I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA... (But I said it anyway) - Smarter Every Day 293

Do yourself a favor and look up moon landing 4k on youtube. There’s some amazing immersive stuff now: link There’s also a few amazing first person videos from space walks on the ISS: link The footage from Artemis is gonna be incredible. Also highly recommend this “are we going?” Talk on engineering issues in Artemis: ▶ this video Which is where I learned about this report from NASA called “What Made Apollo a Success”: link

This thinking, or questioning, is needed everywhere. There is so much security paranoia, that it affects any one, just trying to do something. From setting up a wifi router, to seeing up an email account. Passwords must be used. Walt for 2FA before proceeding. Change your password to include upper lower Roman numerals and at least 5 different fonts... Why? Instead of saying up a website in 15 minutes, there is an hour of preparing to set up a webpage. If I live in the country side, have no neighbors for 50 miles, I must secure my router going to my starlink. Why? Added complexity and regulations, seem to grow around us just as the beurocracies; schools, governments, companies - maybe our lives are just all dependent on the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Higher disorder? I recommend this amazing presentation, questioning the basics, and attitude in teamwork, of the Artemis project: ▶ this video

I recommend you to watch it, it's really good. But as I mentioned in another comment, here is a relatively good AI summary: ▶ this video Click on see more, to see 5 minute wise summaries. (Not affiliated with this site, I just use it from time to time)

I am not affiliated, but as a fan… Smarter Every Day did a walkthrough with an actual Apollo engineer on the rocket and it was absolutely amazing. Definitely worth watching if you want to understand what this engineering program was up against — it’s kind of insane what they were doing with 1960s tech. link Same guy also have one of the bravest talks I’ve seen in a while about the lessons of the Apollo program for Artemis, including some criticisms that I thought were deeply valid. Much to learn about Apollo from this talk as well. ▶ this video Thus very document is the foundation of that talk and I’m sure why this is ending up on hacker news, so credit where credit is due please.

That's a fun read. Also the first time I've heard of the company Aerojet Rocketdyne. Did they come up with that one while playing beer pong? Smarter Every Day gave a talk directly to NASA that raises some of the same issues. It's a good one. ▶ this video

After watching this video i have serious doubts about the whole moon program ▶ this video Reminds me a little of the SLS which makes no sense at all other than preserving some jobs. The Space Shuttle was also ruined by military requirements that never materialized.

Destin (from Smarter Every Day Youtube channel fame) has concerns about the next NASA mission to the moon (named Artemis): ▶ this video Read the comments (especially from NASA engineers). It's pretty interesting that sometimes it takes courageous engineers to break the spell that poor managers can have on an organization.

Destin from Smarter Every Day gave a talk that addresses a lot of these issues that I found pretty interesting too. ▶ this video

I came across this document in a talk Destin Sandlin gave to the American Astronautical Society [1]. The talk compares the architecture and process of the Apollo mission with the modern Artemis mission, and is very critical of the latter. I think both hold some great lessons, even for software engineers working on non-critical systems. [1] ▶ this video

I searched the transcript for "we're going, right?" and stopped it at the first section (here I rewound a little for you) ▶ this video I'll address this to the third parties in the room who are not me or you: Click through and listen and if you are convinced it's a question you can go with Buttons840. If you're not convinced it's a question you can go with me. But it'll take you 10 seconds max. Worth it for you to see it yourself. No need to let anyone convince you.

This reads like a “comment” version of Destin’s speech to a NASA group a few years ago [0]. The loss of institutional knowledge and fundamentals philosophical differences seem like they’ll need to be overcome. [0] ▶ this video

related: Destin from SmarterEveryDay called out some other issues related to the Artemis mission: ▶ this video Curious if this is related to the issues that they're now experiencing.