“Failure is not an option.”

“Failure is acceptable, sometimes.”

One of these two philosophies got us to the Moon. They are not the same.

How do you guys get around the paywall? Am I being unreasonable for not wanting to have to pay for a subscription?

One of those philosophies also killed 3 astronauts and very nearly killed 3 more if not for some quick thinking by the crew.

So y'know, not quite that simple.

You are not being unreasonable.

https://archive.is/

Paste the article URL into the bottom search to see if somebody archived it already. If they haven't, paste it into the top one to do so.

They actually have a Chrome extension also that makes it one click

One of them is appropriate for human missions and expensive flagship robotic missions, the other is appropriate for cheap/quick missions that are easily replaceable.

"Failure is not an Option" was never said during the Apollo program, it was invented for the movie. NASA pretty famously failed a lot early on but what they learned during those failures eventually got us to the moon. This article essentially says that we should be taking more risks in the name of innovation, EXACTLY like the Apollo program. So I guess you are completely right, one of those philosophies did get us to the moon: the second one.

Thank you very much, I will use this from now on.

Failure is an option if the costs are in dollars and the risk/reward ratio makes sense. Cheap cubesat demonstrators, for example, are usually more valuable done quickly rather than made 800% bulletproof.

When lives or billion-dollar missions are at stake, that's when failure isnt an option.

Works for me in reader view. Dont open through reddit app, open in a dedicated browser with reader view

If it’s just one article, not unreasonable. But news costs money to produce, it’s not free. And like everything you get what you pay for. If you like their news, it’s reasonable to pay to get it regularly.

Good article. Dr Z should go work at Starbase for a bit before full retirement.

It is kind of funny that reddit constantly complains about news/reporting going to shit and then turns around and gets upset when the few half decent places left want to get paid for their work.

Yeah, seems reasonable, when you're firing explosive projectiles into the void, things might go wrong sometimes.

Pretty sure if you get as far as being an astronaut, you've already accepted the extremely dangerous nature of your job and the constant possibility of death should anything go wrong at any stage. Going into space is an inherently risky endeavor.

That doesn't mean that we need to compromise safety for expediency or a mission statement. Astronauts accept the risk, but negligence due to some suit saying that you can't fail isn't acceptable levels of risk. In fact, it's external stressors (such as unreasonable expectations) that can directly lead to more mistakes than otherwise would be noted. Sacrificing safety for expediency.

There are no cheap easily-replacable NASA missions. But yes, there are missions where human lives depend on their success.

There is always a quantified and accepted risk of failure. There literally can not be zero risk of failure. You can mitigate but at some point you have to agree what is good enough.

It was the second one, for the record.

This isn't true. I've worked with a lot of motherfuckers that haven't done anything. They never fail, you have to at least try to fail. Their management failed though, by hiring and keeping them there as long as they did. Usually they corrected that failure by firing them.

It's almost like people don't understand how facebook became the place most people get their news, especially the poor.

We could also just fund public news again.

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I mean you could argue that by doing nothing, they failed to do anything, or that they failed to be productive.

And in the scenario you gave, they failed to keep their jobs.

Honestly think that we’re a little too cautious when it comes to space and that’s inhibited us going back to the moon for like 50 years. Shit is gonna go wrong. People will probably die. Everyone sitting on top of a rocket knows they’re in danger.

We’re not going to colonize the solar system without deaths. I like to think the colonization of space is similar to the colonization of the Americas. (Which is an entirely different conversation I know) but the people on those boats knew their chances of death was high, they knew they were never going back to England or wherever, they went anyway. We have to get some of that mindset back if we’re going to Mars and the moon etc.

Never Trying Never Fails -- By Jerry Smith

Even if this were actually said, Apollo 13 was a failure as a mission.

Everyone got back safely, but the contractor who built the cryo tanks dropped the tank, tried to burn off the fuel overnight, unknowingly and accidentally exposed the wiring inside the tank to temperatures that far exceeded the design temperatures, which burned off the protective wire insulation.

That would (months later) result in the liquid oxygen in the tanks being ignited by a spark from the wire.

That was a procedural failure that lead to a moon-landing mission failure.

The point is, failures happen and always will continue to happen -- whether your program wants them to or not.

When exploring space, you’re going to have to develop new and high risk technologies and some of them will inevitably fail. That’s how you learn and get better.

We have difficulty living in Antarctica. Living in space is many orders of magnitude more complex.

We are not close. Even remotely so.

Why risk lives unnecessarily?

We don't have "difficulty" living in Antarctica... we have been doing it for years. We have also had people on the ISS for a large chunk of the last decade. What do you mean "not even close"?

Edit. In fact there are a lot of small towns in rural areas with lower populations than the antarctic research stations.

Curious — how many people live in the Antarctic research stations and how many are there?

A quick Google says a little over 3000 people for the US. Most of which aren't scientists. Looks like there about 70 permanent stations operated by 29 different countries. So without spending too much time digging there is probably between a couple thousand to over ten thousand people living on the continent at any point in time.

No base in Antarctica is self sustaining, and the cost to keep the people on the ISS alive is in the 100s of millions a month and requires the full time work of thousands of people to support.

We can and should visit the places. But living anywhere but earth is fanciful at best for even the most optimistic view of the technology's on the horizon.

The antarctic isn't more self sustaining because no one has ever been motivated enough to make it that way. Just because it hasn't been does mean the technology doesn't exist to do it.

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We literally fund nasa so they can do shit that would probably fail but would be really cool if it suceeded.

If you don't fail sometimes then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough.

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It's functionally unplantable and literally goes dark for months of the year. The outposts are run off of diesel generators. Unless you either set up a nuclear plant or an entire oil/gas refining industry there (which will wreak havok on what fragile ecosystems there actually are) then there's not many avenues to do so with current technology.

It's not that we're 'not motivated' as much as 'motivated not to'.

But you could. The technology exists to put solar panels and modular reactor. The technology exists the make buildings with grow lights. The argument isn't that it is worth it. It certainly isn't. The argument was that the technology exists to do it if we had any good reason to.

Kind of a click-baity title. All missions has some instance of risk. There is no guarantee ever of 100% mission success.

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I think the exclusion of a statment that they wanted to keep the job at least bars them from the failure to keep. Its hard to argue against them failing to do anything unless the objective is to do nothing then successfully doing nothing surely can't be comparable to failing to do anything....can it?

I just learned you can hit the Aa in upper corner and it shows it in reader mode getting around the paywall.

I like the spirit you enspouse.

In science to have 0 failures you should do nothing.

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Failure is a core component of science. You fail until something works, and document it all. Science implies failure.

They volunteer, that’s why. Safetyism is fucking annoying.

The optimal number of mission failures is not zero.

The optimal number of airliner crashes is not zero.

The optimal number of toads in your ice cream is not zero.

It isn’t self sustaining because there is literally zero reason to do so. No one even bothers. Cheaper to ship stuff to it

That's some Battlestar Galactica 1980 trauma right there.

That’s a question for people who willingly choose to risk their lives going to space. You wouldn’t do it, I probably wouldn’t, but who are we to say what others can and cannot do with their lives?

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I get so sick of the "always success" motivational bullshit you see all the time out there.

If you're not failing sometimes, you're not trying hard enough. You're not accomplishing enough. You're not risking enough. But when you do your best, although you WILL fail sometimes (and it does feel like shit), you will keep on going anyhow.

I live in Japan, where we have a saying, which translates:

"Knocked down seven times? Then GET UP eight!"

Lets just make sure all the people going to Mars actually want to go and are guaranteed liberty and pay for their labour...

Our track record with colonizing 'new worlds' doesn't really exude valuing human life...

Just because someone is a volunteer does not give anyone the right to be cavalier with someone's life.

Also, space flight is not only expensive, but also the training is argious.

You can't just take random people off the street, blast them into space with a slap on the back and a good luck. It would be certain death.

So until humans understand and are able to overcome all of the hurdles preventing us from living in space permanently, any attempt to do so is pointless.