I highly recommend this talk at the American Astronomical Society from last year, which talks about the engineering culture at NASA and why Artemis has been slower than Apollo so far.
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American society seems to be more and more controlled by people in positions where they cannot fail. The example that originally put this idea in my head was the Mozilla CEO who, oversaw a year during which Firefox usership fell, and Mozilla workers were fired, and then the CEO received a pay raise. A job where it's not possible to fail. You get paid no matter what, probably get a raise.
In the video Destin keeps asking "we're going right?", throughout the whole video, and the truth is everyone in the room is hesitant to say yes.
Destin keeps narrating and apologizing for his own speech (because he doesn't want to burn every bridge he has with NASA), but history will make Destin look like a prophet I think. I think this speech is worthy of the history books.
Really? It’s eye opening. But Destin seems to miss the point.
We’re not trying to go back to the Moon, one and done. That was Apollo. We’re trying to build a system that reduces the repeat cost of Moon access, with medium-term plans for permanent settlement. (Like in Antarctica. Not The Expanse.)
His criticism of Artemis is on point. But his anchoring to Apollo is bewilderingly blind. If we’re just redoing Apollo, the programme should be defunded. (If a NASA administrator set that as a goal, I’d argue the NASA manned spaceflight programme might need to be overhauled.)
> everyone in the room is hesitant to say yes
This is like Trump complaining his generals won’t laugh at his jokes.
These are senior NASA scientists. They’re listening to a talk, not a rally.
Does anyone expect were going to launch Artemis rockets over and over for decades? Aren't they extremely expensive?
My claim remains that there are many who are working on Artemis that quietly believe it will not succeed. History will eventually reveal the truth about this; and yeah, I might be wrong, we will see.
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.
There may be. But Destin’s video doesn’t demonstrate that.