RamjetFDO

100%. And as I agreed with @locodos above, it's working for them on their commercial space unmanned product line. Ah... here we go. "Two things can be true at the same time". It's ABSOLUTELY a cavalier attitude that has permeated everything that SpaceX does. I know guys who work there that I trust, and they're very worried. They see the social-media-driven generation making decisions based on public and fanboi positive comments rather than taking just a little bit longer and doing things right. Do you think the technical oversight of not launching IFT-1 with flame trench deflectors was because of anything other than GO-fever and not wanting to be embarrassed on Twitter/X? A total sense of "we know what we're doing, to hell with those old guys" hubris? Trust me on this one ... NASA's not immune either. The Apollo guys didn't have this problem, because they were also pretty much the Mercury/Gemini guys. On Shuttle, we had a transition where a lot of the Apollo guys were on the way out, but some were still there to try to pass along the culture and the mindset. Challenger happened just as much because of the bad decisions, misdirected focus, and not applying basic cockpit resource management to the decision processes as due to the technical design flaw. That was a slap in the face and we learned... until we didn't again with Columbia. If you think that this culture of backwards-cap-wearing on console, fanboi-screaming adoration, and casually claiming "success" when failure is the real outcome won't come to bite SpaceX in the ass one day... you're misreading history. There's nothing wrong with staring out by saying "hey, we're disappointed at the failure of the Heavy booster not performing on flyback and we're puzzled and more than a bit worried about what happened with Starship" and then going on to say, but we'll learn from what did go right, fix what went wrong, and those things won't happen again... but that's not even close to the public presentation that they're putting out there. The story, sadly, is unfolding in front of us unless something changes and soon. Again - I WANT them to succeed... but I see what's happening based on history and experience.

This is actually a very accurate comparison and I agree with you. Good points. I'm just of the age and environment that if you launch something that done-did-blown-up, you didn't succeed... and you weren't celebrated for it. NOW - having said that - yes, I get that I'm yelling at clouds here and "things are different old man". SpaceX is doing fantastic things when they do actually succeed. I just don't want them to fail when people are aboard because of the cavalier attitude they have now in these design/test flights. Much like sports and military training ... "train like you fight means you fight like you train". It's an operational mindset that was burned into me that I don't think commercial space (in general, but SpaceX specifically since they're the most visible right now) has with their operational teams.

I'm torn here -- On one hand - FUCKING BRAVO SPACEX. That was amazing. A massive huge success getting the integrated vehicle off the pad, fully through stage one and powered staging, and sub-orbital flight. Those plasma heating (compression, not "friction", you GenX SpaceX BratPack public affairs dipshits) video feed views were fantastic! On the other hand - I'm getting very tired of the "oh well, we lost another Starship" casualness. You are eventually going to run out of taxpayer money (funneled through Elon).

Just saw Part 2 ... and don't think it's been mentioned here (and don't care if it has), but I got an "Empire Strikes Back" vibe from this in the same way, due to the (1) awesomeness of the movie, (2) very different feel/pacing from the first movie, and (3) kinda cliffhanger-y ending without a 100% resolution of the storyline making me yearn for Part 3. Now, if Denis ends up having Spice Ewoks in Part 3, I'm walking out. YUB NUB!

Oof. Fair credit to Spurs, they are clearly the better squad today.

First match of the season for me. Listos! Verde!

Just got a Nikon Z6ii (replaced my old D5100), 24-120 f4 S lens, and a good solar filter ... put it on a sturdy tripod and remote shutter release. ISO200, f/16, 1/500s.

Got my solar filter and wanted to practice a bit... Look! Sunspots!

Digne saves Villa's fat from the fire with an 89th minute quality goal.

What. The. Actual. Hell. Luton Fucking Town levels it up in the 72nd.

Nothing like a Charlie Fox in front of your goal to cut your lead in half... 2-1 Villa in the 66th.

After an extended VAR review .... Ollie! Ollie! Ollie! with a brace!!!

Ollie! Ollie! Ollie! Sorry Luton.

Handbags!

As with a lot of things, the Challenger Accident was far more complex than just that. Yes - the SRB O-Ring design was not made to withstand the sustained low temperatures and then launch/hold the joint seal. HOWEVER - that was outside the design specifications, so blaming Morton-Thiokol *solely* for this was not the way the Rogers Commission report went down. Sure, the joint failure was the root cause of the *physical* incident, but it was the personnel issues - especially cultural and managerial - that were every bit to blame up and down the NASA chain. Thiokol was a convenient public scapegoat for the media, and when Richard Feynman dipped an o-ring segment into a glass of ice water - and CNN covered it live (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TInWPDJhjU) - that's practically all the subsequent coverage centered on. Internal to NASA, though - we knew who the decision-makers were, and they weren't in those roles for much longer after that (voluntarily or not). We went through a lot of soul-searching, including lots of training and process improvements - did some good "cockpit resource management" and "breaking the error chain" training during that down time. Sadly ... some of those errors crept back into the NASA culture for poor decisions made that led to the loss of Columbia less than 20 years later. If you want to really dive into it, the report is online here (PDF). I still have my official bound copy that pretty much all of us had as a reminder of the failures of *people* as well as *technology* that led to that horrible day.

Damn. T-Mobile gave a free MLS season pass last year... And they're not doing that this season (grumble).

They did. No one is reading them. They "know how to do it better than those old guys"...

Ollie and Leon are a great pair. 4-2 now to the Villa.

Welp. Forest winning the last 2 of the first half and the first two minutes of the second... And suddenly it's 3-2.

I didn't have a brace for Luiz on my bingo card today.

That's an interesting proposition... And the industrial espionage alone between the competing companies would make for a highly readable thriller! Hmmm... I want to write a novel now.

So money. Forest just have no answer.

Leon has been on fine form lately. Broke some ankles and left a tap in for Ollie! ... Almost had #2 there!

Slow your roll on the "it was successful" parade. We've fallen well short on "mission success" when the lander can't, well, land. Kinda like a SpaceX booster that doesn't, well, boost. You can say "we learned a lot" until the cows come home, but you didn't have a successful mission. You never should plan success to be a failure. This is endemic across the board these days and people will die as a result. Do. Better.