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I'm reminded of the story of two economists walking down the street. One sees a dollar bill on the ground, and the other decides "that can't be right; if there

I'm reminded of the story of two economists walking down the street. One sees a dollar bill on the ground, and the other decides "that can't be right; if there was a dollar bill on the ground someone would've picked it up already". Not saying that a bunch of random folks on HN are seeing dollar bills in this analogy, but I've never quite been satisfied with the "if we're thinking of it then they probably already tried it" explanation :)

avmich 6y ago
> but I've never quite been satisfied with the "if we're thinking of it then they probably already tried it" explanation :) Same here :) . I'm still unhappy with their decision to use toxic propellants on Crew Dragon - I'm sure they could use something much more benign.
- simonh 6y ago
  To be fair they selected it quite some time ago now. There's a lot of very promising research now though, so hopefully they will have better options available down the line.
  - avmich 6y ago
    > To be fair they selected it quite some time ago now. They've had better fuel options from the very beginning. I guess they didn't have space cycles to additionally solve this issue; hope they'll come back to it.
nielsole 6y ago
"Question: Why only light 2 engines for landing? Any engine failure means loss of vehicle, so you have two single points of failure. Why not light all 3, do the flip, then pick the best two and turn off the other?" "We were too dumb" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1357256507847561217 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1357256507847561217
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Hm. Ok.