Moments like this remind me exactly why the hairs on my arms stand up every time I see the NASA logo. It’s not just science, it’s the amazing inspiring human achievement. Incredible work, NASA team.
It's decades of human curiosity, persistence, and creativity all packed into one little spacecraft still whispering to us from the edge of the solar system
I miss that spirit of curiosity, so much has become cultural mudslinging and navel gazing, plus money in the hands of those who don’t have the capacity to do any good with it. Bill Gates recently announcing he will give everything away should be the norm, not the exception in terms of spirit.
I think the problem is that when you take things at face value, your naivety eventually gets exploited, and you learn to always be on guard.
The problem is that exploitation of anyone and everyone you can has been normalized and glorified in our culture.
We could just all agree that exploitation of others is wrong and unacceptable and severely punish those that try to exploit vulnerable people. But no, defauding Granny for her entire retirement is acceptable behavior now.
It's not just "acceptable behavior", it is literally taught as the thing to strive for in business programs and obsessed over in weekly meetings and the primary way to get on magazine covers.
NASA is a great PR firm. In my opinion, the real heroes are CalTech-JPL, Arizona State, and the other institutions that NASA slaps their logo on to.
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."
> 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”.
Things that slightly move, make all things better. As in propelling the physics of the situation (rattle the solar panel) and then reevaluate, recover.
I 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_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.
Two space shuttles exploded, killing everyone on board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...
They 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.
Good point, let's just shut it down, nobody should do anything
That's not my point. The learned painful lessons and their success rate is high.
Wasn’t that more the point of the person you replied with counterexamples to?
Let’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”.
Yeah 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.
I 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.
And a bunch of other missions worked great. Learn from failures, progress.
Yeah it's not "bonkers" or "insane". They learned the hard way. Painful lessons.
The 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.
My children are probably going to have a similar reaction to the SpaceX logo. I grew up watching shuttle launches, my dad grew up watching the moon landings, and now my children are seeing those boundaries pushed even more. I can’t say how cool it was to watch the tower catch the SpaceX rocket. My children were awed.
They were so thrilled when he launched a car into space with a manakin playing music. Like, who does that?? But it is simply inspiring to children. The next generation of engineers are going to see him as a hero.
I think Musk never lost his boyish wonder at the universe. Not even extreme wealth could take it away from him. I’m very thankful to have him as a role model for my children. Does he do things I disagree with? Yes. But I’m not going to destroy their hero because he is having a very positive, enabling influence on them.
It is so fulfilling to have my child say “Daddy can I show you my plans for building a train?” and hear them connect that curiosity and wonder with “like Elon Musk’s rockets, daddy.”
another hair raiser is that Voyager is going to be one light day out soon which is solidly into sci fi territory, but real