8 ms·

>unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable Isn't that exactly what both Musk and Professor Sadoway are su

>unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable Isn't that exactly what both Musk and Professor Sadoway are suggesting in the linked article?

hnwh 14y ago
Sadoway is one of the world's leading geniuses in this field.
- robomartin 14y ago
  Mostly in jest: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929. "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project. I did come across an interesting letter that is not necessarily relevant to this discussion but might be worth reading: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
  - hnwh 14y ago
    Well, here he's not saying that its safe, and never going to have problems.. He's saying its a bad design.. which I think he's competent enough to recognize the physics of
  - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
    Bill Gates never said that.
  - tzs 14y ago
    There is no evidence for the Gates alleged quote. Same for the Watson alleged quote. As far as Smith and FedEx goes, according to Smith himself he wrote one paper that touched on the idea while an undergraduate. He doesn't remember what his grade was. The "C" notion came about, he says, because a reported asked him what his grade was and he said "I don’t know, probably made my usual C". [1] [1] http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/interview-with-fedex-founder-fred-smith-yale-university/ http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/inter...
  - fjarlq 14y ago
    The Ken Olsen quote is taken way out of context. He was thoroughly aware of personal computers in 1977. He was referring to behemoth home automation systems: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp The quote attributed to Lord Kelvin is a significant paraphrasing of a letter he wrote in 1896: http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell
    - notahacker 14y ago
      In 1902 Kelvin was more blunt about (i) balloons being more promising than the idea of aeroplanes and (ii) neither of them having any viable future http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_wireless.html http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
robomartin 14y ago
I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data. You have to remember that the FAA had to approve these subsystems as well. I don't have any first-hand experience on just how detailed (or not) this certification process might be. Once again, how could anyone say anything at all without looking at data. To make a really dumb analogy, it's like claiming to know what happened with a race horse that died clear across the country because you know race horses. Wouldn't you first have to see the veterinarian's records on that horse as well as such things as dietary and other data before really being able to say anything at all. In other words, I am not detracting from the expert status some of these folks enjoy. Not at all. I think it is precisely because they might be domain experts at some level that they should behave with decorum and refrain from making comments without a full stack of the necessary data.
- wololo 14y ago
  And the FAA seems pretty conservative? "Finally, the FAA changes so slowly that if this were even all possible, the adoption and certification would all take at least 50 years." --Eric Schmidt, http://longbets.org/4/ http://longbets.org/4/
  - robomartin 14y ago
    Well, either we believe that government is the solution to all our problems or we don't. Right? (In jest)
  - notahacker 14y ago
    I'm not sure that erring on the side of caution is a bad thing when it comes to commercial jets, especially when "erring on the side of caution" means requiring an airline carrying large numbers of paying passengers needing to pay two qualified pilots to sit in a cockpit just in case things go wrong. I suspect most people underestimate just how many different separate electronic systems, usually developed and manufactured by independent specialists, are involved in controlling an aircraft (not to mention the new ones that would need to be developed for when things go wrong: there's a big difference between an autopilot landing an an instrument landing system and a pilot gliding his plane to a perfect stop on the Hudson River.) Also worth pointing out that the CEO of Google (yes...I know his company tests driverless cars) isn't really more of an expert on the FAA certification process than the average person here. I think he's on the right side of the bet, but I'd also note that the avionics which assist the pilot in controlling the plane and monitoring what's going on have changed more in the last 50 years than any other aspect of commercial aircraft. Commercial considerations are a bigger factor than certification in new aircraft programme inertia: airlines' economies of scale hugely favour existing models, and expensive radical innovation in aircraft programmes can often be improved upon at lower research cost by rivals.

>unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable Isn't that exactly what both Musk and Professor Sadoway are suggesting in the linked article?

hnwh 14y ago

Sadoway is one of the world's leading geniuses in this field.

robomartin 14y ago
Mostly in jest: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." -- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929. "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". -- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project. I did come across an interesting letter that is not necessarily relevant to this discussion but might be worth reading: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
- hnwh 14y ago
  Well, here he's not saying that its safe, and never going to have problems.. He's saying its a bad design.. which I think he's competent enough to recognize the physics of
- Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
  Bill Gates never said that.
- tzs 14y ago
  There is no evidence for the Gates alleged quote. Same for the Watson alleged quote. As far as Smith and FedEx goes, according to Smith himself he wrote one paper that touched on the idea while an undergraduate. He doesn't remember what his grade was. The "C" notion came about, he says, because a reported asked him what his grade was and he said "I don’t know, probably made my usual C". [1] [1] http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/interview-with-fedex-founder-fred-smith-yale-university/ http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/inter...
- fjarlq 14y ago
  The Ken Olsen quote is taken way out of context. He was thoroughly aware of personal computers in 1977. He was referring to behemoth home automation systems: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp The quote attributed to Lord Kelvin is a significant paraphrasing of a letter he wrote in 1896: http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/letters.html#baden-powell
  - notahacker 14y ago
    In 1902 Kelvin was more blunt about (i) balloons being more promising than the idea of aeroplanes and (ii) neither of them having any viable future http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_wireless.html http://zapatopi.net/kelvin/papers/interview_aeronautics_and_...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

robomartin 14y ago

I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data. You have to remember that the FAA had to approve these subsystems as well. I don't have any first-hand experience on just how detailed (or not) this certification process might be. Once again, how could anyone say anything at all without looking at data. To make a really dumb analogy, it's like claiming to know what happened with a race horse that died clear across the country because you know race horses. Wouldn't you first have to see the veterinarian's records on that horse as well as such things as dietary and other data before really being able to say anything at all. In other words, I am not detracting from the expert status some of these folks enjoy. Not at all. I think it is precisely because they might be domain experts at some level that they should behave with decorum and refrain from making comments without a full stack of the necessary data.

wololo 14y ago
And the FAA seems pretty conservative? "Finally, the FAA changes so slowly that if this were even all possible, the adoption and certification would all take at least 50 years." --Eric Schmidt, http://longbets.org/4/ http://longbets.org/4/
- robomartin 14y ago
  Well, either we believe that government is the solution to all our problems or we don't. Right? (In jest)
- notahacker 14y ago
  I'm not sure that erring on the side of caution is a bad thing when it comes to commercial jets, especially when "erring on the side of caution" means requiring an airline carrying large numbers of paying passengers needing to pay two qualified pilots to sit in a cockpit just in case things go wrong. I suspect most people underestimate just how many different separate electronic systems, usually developed and manufactured by independent specialists, are involved in controlling an aircraft (not to mention the new ones that would need to be developed for when things go wrong: there's a big difference between an autopilot landing an an instrument landing system and a pilot gliding his plane to a perfect stop on the Hudson River.) Also worth pointing out that the CEO of Google (yes...I know his company tests driverless cars) isn't really more of an expert on the FAA certification process than the average person here. I think he's on the right side of the bet, but I'd also note that the avionics which assist the pilot in controlling the plane and monitoring what's going on have changed more in the last 50 years than any other aspect of commercial aircraft. Commercial considerations are a bigger factor than certification in new aircraft programme inertia: airlines' economies of scale hugely favour existing models, and expensive radical innovation in aircraft programmes can often be improved upon at lower research cost by rivals.