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It’s more than PR: it’s recognizing that there is a massively greater cost to failure because fixing even a small problem is impossible. When you’re designing s

by acdha 3y ago

It’s more than PR: it’s recognizing that there is a massively greater cost to failure because fixing even a small problem is impossible. When you’re designing something with sufficient robustness to hit that minimum success requirement, it’s almost certain that you’ll be able to exceed it by a large margin. NASA is willing to pay more to avoid failures, and given their funding model that’s almost certainly the right call. Think about it like having to get across town after work for some reason. If it’s your buddy’s party and it’ll run all night, you might take the bus or call an Uber but it’s no big deal if you’re a few minutes late. If it’s your party, you might pay to park your car nearby or have a ride waiting for you. If it’s the meeting where you’re selling your company or announcing your presidential campaign, you might have a helicopter waiting on the roof. NASA’s stuff is all like that last case because the base costs are so high - shipping anything to another planet and waiting years to do it again, if you are given the chance, costs so much more that it makes sense to pay extra to build everything with deep safety margins just so you can say the odds of failure are comfortably low.

aurareturn 3y ago
It’s underpromising and over delivering. They knew internally that it could fly 16x more. They just didn’t want to say it in a statement publicly.
- rvnx 3y ago
  It also means costs and estimates are incorrect and a potential waste of public resources
  - acdha 3y ago
    Again, nothing is incorrect here: a margin is only waste if you’re a Walmart MBA obsessed with lowering costs. If the DOT builds a bridge with a 70 ton rating and it doesn’t collapse when an 80 ton truck drives over it, that’s not waste but rather the engineers prudently including a safety margin in each component to protect against minor defects or inconsistencies meaning that one component being slightly under spec causes the entire system to fail. NASA and aerospace as a field traditionally have a bias towards that kind of overlapping safety margins because the kinds of failures they get destroy the entire air/space-craft. If some MBA at GE cost-optimizes your dishwasher, they’re better off trimming “waste” until it dies the day after the warranty expires as long as it doesn’t fail in a way which causes you never to buy their brand again. NASA faces far more catastrophic failures and because their systems are all custom with economy of scale for large product runs and their missions by necessity have a hefty base cost so it doesn’t make sense to save $50k on rover parts when you are paying $500M to ship it to Mars.
- coryrc 3y ago
  They knew it would last exactly 80 flights? Wow, they are good.
- glenstein 3y ago
  Actively promising outcomes that push equipment to the brink of failure would be malpractice and the planners would deservedly be fired. These are novel and truly unprecedented space missions. There may yet be a future in which we can confidently predict outcomes at scale, but we are not there yet. Being conservative in assumptions is a virtue, and hopefully is emulated in every future mission.
bnralt 3y ago
The PR is how they're reporting it. "We want an minimum of 20, but it could make upwards of 200 flights before giving out" isn't as punch as they want. They want to say, "We only are planning on 5 flight. WOW, 15 flights?! Wait wait wait...NOW IT'S UP TO 40 FLIGHTS?!?!" (And if your target is at least 20 but you say it's 5, you can miss your target and still claim you succeeded.) Look at the reporting from NASA. For instance[1]: > “Less than a year ago we didn’t even know if powered, controlled flight of an aircraft at Mars was possible,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Now, we are looking forward to Ingenuity’s involvement in Perseverance’s second science campaign. Such a transformation of mindset in such a short period is simply amazing, and one of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration.” ** > “This upcoming flight will be my 22nd entry in our logbook,” said Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip of JPL. “I remember thinking when this all started, we’d be lucky to have three entries and immensely fortunate to get five. Now, at the rate we’re going, I’m going to need a second book.” "One of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration"? Or here[2]: > NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter completed 71 flights since first taking to the skies above the Red Planet on April 19, 2021, far exceeding its originally planned technology demonstration of up to five flights. Of course, this makes it to the Wiki article[3]: > The helicopter's performance and resilience in the harsh Martian environment have greatly exceeded expectations. The aircraft surpassed its required altitude and flight duration specifications soon after beginning operations on Mars. This allowed Ingenuity to perform far more flights than were initially expected of the aircraft. Or look at how XKCD has a comic about "Wow, I can't believe this rover exceeded our expectations by so much!" for both Spirit[4] and Opportunity[5]. At this point, it's hard to not see this framing as NASA spin, one that people keep falling for over and over again. [1] https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9146/nasa-extends-ingenuity-helicopter-mission/ https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9146/nasa-extends-ingenuity-helic... [2] https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Helicopter-Highlights https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Helicopter-High... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) [4] https://xkcd.com/695/ https://xkcd.com/695/ [5] https://xkcd.com/1504/ https://xkcd.com/1504/
- glenstein 3y ago
  The XKCD comics do not at all suggest that we are supposed to treat the unexpected longevity of the missions as spin from NASA. One is a playfully satirical exaggeration of capabilities. To the extent it offers a commentary, is fully crediting a rover for it's toughness and longevity. The other approaches the longevity from a perspective of sentimental affection for an innocent rover who grows increasingly lonely as it's mission grows longer and longer. It does not imply prior knowledge or PR spin on the past of NASA.

by acdha 3y ago

aurareturn 3y ago

It’s underpromising and over delivering. They knew internally that it could fly 16x more. They just didn’t want to say it in a statement publicly.

rvnx 3y ago
It also means costs and estimates are incorrect and a potential waste of public resources
- acdha 3y ago
  Again, nothing is incorrect here: a margin is only waste if you’re a Walmart MBA obsessed with lowering costs. If the DOT builds a bridge with a 70 ton rating and it doesn’t collapse when an 80 ton truck drives over it, that’s not waste but rather the engineers prudently including a safety margin in each component to protect against minor defects or inconsistencies meaning that one component being slightly under spec causes the entire system to fail. NASA and aerospace as a field traditionally have a bias towards that kind of overlapping safety margins because the kinds of failures they get destroy the entire air/space-craft. If some MBA at GE cost-optimizes your dishwasher, they’re better off trimming “waste” until it dies the day after the warranty expires as long as it doesn’t fail in a way which causes you never to buy their brand again. NASA faces far more catastrophic failures and because their systems are all custom with economy of scale for large product runs and their missions by necessity have a hefty base cost so it doesn’t make sense to save $50k on rover parts when you are paying $500M to ship it to Mars.
coryrc 3y ago
They knew it would last exactly 80 flights? Wow, they are good.
glenstein 3y ago
Actively promising outcomes that push equipment to the brink of failure would be malpractice and the planners would deservedly be fired. These are novel and truly unprecedented space missions. There may yet be a future in which we can confidently predict outcomes at scale, but we are not there yet. Being conservative in assumptions is a virtue, and hopefully is emulated in every future mission.

bnralt 3y ago

The PR is how they're reporting it. "We want an minimum of 20, but it could make upwards of 200 flights before giving out" isn't as punch as they want. They want to say, "We only are planning on 5 flight. WOW, 15 flights?! Wait wait wait...NOW IT'S UP TO 40 FLIGHTS?!?!" (And if your target is at least 20 but you say it's 5, you can miss your target and still claim you succeeded.) Look at the reporting from NASA. For instance[1]: > “Less than a year ago we didn’t even know if powered, controlled flight of an aircraft at Mars was possible,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Now, we are looking forward to Ingenuity’s involvement in Perseverance’s second science campaign. Such a transformation of mindset in such a short period is simply amazing, and one of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration.” ** > “This upcoming flight will be my 22nd entry in our logbook,” said Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip of JPL. “I remember thinking when this all started, we’d be lucky to have three entries and immensely fortunate to get five. Now, at the rate we’re going, I’m going to need a second book.” "One of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration"? Or here[2]: > NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter completed 71 flights since first taking to the skies above the Red Planet on April 19, 2021, far exceeding its originally planned technology demonstration of up to five flights. Of course, this makes it to the Wiki article[3]: > The helicopter's performance and resilience in the harsh Martian environment have greatly exceeded expectations. The aircraft surpassed its required altitude and flight duration specifications soon after beginning operations on Mars. This allowed Ingenuity to perform far more flights than were initially expected of the aircraft. Or look at how XKCD has a comic about "Wow, I can't believe this rover exceeded our expectations by so much!" for both Spirit[4] and Opportunity[5]. At this point, it's hard to not see this framing as NASA spin, one that people keep falling for over and over again. [1] https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9146/nasa-extends-ingenuity-helicopter-mission/ https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9146/nasa-extends-ingenuity-helic... [2] https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Helicopter-Highlights https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Helicopter-High... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) [4] https://xkcd.com/695/ https://xkcd.com/695/ [5] https://xkcd.com/1504/ https://xkcd.com/1504/

glenstein 3y ago
The XKCD comics do not at all suggest that we are supposed to treat the unexpected longevity of the missions as spin from NASA. One is a playfully satirical exaggeration of capabilities. To the extent it offers a commentary, is fully crediting a rover for it's toughness and longevity. The other approaches the longevity from a perspective of sentimental affection for an innocent rover who grows increasingly lonely as it's mission grows longer and longer. It does not imply prior knowledge or PR spin on the past of NASA.