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I am really surprised at the negativity, it makes me want to stop coming here. How many here are actual engineers by profession? The default state of any novel

I am really surprised at the negativity, it makes me want to stop coming here. How many here are actual engineers by profession? The default state of any novel engineering project is “not working”. Rockets are very hard among engineering projects. Failure here would look like the rocket doing nothing visible, perhaps a little bit of smoke. Neutral is the rocket exploding. Success is the rocket moving at all. The rocket actually flying and then making it to the point of attempting first stage separation is a shockingly amazing level of success for the first test run. The media should be congratulating the team and optimistically looking forward to future tests.

mkaic 4y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. My engineering teacher in high school always used to tell us to fail fast and fail often and I think SpaceX has that down to a T — because failing in engineering isn't really failing, it's an integral part of the development process! Why spend countless billions trying to make sure everything goes exactly right on the first try when you could achieve an even higher final quality by just accepting that a few of your spaceships are going to explode, and that explosions are learning opportunities? In summary yeah, this launch was a massive success!
RetpolineDrama 4y ago
>How many here are actual engineers by profession? Almost none, because "software engineers" aren't _actual_ Engineers! (ducks for cover) But really, this was a huge step in the right direction on the cutting edge of propulsion science and spaceflight. SpaceX will iterate and in a few months/years everyone here will be telling you how "they always knew it would work" and "starship succeeding was obvious"
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Can confirm, am "Software Engineer" but from a family of Real Engineers™, what we do on a day to day basis only resembles engineering in the weakest sense. Both professions iterate on failure but Real Engineers actually spend a significant amount of time studying each failure and drawing strong conclusions based on collected data. We can do that (and sometimes do) but usually just hack it and re-run the tests until it works, can't really do that with a physical test though unless you have reduced your problem down to a small test article (something programmers should always do because it's cheap and easy). Our field is young and lacks the rigorousness of Real Engineering. We probably don't want to adopt all of it because our cost and risk profiles are hugely different but there is a lot to learn from Real Engineers about how to iterate better and get better bang for our buck out of our failures.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Agreed, I think us software people are too used to the 'safety' and conveniences of the abstract world of software. Besides the comparatively smaller amount of people working on software for safety critical stuff, most of us are too used to just being able to quickly hack together fixes, where for safety critical stuff you do have to work with similar rigor as 'real' engineering and failures result in similar reviews of processes leading up to them. For example, after Starliner's first test flight's software debacle, NASA ordered a full safety review of all of Boeing's software practices, for all of their projects - planes and spacecraft. Most of us don't have to deal with that amount of rigor over buggy code.
- kanbara 4y ago
  it’s great about cutting edge tech and spaceflight, but could do without the needless callout. i and many engineers i know build, support, and run life-critical systems, emergency systems, flight software, and more. software absolutely needs more discipline but to be so derisive isn’t ideal.
trafficante 4y ago
Politics ruins everything. You can not be a fan of Musk the person and still appreciate stuff like this.
jansan 4y ago
I disagree (and I actually do have a degree in mechanical engineering). Success and failure is not binary. There is always an expectation range. If your result is at the bottom of that range, it is more of a failure, if it is at the upper end it is more of a success. Usually, in an iterative development process your result will be within the range, and in this case it is, too. The minimum goal was to get the ship off the pad and not having it explode near it. The maximum goal was to achieve separation of stage 1 and reaching orbit. Discussing why the maximum goal was not reached has nothing to do with negativity, but is the natural thinking of an egineer who mainly tries to solve problems. So we naturally think about the ignition failure of some of the engines. Was is caused by the (obviously larger than expected) damage of the launch pad? Or is there a problem with reliability of the engines? Also, will the damage of the launch pad cause a delay for the next start? How can this be improved? These are all things that we are trying to find answers for fro our armchairs.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> I am really surprised at the negativity I would wager that a good part of that is just a reaction to the over-the-top "massive success!" posts.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  He (capital H) said it had a 50% chance of blowing up on the launchpad. It blew up ~on~ shortly after leaving the launchpad. Media says "it blew up ~on~ shortly after leaving the launchpad". 1,000 commentators arrive on HN to say "I am disturbed by the media/public/fellow HNers lack of faith / lies / mischaracterisations / ignorance of hard engineering / etc." What's sad is that, as the sun rises on the dawn of one of history's greatest men's greatest successes, it's completely overshadowed by His victimhood. And to such an extent that His success can scarcely be commented upon without also pointing out His victimhood. What a world we live in.
chuddington 4y ago
[dead]
scaramanga 4y ago
The irony is, I can hardly find the posts you are talking about since the comments section is flooded with posts lamenting on the unfair treatment of Musk, and those are the top voted posts. So I mean, if you want to argue that HN doesn't have enough "weird nerds crawling out of the woordwork for any opportunity to cheerlead their heroo Musk" it's a point that appears to be refuting itself.

mkaic 4y ago

I wholeheartedly agree. My engineering teacher in high school always used to tell us to fail fast and fail often and I think SpaceX has that down to a T — because failing in engineering isn't really failing, it's an integral part of the development process! Why spend countless billions trying to make sure everything goes exactly right on the first try when you could achieve an even higher final quality by just accepting that a few of your spaceships are going to explode, and that explosions are learning opportunities? In summary yeah, this launch was a massive success!

RetpolineDrama 4y ago

>How many here are actual engineers by profession? Almost none, because "software engineers" aren't _actual_ Engineers! (ducks for cover) But really, this was a huge step in the right direction on the cutting edge of propulsion science and spaceflight. SpaceX will iterate and in a few months/years everyone here will be telling you how "they always knew it would work" and "starship succeeding was obvious"

jpgvm 4y ago
Can confirm, am "Software Engineer" but from a family of Real Engineers™, what we do on a day to day basis only resembles engineering in the weakest sense. Both professions iterate on failure but Real Engineers actually spend a significant amount of time studying each failure and drawing strong conclusions based on collected data. We can do that (and sometimes do) but usually just hack it and re-run the tests until it works, can't really do that with a physical test though unless you have reduced your problem down to a small test article (something programmers should always do because it's cheap and easy). Our field is young and lacks the rigorousness of Real Engineering. We probably don't want to adopt all of it because our cost and risk profiles are hugely different but there is a lot to learn from Real Engineers about how to iterate better and get better bang for our buck out of our failures.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Agreed, I think us software people are too used to the 'safety' and conveniences of the abstract world of software. Besides the comparatively smaller amount of people working on software for safety critical stuff, most of us are too used to just being able to quickly hack together fixes, where for safety critical stuff you do have to work with similar rigor as 'real' engineering and failures result in similar reviews of processes leading up to them. For example, after Starliner's first test flight's software debacle, NASA ordered a full safety review of all of Boeing's software practices, for all of their projects - planes and spacecraft. Most of us don't have to deal with that amount of rigor over buggy code.
kanbara 4y ago
it’s great about cutting edge tech and spaceflight, but could do without the needless callout. i and many engineers i know build, support, and run life-critical systems, emergency systems, flight software, and more. software absolutely needs more discipline but to be so derisive isn’t ideal.

trafficante 4y ago

Politics ruins everything. You can not be a fan of Musk the person and still appreciate stuff like this.

jansan 4y ago

I disagree (and I actually do have a degree in mechanical engineering). Success and failure is not binary. There is always an expectation range. If your result is at the bottom of that range, it is more of a failure, if it is at the upper end it is more of a success. Usually, in an iterative development process your result will be within the range, and in this case it is, too. The minimum goal was to get the ship off the pad and not having it explode near it. The maximum goal was to achieve separation of stage 1 and reaching orbit. Discussing why the maximum goal was not reached has nothing to do with negativity, but is the natural thinking of an egineer who mainly tries to solve problems. So we naturally think about the ignition failure of some of the engines. Was is caused by the (obviously larger than expected) damage of the launch pad? Or is there a problem with reliability of the engines? Also, will the damage of the launch pad cause a delay for the next start? How can this be improved? These are all things that we are trying to find answers for fro our armchairs.

rootusrootus 4y ago

> I am really surprised at the negativity I would wager that a good part of that is just a reaction to the over-the-top "massive success!" posts.

scaramanga 4y ago
He (capital H) said it had a 50% chance of blowing up on the launchpad. It blew up ~on~ shortly after leaving the launchpad. Media says "it blew up ~on~ shortly after leaving the launchpad". 1,000 commentators arrive on HN to say "I am disturbed by the media/public/fellow HNers lack of faith / lies / mischaracterisations / ignorance of hard engineering / etc." What's sad is that, as the sun rises on the dawn of one of history's greatest men's greatest successes, it's completely overshadowed by His victimhood. And to such an extent that His success can scarcely be commented upon without also pointing out His victimhood. What a world we live in.

chuddington 4y ago

[dead]

scaramanga 4y ago

The irony is, I can hardly find the posts you are talking about since the comments section is flooded with posts lamenting on the unfair treatment of Musk, and those are the top voted posts. So I mean, if you want to argue that HN doesn't have enough "weird nerds crawling out of the woordwork for any opportunity to cheerlead their heroo Musk" it's a point that appears to be refuting itself.