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It's frankly bonkers how many insane success-at-long-odds stories NASA has and how few "we made a stupid mistake and everything exploded" stories NASA has. For
by CobrastanJorji 1y ago
It's frankly bonkers how many insane success-at-long-odds stories NASA has and how few "we made a stupid mistake and everything exploded" stories NASA has.
For every Climate Orbiter "we made an oopsie converting metric to imperial" story, there are three "we figured out how to get the crew of Apollo 13 to fit a square peg into a round hole and they can breath now" miracles.
I mean, sure, there's Apollo 1's "we put people and a bunch of wires in a pressurized can of pure oxygen", but there's also the Perseverance Rover's "we made a crane that holds itself aloft with rockets and lowers a one ton rover gently to the ground on a tether."
- voidspark 1y agoTwo space shuttles exploded, killing everyone on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...
- cr125rider 1y agoAnd a bunch of other missions worked great. Learn from failures, progress.
- voidspark 1y agoYeah it's not "bonkers" or "insane". They learned the hard way. Painful lessons.
- jaredhansen 1y agoGood point, let's just shut it down, nobody should do anything
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- voidspark 1y agoThat's not my point. The learned painful lessons and their success rate is high.
- wqaatwt 1y agoDidn’t they just stop crewed space flights for (almost)decades instead?
- j4coh 1y agoWasn’t that more the point of the person you replied with counterexamples to?
- thom 1y agoLet’s assume good faith all round. One poster rightly highlights the overwhelmingly positive track record. Another points out the negatives went a little beyond an “oopsie”.
- voidspark 1y agoYeah just being respectful to those 14 astronauts who died. They are worth mentioning. Nasa had major setbacks - not an "oopsie". Didn't mean to hijack the thread. Well done Voyager team.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 1y agoI think this is an unfair characterization of the comment. Nobody is dismissing the shuttle crews. The “oopsie” was in reference to the Mars Climate Orbiter mishap that did not involve loss of human life.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoThey did, yes. And there are fascinating failure stories for each one. But my point is that there were more miraculous successes than miraculous failures. Heck, in my opinion, given that the Space Shuttle flew in atmosphere like a brick, and given that there was no possible way to get a second shot at the landing strip, the fact that they landed successfully every time (except for Columbia, of course) is amazing. The Apollo flights in particular were interesting. For example, in the case of Apollo 14, when Houston was literally reading new machine code to the astronauts over radio who were punching in POKE instructions by hand to change the code.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 1y ago> except for Columbia, of course And Challenger.
- HenryBemis 1y agoThe cost of doing things (I remember watching the Challenger live on TV at the time). Every now and then we watch/read in the news that # of workers died while building that bridge/road/building/etc. We don't stop making bridges/roads/buildings. We just make it safer. Will people continue dying unnecessary/unnatural deaths? Unfortunately, yes. Let's minimise this.
- mulmen 1y agoI completely agree with you. NASA consistently does amazing things. Unfortunately I just can’t leave this whole “Imperial vs Metric” thing alone so here comes a tangent. > "we made an oopsie converting metric to imperial" US Customary*. The United States has never used the Imperial system. It didn’t even exist at the time of the revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_a... Also since I’m already being pedantic Mars Climate Orbiter was not lost to a conversion error. US Customary units were provided by Lockheed software to a NASA system that expected SI units. It would not have been lost if either system was used consistently.
- randmeerkat 1y ago> It's frankly bonkers how many insane success-at-long-odds stories NASA has and how few "we made a stupid mistake and everything exploded" stories NASA has. That’s what happens when engineers are allowed to engineer things, rather than being forced to “move fast and break things”.
- ashoeafoot 1y agoThings that slightly move, make all things better. As in propelling the physics of the situation (rattle the solar panel) and then reevaluate, recover.