Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

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Regarding 2, it makes sense to me. The FAA's purview is vast. They handle matters pertaining to all airspace in the USA. That includes commercial and private flights, drones, local government, and (of course) space flight. (And maybe even military flights, too, IDK). Is there such a thing as an "FAA detective" that preemptively goes on-sight to verify the reports they receive? Like most agencies, they function primarily on a self-reporting basis, relying heavily on the fear of retributive sanctions to ensure that they aren't being lied to in those reports. Can you imagine the cost of investigating everyone and everything the FAA is supposed to regulate?!

My sense is that, unusually among government regulators, the FAA is generally competent and cares about the real consequences of their in/action - both because the subject is life-and-death table stakes, but also because when there's a disaster the FAA itself is, by default, one of the "usual suspects". And rightly so.

Personally I see this as a very optimistic story about a regulator that actually does its job.

The FAA's purview is vast, but the number of space flights is not. They have the resources to monitor those directly, at least.

Hah. I have a love/hate relationship with the FAA. Funny story: a building was something like a foot over spec, about a mile off the end of a regional airport and the FAA found out. I do not envy the builder.

I've known some FAA people and they're some of the more interesting types I've come across.

" a building was something like a foot over spec, about a mile off the end of a regional airport and the FAA found out."

Well I suppose the line of reasoning is, if here is something wrong and not according to spec, then maybe there are more critical things out of spec.

Yes, in the article it mentions specifically that FAA agents were in the control room and had access to the pilots warnings.

So then it seems more like responding to an article than the facts they saw on the ground

Edit: I'm being downvoted to -3 for reading the article and making an anodyne comment answering a question about it. Cool.

Yeah, it definitely smells more like ass-covering for optics than anything they were concerned about at the time of launch.

Good they were in the room at the time. I would absolutely want a public accounting for the gap between what the regulators in the room saw vs. why the grounding after the article. Abundance of caution over a nothing-burger? Ok, just say so. A bad call made by the regulators in the room? Ok, human error exists. An intentional effort to keep the regulators need-to-know or an intentional looking the other way? Big problem.

No, the investigation was started almost immediately after the flight.

It's simply being reported in detail now.

I'm not sure that's the reason you're being downvoted. You could be being downvoted because the BBC article in the OP says that there was a New Yorker article and The FAA have said there is an investigation. You're concluding that the FAA is doing the investigation because of the New Yorker article. Another (perhaps simpler) explanation of the same facts is that the FAA were doing an investigation (either because of what the agents on the ground told them or because of the flight data or whatever) but it wasn't reported in the press (and the FAA didn't make a statement) until the New Yorker article came out.

Also you're probably further being downvoted because whining about being downvoted is a surefire way to get downvoted.

Nah, it's a surefire way to get upvoted - I get 2 back every time people overreach and go nuclear

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