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> control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets My stepfather worked as a programmer on the Apollo program, and the thing he a
by gcanyon 2y ago
> control system also has to compensate for the fuel moving inside their rockets
My stepfather worked as a programmer on the Apollo program, and the thing he always talked about as his biggest accomplishment was working on the "slosh problem" -- so yeah, props to the SpaceX team for managing that landing. And props to my stepdad for managing it on hardware that was... a billion times less capable? :-)
- kbmr 2y agoDid he get a chance to see any of the recent SpaceX accomplishments?
- gcanyon 2y agoNope, died fifteen years ago.
- falconertc 2y agoI might be misremembering but I think slosh was the failure cause for one of the three failed Falcon 1 flights. It was number 11 out of a pre-flight list of top 10 most likely failure scenarios. Definitely a difficult problem.