top | item 38684226

(no title)

wolfd | 2 years ago

This document was referenced by Smarter Every Day in his latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

discuss

order

hazrmard|2 years ago

This was a good presentation. I liked how he didn't pull punches, but was also friendly with the audience. It was an intervention, more than a confrontation.

engineer_22|2 years ago

Being an outsider he approached it in a psychologically correct way. To harken to mythology, it is the court jester who tells the king what no one else will say.

Not to say Devin is a clown - far from it! Much respect for him.

arein3|2 years ago

I think he missed the point. His entire focus is the landing on moon as the only objective, and doing that with minimal features, which is logical if your goal is just landing on the moon.

US already landed on the moon, now they want a framework that will allow a lunar base, taking into account a mars base. With that in mind, you need extra features.

So I think his entire talk is based on a wrong assumption (and funny to watch from aside, as it is a bit headstrong).

sabareesh|2 years ago

Loved the most of the presentation but i felt he lacked the big picture, it is no longer about just going to the moon but this time we want to potentially settle and expand to other planets. Because of this we are not just trying to replicate how we went there but it is such an invaluable document to do what we want to do.!!

0xfae|2 years ago

I felt the same. In the apollo program literally every step along the way had never been done before, and the problems were solved by smart people putting in good work and the result is that we developed a ton of new technologies and skills as a country.

He seems to be saying: don't try new things, keep in simple and just do what we did 50 years ago again. Keep funding the old aerospace giants (Boeing, Lockheed, ULA, and a hundred different contractor companies) rather than giving money to companies that are developing new technologies. This partially makes sense, since he and his dad and many friends work for those old companies and are probably threatened by the new comers.

doug_durham|2 years ago

I didn't get the impression that he was saying "don't try new things". It was more "practice good engineering". He ask people how many refueling launches it would take for the moon landing. No one knew. The engineers responsible for the project couldn't provide a number for one of the most critical things that needs to occur in the next couple of years. It took a government watchdog agency to come up with an evidence based number. That looked really bad for the program.

elsonrodriguez|2 years ago

The big picture is that instead of sending 16 moon-capable rockets to refuel one moon-capable rocket, just send 16 rockets to the moon.

You can build a lot of infrastructure with 16 rockets to the moon.