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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

It seems that they just got a new word in the dictionary: https://mobile.twitter.com/teamspaceil/status/11163129311033...

I find it a bit irritating to be that cocky when it comes to space technology. Better luck next time!

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Contrast with Elon Musk saying the next launch of the Falcon Heavy (today) has a 5-10% chance of failure. [1] This is after it has already successfully launched once.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1115998728878321672

Or Musk persistently pointing out how he expected the first Falcon Heavy launch to explode as the most likely outcome. The early intense trauma of SpaceX failures I think taught him valuable lessons in humility when it comes to space.

Instead we got two boosters returning and landing side by side.

Meanwhile he seems to lack any doubt or humility in anything involving Tesla...

There may be problems with the business itself but the cars are real, they work well, and people love them. They're even best selling in their category in some countries. The fact that Tesla is now a mainstream production car company is incredibly impressive.

He's been pretty upfront about his date prediction abilities:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blames-missed-mode...

And yet he continues doing it.

The problem isn't that people are demanding accurate dates for launches and then getting mad he wasn't exactly correct, the problem is that he is underestimating launch times significantly and stating them publicly with confidence.

Humans have flaws. Elon is no different in that respect.

He could simply say he doesn't know.

But these are actual dates he gives his engineers. Unsurprisingly, engineering is very difficult. He's pushing them to reach the stars, and they've only managed to reach the moon so to speak. He's fanatical about pushing them to be their very best (depending on your POV).

I was more thinking about self driving

Here I was thinking the new dictionary entry was going to be something like:

Beresheet: (v) To fail dramatically after overwhelming confidence

So hubris?

Hubris leads to Beresheet.

Pride cometh before the Beresheet

I Beresheet the bed.

Beresheet means "genesis," and if we know anything about the genesis of the universe it's that there's a big explosion.

It means "In the beginning" (בראשית)

(The prefix "ב" meaning "in", the root "ראש" meaning "head" --used both for the part of the body, and to mean "starting" or "principal"--and the suffux "ית" being the a type of feminine suffix)

That said, it is the Hebrew name of the book of scripture commonly called "Genesis" in English, because it's the first word (incipit) of that book. So people who translate it as "genesis" are not totally making it up, and arguably it's a more poetic translation since the name of the book is (presumably) why they chose that name for the craft.

The overweening pride is hubris. The retribution for such is nemesis.

I think the tempting fate bit comes from inviting the politicians into the control room

Netanyahu has a tendency to credit himself with any Israeli achievement as part of his personality cult he is encouraging. I bet he made it obvious that he is going to be in the control room.

Beresheet is Hebrew for "beginning".

I'm sure/I'd hope the actual engineers on the project wouldn't align to that tweet's wording by the marketing team (aka, they prob wouldn't be that cocky/have phrased it that way themselves).

Count your blessings.

They are the 4th country to reach the Moon (albeit at 1km/s).

A successful landing, followed by rapid unplanned disassembly.

Unscheduled lithobraking manoeuvre.

No, they would have been the 4th country to land on the moon. Both ESA and ISRO have previously conducted (intentional) impact missions.

khuey with the correction. Yes they would have been the 4th country to land on the moon. They settled to be the 7th country to orbit.

US, USSR, and China have successfully landed on the moon.

Japan, ESA, India, and SpaceIL all have crashed on the moon (counting as reached).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_on_the_Moon

That being said, ESA landed on a comet. Which is arguably a much harder shot to make ;) literally, you shoot, wait a decade, and cross your fingers during landing ^^

You don't so much land on a comet, as dock with it. And I think they kinda less-than-succeeded at that.

They got down at the expected speed just fine. Except that speed is enough to bounce two times if your harpoons fire but don't stick in the crust because it is even more crunchy than expected.

As I said, a failed docking attempt.

And even if they didn’t ever manage to land on the moon, ESA did once land on a moon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)

Pride comes before a fall. (scnr)

> Pride comes before a fall. (scnr)

Only if your pride is traveling at less than 11.2 km/s.

And/or lithobraking.

They successfully crashed it.

This comment thread is both celebratory and hateful, truly disgusting from Hn.

Celebrating space mission failures for any reason is a terrible look.

This is a cultural difference, try to take a step back from your own preconceived cultural norms. What's considered confidence in Israel would qualify as hubris in American culture - there's much less value placed on being humble or soft-spoken in Israeli culture. I make no judgements about if this is better/worse but I certainly wouldn't dream of relishing in their failure even if I perceived them as "cocky".

Are you telling us that in Israel confidence is replaced by hubris- the kind of over-confidence that makes you forget about your limits, underestimate dangers, antagonize people around you, and ultimately cause your own downfall? Well, good luck then, they'll need it!

What's considered hateful in most cultures is considered light-hearted an fun in HN culture. Truly ignorant of you to criticize this. It's culture-shaming.

If anything I feel I have to watch my words on HN, compared to when I speak with people living around me or people at places I've lived before.

HN also feels extremely safe compared to certain other places I've visited online.

It's tongue-in-cheek. I think it's dumb that criticizing hubris in the manner seen in this comment thread is seen as hateful just because hubris is part of someone's culture.

Well, I'm Israeli, and hubris is not part of my personal culture, but it is prevalent in Israel. IMHO it's a real problem for Israel because people here tend to be euphoric and unaware of the consequences of our decisions. On the other hand, it does make us more daring and in today's world it is a great way to "succeed"

> in today's world it is a great way to "succeed"

Yes, until you piss off too many people around you with your excessive confidence- which includes a sense of superiority and the feeling of being immune from the consequences of evil or hostile actions.

And if you made everybody around you an enemy rather than a friend, sooner or later you'll pay the consequences.

I don’t know if anyone is celebrating just because it was an Israeli mission but since I started following the mission there were few tweets similar to the one in question. On the first one I just rolled my eyes and on the second one I rooted for a failure just to to imagine how annoyed the PR person would be. I know it’s not a logical behavior but it’s not affecting the outcome, so... I guess if you’re going to be overly confident and “do” when everyone else is “attempting”, you better deliver.

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