaza 8y ago
        The AMA controls enough seats on that board to prevent new schools/seats from being created. And the idea that an industry as profitable as medicine needs the taxpayer to fund its training is preposterous. This is just a deflection from the AMA's role.
        mentalhealth 8y ago
        a profession as wealthy as medicine needs the taxpayer to fund its training is preposterous Most doctors already come from wealthy families (specifically, they have doctor parents) because in addition to the tuition of medical school, there are a variety of other expenses (board examination fees, the undergraduate requirement, interview expenses for both medical school and residency) that are difficult to fund without assistance. Also, compensation for physicians is not what you seem to think it is outside of subspecialized fields, and the expense of medical school (and the opportunity cost of residency) means that physician shortages in the general disciplines will only continue to get worse as medical students realize the only way they can pay back their loans is to subspecialize. Also, medical schools are primarily limited by number of faculty, and it's difficult to find doctors for med school faculty roles... because they're so poorly compensated in comparison to other opportunities. If you want more doctors, first provide incentives for doctors to teach, then provide funding for those who normally don't see medical school as an available opportunity, then incentivize people to go into general disciplines, then properly compensate residents so they're not throwing away ten years of potential income, then complain about how "doctors are overpaid but there's also a big shortage of them".
        marcoperaza 8y ago
        The rest of us have to compete in a free market for our skills. Why not doctors? I agree that the undergrad requirement is absurd. But it is also just another part of the system that increases entry-barriers and leads to all of these problems, but makes the field more lucrative for a big segment of those who get through it.
        8y ago
    - vkou 8y ago
      It doesn't matter how many medical schools or students exist, if there aren't enough residency positions for them. And the AMA does not control the number of residency positions.
      - FireForce 8y ago
        Podiatry in the US has this problem in a big way.
  - glfharris 8y ago
    Something similar happened in the UK with GPs, and it's been one of the least popular health reforms ever to take place.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      (England, not UK) Not sure why you got downvoted. The Lansley Reforms - where Primary Care Trusts were abolished and replaced by Clinical Commissioning Groups which are run by GPs and are responsible for commissioning most of the NHS services (about 2/3 of the budget) - are known to have caused severe disruption to English NHS services.
  - amatecha 8y ago
    Huh, coincidentally I just heard a couple hospitals in Netherlands are closing on short notice due to bankruptcy[0]... I'm sure there's a lot more backstory there, but it doesn't sound like #1-tier healthcare when that's happening. hehe ;) [0] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/10/slotervaart-hospital-stops-new-admissions-lelystad-hospital-may-have-buyer/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/10/slotervaart-hospital-s...
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Netherlands, a high density country without the added costs of delivering healthcare to remote places, spends 30% more per head on healthcare than the UK. That has a far higher outcome on healthcare than taking doctors away from patients to run hospitals.
- planteen 8y ago
  Yep. I love space and science, but after working with NASA for a while, you see some of the problems. NIH syndrome is a huge problem, especially between GSFC and JPL. There are incompetent engineers who will have a well paying job at NASA for life. And then there the passionate, brilliant scientists and engineers the that dream and make it all work. A reduction in force of dead weight would go a long way but it will never happen.
  - mushufasa 8y ago
    i think that's true generally of any organization. pareto -- 80% of work done by 20% of workers. there's also some other law about the work being done by the square root of the total workers.
    - planteen 8y ago
      I agree the 80/20 is true of most organizations. But producing nothing and keep your job for life as long as you show up for work is not common in private industry. On the private side, I see developers get let go all the time for inadequate work.
      - carolinaCarl 8y ago
        Hmmm, so 9 to get 3 workers, 16 for 4, 25 for 5, 100 gets 10, 10,000 gets 100... Yeah, I think that about fits. But on the other side of the table, having been forced to accepts seats at the kids table where competence is prohibited, there's this weird purgatory you're forced to cope with, like a Cassandra, being forced to nurse a Sick System. You want to take action, you certainly could intervene, take charge, and set things right, but any number of workplace taboos might be infringed upon or violated, in so doing. I've had to sit, and watch morons bumble about, stare at hamfisted facts of existence for years on end, look but not touch, and let perfectly reasonable things burn and go to waste because my hands were tied. Being competent enough to know better, skilled enough to intervene with success, and yet find myself in such a position where I am forbidden to do so is maddening. At some point a post-traumatic learned helplessness sets in, and you grow catatonic at the futility of struggling. If I could rewind my life, I'd love to locate the moment when I died inside. I might ballpark it back somewhere around... 2002? And yet reality still continues to unfold before these eyes. C'est la vie.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
Wasting money criticism with regard to SLS is valid, I think, but is more of a political reality than a NASA issue.
howard941 8y ago
It's always a lead into cutting NASA spending so remind them that it's not a zero sum thing, cutting NASA's budget isn't going to cause lower taxes, higher spending on $THINGS_SHE_PREFERS, or a fatter personal wallet, it'll just be cutting NASA's budget.
- marcoperaza 8y ago
  Why wouldn't it mean those things? That's the essential nature of budgeting.
  - clintonb 8y ago
    The money will probably be directed to another department.
    - marcoperaza 8y ago
      That's one of the options in the parent post. My point is that the budgeting process is in fact mostly zero-sum. It's only not totally zero-sum because of the use of debt (which considered by itself is zero-sum over the long run) and the possible effect of particular spending on the broader economy (which makes it not perfectly zero-sum as a repeated process)
  - kingbirdy 8y ago
    Tax changes and budgets are passed separately
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
HenryBemis 8y ago
While people may think that this is wasting money, I see that this these teams gain unieque knowledge and experience on how to resolve issues on "machines far far away", and if we are ever to explore/move humans to a new planet, you want THOSE exact teams as 'helpdesk' that use anything and everything to bring things back to life and operation.
- dmix 8y ago
  This is assuming generational knowledge can be sufficently passed down to be useful in future missions. I'd assume this is quite a niche/specialized skillset they developed for this particular machine. The utility of the knowledge has a limited timeframe which may not justify education of the next generation of scientists. But regardless recording it would likely be helpful as most problems in engineerings seem to recur over time in different and new contexts.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    We build on the knowledge of those before us. The people who invented the original programming languages are mostly gone and most of us probably don't know how to use the stuff created but future works were based off the findings of those before them and we all benefit from that.
    - SpikeDad 8y ago
      Hubble has been around enough now that the next generation of stellar and space engineers are getting though university and into NASA and other space ventures. Kids need to see the previous generation has set extraordinary goals to inspire them to set their own goals. What could be more inspiring than a middle school student seeing Hubble launch, being inspired to study and then after college get to participate in what inspired them in the first place.
- deevolution 8y ago
  I think its reasonable to assume AI will be able to fix these kinds of problems in the future. They could run simulations of all the possible failures and solutions ahead of time or during operation eventually

pmorici 8y ago

You can achieve impressive results and still be "wasting money" if there were more cost efficient ways to achieve an equivalent result. I don't have an opinion on NASA but that could be the point of view those people are coming from.

Entalpi 8y ago
The problem with having non-science people run an organisation of science people is self explanatory. In the Netherlands they have outsourced the organisation and managment of health care to the doctors themselves (roughly speaking). It is often cited as one of the main reasons the Netherlands rank #1 in health care ratings over the years.
- seibelj 8y ago
  In the US, the American Medical Association is run by doctors and they artificially limit the supply new doctors by capping the number of medical schools. So sometimes having the fox guard the henhouse is not the best way to save money.
  - epmaybe 8y ago
    The AMA doesn't directly govern the number of medical schools in this country. That would be the LCME (Liaison Committee on Medical Education), which is sponsored by the AMA and American Association for Medical Colleges. It's also important to note that the number of medical schools isn't really artificially limited by the LCME, as they will accredit most any medical school that meets the accreditation standards. On top of that, medical students in the US have to undergo a residency before becoming fully licensed physicians. These residencies are accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), a separate organization. However, while the ACGME can accredit these programs, the majority of funding for training resident physicians comes from the federal government (department of health and human services, center for medicare and medicaid services), and is capped by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (modified in 1999 to accommodate the rural physician shortage). Today, this costs the federal government around $11 billion each year for all of the residents in the country. The real question, then, is who we can point to as the bottleneck for new doctors in this country. I found this article enlightening, but it may be behind a paywall: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28919221 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28919221
    - marcoperaza 8y ago
      The AMA controls enough seats on that board to prevent new schools/seats from being created. And the idea that an industry as profitable as medicine needs the taxpayer to fund its training is preposterous. This is just a deflection from the AMA's role.
      - mentalhealth 8y ago
        a profession as wealthy as medicine needs the taxpayer to fund its training is preposterous Most doctors already come from wealthy families (specifically, they have doctor parents) because in addition to the tuition of medical school, there are a variety of other expenses (board examination fees, the undergraduate requirement, interview expenses for both medical school and residency) that are difficult to fund without assistance. Also, compensation for physicians is not what you seem to think it is outside of subspecialized fields, and the expense of medical school (and the opportunity cost of residency) means that physician shortages in the general disciplines will only continue to get worse as medical students realize the only way they can pay back their loans is to subspecialize. Also, medical schools are primarily limited by number of faculty, and it's difficult to find doctors for med school faculty roles... because they're so poorly compensated in comparison to other opportunities. If you want more doctors, first provide incentives for doctors to teach, then provide funding for those who normally don't see medical school as an available opportunity, then incentivize people to go into general disciplines, then properly compensate residents so they're not throwing away ten years of potential income, then complain about how "doctors are overpaid but there's also a big shortage of them".
        marcoperaza 8y ago
        The rest of us have to compete in a free market for our skills. Why not doctors? I agree that the undergrad requirement is absurd. But it is also just another part of the system that increases entry-barriers and leads to all of these problems, but makes the field more lucrative for a big segment of those who get through it.
        8y ago
  - vkou 8y ago
    It doesn't matter how many medical schools or students exist, if there aren't enough residency positions for them. And the AMA does not control the number of residency positions.
    - FireForce 8y ago
      Podiatry in the US has this problem in a big way.
- glfharris 8y ago
  Something similar happened in the UK with GPs, and it's been one of the least popular health reforms ever to take place.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    (England, not UK) Not sure why you got downvoted. The Lansley Reforms - where Primary Care Trusts were abolished and replaced by Clinical Commissioning Groups which are run by GPs and are responsible for commissioning most of the NHS services (about 2/3 of the budget) - are known to have caused severe disruption to English NHS services.
- amatecha 8y ago
  Huh, coincidentally I just heard a couple hospitals in Netherlands are closing on short notice due to bankruptcy[0]... I'm sure there's a lot more backstory there, but it doesn't sound like #1-tier healthcare when that's happening. hehe ;) [0] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/10/slotervaart-hospital-stops-new-admissions-lelystad-hospital-may-have-buyer/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/10/slotervaart-hospital-s...
- isostatic 8y ago
  Netherlands, a high density country without the added costs of delivering healthcare to remote places, spends 30% more per head on healthcare than the UK. That has a far higher outcome on healthcare than taking doctors away from patients to run hospitals.
planteen 8y ago
Yep. I love space and science, but after working with NASA for a while, you see some of the problems. NIH syndrome is a huge problem, especially between GSFC and JPL. There are incompetent engineers who will have a well paying job at NASA for life. And then there the passionate, brilliant scientists and engineers the that dream and make it all work. A reduction in force of dead weight would go a long way but it will never happen.
- mushufasa 8y ago
  i think that's true generally of any organization. pareto -- 80% of work done by 20% of workers. there's also some other law about the work being done by the square root of the total workers.
  - planteen 8y ago
    I agree the 80/20 is true of most organizations. But producing nothing and keep your job for life as long as you show up for work is not common in private industry. On the private side, I see developers get let go all the time for inadequate work.
    - carolinaCarl 8y ago
      Hmmm, so 9 to get 3 workers, 16 for 4, 25 for 5, 100 gets 10, 10,000 gets 100... Yeah, I think that about fits. But on the other side of the table, having been forced to accepts seats at the kids table where competence is prohibited, there's this weird purgatory you're forced to cope with, like a Cassandra, being forced to nurse a Sick System. You want to take action, you certainly could intervene, take charge, and set things right, but any number of workplace taboos might be infringed upon or violated, in so doing. I've had to sit, and watch morons bumble about, stare at hamfisted facts of existence for years on end, look but not touch, and let perfectly reasonable things burn and go to waste because my hands were tied. Being competent enough to know better, skilled enough to intervene with success, and yet find myself in such a position where I am forbidden to do so is maddening. At some point a post-traumatic learned helplessness sets in, and you grow catatonic at the futility of struggling. If I could rewind my life, I'd love to locate the moment when I died inside. I might ballpark it back somewhere around... 2002? And yet reality still continues to unfold before these eyes. C'est la vie.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago

Wasting money criticism with regard to SLS is valid, I think, but is more of a political reality than a NASA issue.

howard941 8y ago

It's always a lead into cutting NASA spending so remind them that it's not a zero sum thing, cutting NASA's budget isn't going to cause lower taxes, higher spending on $THINGS_SHE_PREFERS, or a fatter personal wallet, it'll just be cutting NASA's budget.

marcoperaza 8y ago
Why wouldn't it mean those things? That's the essential nature of budgeting.
- clintonb 8y ago
  The money will probably be directed to another department.
  - marcoperaza 8y ago
    That's one of the options in the parent post. My point is that the budgeting process is in fact mostly zero-sum. It's only not totally zero-sum because of the use of debt (which considered by itself is zero-sum over the long run) and the possible effect of particular spending on the broader economy (which makes it not perfectly zero-sum as a repeated process)
- kingbirdy 8y ago
  Tax changes and budgets are passed separately
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

HenryBemis 8y ago

While people may think that this is wasting money, I see that this these teams gain unieque knowledge and experience on how to resolve issues on "machines far far away", and if we are ever to explore/move humans to a new planet, you want THOSE exact teams as 'helpdesk' that use anything and everything to bring things back to life and operation.

dmix 8y ago
This is assuming generational knowledge can be sufficently passed down to be useful in future missions. I'd assume this is quite a niche/specialized skillset they developed for this particular machine. The utility of the knowledge has a limited timeframe which may not justify education of the next generation of scientists. But regardless recording it would likely be helpful as most problems in engineerings seem to recur over time in different and new contexts.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  We build on the knowledge of those before us. The people who invented the original programming languages are mostly gone and most of us probably don't know how to use the stuff created but future works were based off the findings of those before them and we all benefit from that.
  - SpikeDad 8y ago
    Hubble has been around enough now that the next generation of stellar and space engineers are getting though university and into NASA and other space ventures. Kids need to see the previous generation has set extraordinary goals to inspire them to set their own goals. What could be more inspiring than a middle school student seeing Hubble launch, being inspired to study and then after college get to participate in what inspired them in the first place.
deevolution 8y ago
I think its reasonable to assume AI will be able to fix these kinds of problems in the future. They could run simulations of all the possible failures and solutions ahead of time or during operation eventually