4 ms·

That's a much friendlier puff piece that some others: "It also emerged that three senior Virgin Galactic executives - the vice-president in charge of propulsio

• pulkitpulkit 12y ago
  Think we have to differentiate between using these as signals of bad practice or process and using them as scapegoats or excuses in hindsight. Once something goes wrong, it's really easy to create a case for guilt by using many small, unrelated, eventually inconsequential pieces of evidence - often greater than the sum of the parts and I feel this can be really unfair.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • coldtea 12y ago
    There are far too many signals of bad practice, arrogance and refusal to cooperate to just leave them alone. Of course if there was success people wouldn't be looking into this (as much), but that's par for the course. When bad practices are involved, you either (a) succeed so all is OK, or (b) face the consequences when you fail. The third option, (c) have bad practices and be left alone after you fail is not really productive or helpful for the industry.
    • quonn 12y ago
      The fourth option, (d) there were no bad practices is also possible. The fact that the did not get their design reviewed may be normal in that industry. The safety issues in 2007 may well have been addressed and in any case, it's not clear they are related to the current issue. The fact that some important employees have recently quit is suspect, I agree. But we don't know why they have quit, do we? Maybe the were not happy with their salary or there were other personal reasons. This is worth investigating, though. EDIT: I just read the article and there seem to be plenty of other warning signs.
  • krisoft 12y ago
    It really rubs me the wrong way that you seemingly refer to the previous test related death of 3 people as a "small" incident. I'm sure that's not what you intended to write. Maybe what you say is that it's unrelated, therefore "has a small relevance" now. Even then I would argue that evidence of blatant disregard of safety protocols in the past is a relevant piece of the puzzle. But declaring it a small incident? I would not.
    • pulkitpulkit 12y ago
      Apologies: don't mean to imply that deaths are a "small incident" or that they can be forgiven. My point is not about whether they are or aren't guilty of malpractice or poor protocols, but that a thorough investigation should be used to determine that, not stringing together a series of events that make it easy for any passive reader to discredit the organisation. tl, dr: we shouldn't pass judgement based on this article.
• lutorm 12y ago
  Which aerospace companies have their designs peer reviewed?
  • hga 12y ago
    I would hope that if you're developing a brand new rocket engine design to carry people, you'd welcome offers of peer review and do everything else you can reasonably do to help make it safe (like avoiding PR driven deadline pressure). In the history of manned space flight, lots of unmanned experience was made before crossing that threshold.
    • lutorm 12y ago
      As part of the CCtCaP (or whatever the acronym is) program, SpaceX and Boeing is giving NASA access to all the details for review. This seems obvious, since they are the customer. But to think that SpaceX and Boeing would reveal their individual trade secrets to each other seems unrealistic.
      • hga 12y ago
        That's why I qualified it so much, "brand new" + "to carry people". If they were only trying one of these I'd be a lot more forgiving.