I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day | Hacker News Reader

I was scared To say this to NASA (But I said it anyway) – Smarter Every Day

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109 pointsMeleagris59 comments

My TLDW: He's (not so) indirectly critical of Space X's Starship program and tribal groupthink. He may be "scared" of NASA because he's calling out one of their giant Artemis contracts.

Some longer takeaways:

- Simplify. We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why? We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic refuel in orbit (this seems like a biggie).

- Communicate a lot. Why aren't people talking about the seemingly giant increase in complexity to accomplish the same mission we had in the 60s (land on the moon)? People need to have safe/comfortable way to raise questions and concerns.

- Have many layers of redundancy. Apollo had 6-7 backup procedures for what to do if they couldn't launch the lander off the moon.

- Test. small tests, big tests, real tests, skin-in-the-game tests. Some tests can be eliminated by simplifying or, in the case of big systems/tests, doing small tests on the riskiest components.

- Humans have ingrained biases. Will be situations astronauts haven't experienced where their instincts may be wrong.

> We went to the moon 50+ years ago, but we are reinventing the wheel in some significant ways in Artemis. Why?

Because if we do it the same way we did 50+ years ago, we learn absolutely nothing and the whole thing is a pointless waste of money.

In order to progress and learn and improve you must do things you've never done before. You must be ambitious and you must attempt things that are difficult and will probably take many attempts to master.

This logic is exactly the same as saying "we've been burning toxic liquids for generations to get around. Why are we making things complicated with all these batteries and electric motors".

The whole point is improvement.

This strikes me as a moment where you should watch the video there's a moment specifically at 41:40 where he basically says what you're saying and it's an integral part of his point

I find that a lot of people myself included like to argue against an imagined version of something they hear second hand often not going to the source material to realize they're standing on the same side

A counterpoint to his thesis that the orbit and design have to be simple to succeed is the Mars rover sky crane lander system. It was terribly complex and, famously, worked very well. Compute has made a big difference since the 60s. Roughly every line of code today used to be a handful of physical components, whether it was an analog circuit or additional core memory wire-wound in the flight computer. Then there's the fact we test differently today because we finite element analysis every part down to the smallest component. That wasn't possible in the 60s.

It depends on your mission. If the mission is to go to the moon, well, we've done that, we don't really need anything new. If the mission is to reduce carbon emissions, that will require something new.

> Because if we do it the same way we did 50+ years ago, we learn absolutely nothing and the whole thing is a pointless waste of money.

I would argue that if we did it exactly as we did back then that we would actually learn something because we forgot how to do so much. Literally can’t build an F-1 engine. It would take a ton of work just to recreate it.

However, the benefit is that we would then have plans (diagrams, specs, etc) to build it and one built we can iterate.

But building what we had is already a tremendous challenge because of the lost knowledge. Were it not for that, I would agree with you.

I agree - there would be tremendous value in taking the 1960s approach, keeping it simple, and optimizing with modern electronics.

What they seem to be doing is a code rewrite while adding features.

Revival of Saturn-V today would likely be very expensive comparing to Starship variants.

> However, the benefit is that we would then have plans (diagrams, specs, etc) to build it and one built we can iterate.

Hypothetically we've lost the diagrams,designs,knowledge to build a 386.

Is it worth building one today just so we can remember how, and then iterate on it?

No, absolutely not. The F-1 (and the 386) are ancient. Don't start from ancient and work up. Aim higher.

> However, the benefit is that we would then have plans (diagrams, specs, etc) to build it and one built we can iterate.

To me the current state looks like as if we

    1) recreated F-1
    2) had plans and diagrams
    3) iterated - first to the level of NK-33, then to the
       level of RD-270, then to the level of Raptors
    4) carefully put those original plans back on the shelf
       and forgot about them.

Yes we can't do F-1 today verbatim. We also can't do many other things, not easily - steam engines, telegraphs, airplanes, cassette players of the time would all require some re-engineering. We however can often do better using very different approach.

Sure you always learn something when you do anything.

> Literally can’t build an F-1 engine.

We can. There has been lots of work done on that already. But you wouldn't want to do an engine like it was done back then anyway. It would be crazy to do it the same way. A modern version would be better, better controls, lighter and so on.

> However, the benefit is that we would then have plans (diagrams, specs, etc) to build it and one built we can iterate.

Those would be more like constraints. So many things that are not the same anymore. You would literally reconstruct the economy from the 1960s first. That would be totally insane thing to do.

Its not because of 'lost knowlage' its because first of all, it just doesn't make any sense to do it the same way even if you could. Both the tools and the people are totally different, the structure of the economy is different.

"but we have never attempted a cryogenic refuel in orbit (this seems like a biggie)"

Isn't this a consequence of having Sen. Richard Shelby in de facto control of cosmic spending for decades?

AFAIK Shelby was notorious for vetoing any project that included refueling in orbit. Fortunately, he finally retired at the ripe old age of 89.

(If longevity research pays off, we may never get rid of such entrenched people... or in 100 years or so.)

Idk how you took away that he was criticizing the Starship program at all. SpaceX pivots designs on a swivel, conducts tons of incremental tests, and ends up succeeding at the claimed impossible time and time again. If anything, NASA should be taking a cue from them.

He’s being directly critical of Artemis and Orion/SLS, which is not at all built that way, was basically architected by politics, and will probably not end up actually going to the moon unless there’s a major change.

In-orbit refueling, etc. Those are Starships not SLS being counted: 29:45

Talking about methane, in situ refueling (not just spacex, but they've been the most vocal): 41:25

Complexity/redundancy: 46:28 (looong pause and laughter)

Comments on engine design: ~48:00 (you have to be aware of Raptor/SS booster design to get the criticism)

Raptors right now look very nightmarish if used for landing crew on anything - the Earth or the Moon alike. The most advanced liquid fuel engine with tons of feedback loops looks suspiciously like a catastrophe waiting to happen at a worst possible moment.

Landing on the Moon is supposed to use some other engines as well at the time, so that may help. As soon as we'll know more about design, we can say things more confidently.

The Starship program is the big unknown in the whole mission. The SLS is boring and expensive and underperforming but it somewhat works. They should have given it more power to avoid the NRO, which appears to be a source of complexity due to the underperformance of the SLS. It makes things harder than it needs to be, but it isn't a death knell.

He clearly argued against flashy technology demonstrations like orbital refueling, which if you have paid attention, doesn't apply to the SLS but Starship. Orbital refueling adds an insane amount of uncertainty to the entire mission due to the boiling off of cryogenic fuels. He clearly pointed out that despite the plan of sending six Starships to LEO, nobody actually knows how many rocket flights are necessary. Fancy technology has been put on a pedestal, while the actual mission is being neglected. This is a common theme I have seen on HN and Reddit. SpaceX enthusiasts think the moon mission is some irrelevant symbolic political boondoggle to keep NASA facilities open. They all want to go on the promised 100 people trip to mars.

>will probably not end up actually going to the moon unless there’s a major change.

I don't know if you have paid attention lately, but currently Starship is significantly behind schedule. I'm not sure what to call this interpretation except "biased". Maybe this will refresh your memory: The Starship "Propellant Transfer Test" was supposed to happen in 2022 Q4.

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/qujnsi/propos...

> He clearly argued against flashy technology demonstrations like orbital refueling, which if you have paid attention, doesn't apply to the SLS but Starship.

I think this ignores that a lander of significant size would need newly designed hypergolic engines and would need very complex orbital refueling of hypergolics as well.

> Fancy technology has been put on a pedestal, while the actual mission is being neglected.

I think this is just a misunderstanding of the long term vision for the program. I its not about Artemis 3 only.

> SpaceX enthusiasts think the moon mission is some irrelevant symbolic political boondoggle to keep NASA facilities open. They all want to go on the promised 100 people trip to mars.

That's unfair. SpaceX enthusiast for the most part are simply happy money flows into the Starship program. The real win here is the Starship program itself, not any individual mission.

And I think that is the most impactful thing about this, having impact all future deep space missions. So call me a SpaceX enthusiasts.

So unless you go to a tiny lander, its just a reality. Its in the critical path.

He's specifically criticizing the orbital refueling timeline and the use of methane+LOX instead of hypergolic propellant for the lander. The timeline will probably get pushed back and the lander development seems to still be in a very early stage and it may well be worth it to consider hypergolic fuel. Also the systems of the starship lander must be accessible for repair.

Think about it, we can go to the moon but now can't. None of the superpowercountries like China, Russia, EU, could. I give more credence to we never landed human there but only sent mechanical robots there for deployment to prove we landed there. Look up Neil Armstrong career after coming back from the moon. He was so wasted about his achievement...could have been senator or even some big corporation hotshot. But didnt. Nearly all moonwalkers behave the same. Either they have moon ptsd or as what conspiracy hinted, we never have human landed there.

> Either they have moon ptsd or as what conspiracy hinted, we never have human landed there.

You can read an autobiography book of Michael Collins, it answers your question to a some extent. He cannot say for every astronaut and I wouldn't risk to give here an answer in a short form as I understand it, because I'm not sure I understand it right. But I urge you to read and to answer your question yourself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_the_Fire

I think the fundamentally disconnect here is that its not 'the same' mission. Sure if you break it down to the extreme the mission to the extreme, its the same 'people on moon'. But if you think about it beyond that, Artemis makes quite a bit more sense.

> We are supposedly going to the moon in two years, but we have never attempted a cryogenic refuel in orbit (this seems like a biggie).

The 2024 date was always politics and its an open secret that it won happen. Everybody who has followed this topic kind of knows this.

> - Have many layers of redundancy. Apollo had 6-7 backup procedures for what to do if they couldn't launch the lander off the moon.

While true, its also the case that Apollo lander had 1 ascent engine that couldn't be tested and wasn't redundant.

> - Test. small tests, big tests, real tests, skin-in-the-game tests.

I think its strange that he points this out but then doesn't point out that this is exactly the testing Starship proposed to prove out the rocket and things like the Cryo transfer.

Report discussed in the talk:

"What made Apollo A Success?"

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19720005243/downloads/19...

He seems really worried about offending people and hurting his relationships with NASA execs.

I wonder if NASA people are more prickly, less, or the same in terms of taking negative feedback as compared to programmers and hackers.

I suspect since we spend all day with compilers telling us we made silly errors, we're a bit more inured to criticism than the general public.

I don’t know about NASA, but in my few encounters with stuff at the federal level the people involved seemed way more concerned with interagency battles than anything related to the mission. To the point where it the top priority was to fuck over Bob from the Department of Whatever by scuttling his project before the next Big Meeting. I guess fighting the same battles for forty+ years could lead to a form of org debt.

People are way more willing to accept negative feedback and direction from a computer than a human. It’s one of the major benefits of code linters and CI. It’s not embarrassing to be told by a computer that you messed up.

Really doubt coders are much better at taking negative criticism than the general population haha.

They definitely aren't. If anything I'd say worse. There are a couple of people I've had to work with who took any suggestion for changing anything as a personal attack.

Does NASA and their contractors have any true believers in leadership positions?

The complexity and safety concerns have been pointed out multiple times. I stopped paying attention because this program appears to be on bureaucratic autopilot. Government contractors deliver parts, without control or accountability about the performance of the entire system. The complexity indicates that Artemis will get cancelled once it fails to achieve goals. I hope nobody dies.

The top engineering talent of the U.S. is not in this program. Poor engineering leadership is inevitable. Artemis looks like a jobs program.

There are some misunderstanding here. Artemis isn't really a program. SLS, Orion, HLS (Starship) and a few other things are all their own program. Each has their own political logic and its cancellation depends on many things. Cancling all isn't really possible, no matter what the marketing term 'Artemis' means. Artemis is literally just a marking term a clever NASA Administrator made up in order to get money for a lander.

SLS and Orion have survived many changes in program, their survival is independent.

The HLS program is fixed-price, and once award can't really be changed canceled. They can only not renew the contract for more missions.

If NASA engineering talent is so shit, why has Commercial Crew and Cargo program been some of the most successful NASA programs since Apollo? The same people selected the HLS program.

HLS (Starship) is anything but a Jobs program for NASA or SpaceX. Its literally the future SpaceX (pretty good engineering company) is banking on.

Artemis is a complex program with a complex history of sub-parts and lots of political constraints. The programs most like it have been successful. This is a larger version of those ideas, but those ideas were clearly more successful then what NASA has been doing for the last 40 years.

(Look at the countless failed projects)

> Government contractors deliver parts, without control or accountability about the performance of the entire system.

Contractors didn't have this during Apollo.

I would have greatly preferred a non-clickbait title for this.

I don't actually know if it's clickbait. A huge portion of the video is actually just laying the groundwork for the importance of feedback and being afraid to speak up because of political and management concerns is actually a central point of the talk. Thematically the title is a great fit and if it gets clicks, good for him

Good talk, worth watch.

15 rockets!

Hey - you put in the time. Can you please help the rest of us out and post a TLDR?

tldr; don't simply listen to others and go with the flow, do your own research and be brave

TL;DR:

- Apollo simple, Apollo success.

- Artemis very complex, many unknowns.

- Stated reasons for doing things are clearly not the real reasons.

- Providing honest negative feedback seems to be the the key to success.

- Artemis engineers might fear talking honestly.

---

Personal comment: The timeline was fubar from the beginning. Remember when VP Mike Pence made a surprise announcement that NASA goes to the Moon 2024 surprising NASA director. Then NASA committed to it and scrambled to adjust everything.

Also:

- Apollo simple with many redundancies, design for failure, culture of risk management (after Apollo 1)

- Artemis very complex, many unknowns, unanswered questions, poor communication

I wonder if he mentioned the reason for Apollo: a muscle-flexing exercise to show the Soviet Union (and the rest of the world) who the boss is. Once the point was made, there was no need for further Moon or outer space exploration, and predictably the program ended.

We don't have that rationale now. Various presidents come with different ideas for space exploration, but the fundamental need is just not there, and without that, the budget and the focus is not there.

The only way for us to get back to the Moon is if we can do it on the cheap. So cheap that it doesn't cost a lot of political capital to do it. And for for that SpaceX seems like the best bet. Maybe not in 2 years, but at some point.

In the time that it took you to ask several people for the TL;DR, you could've watched the video.

I guess I summarize things different than others, but at the 32:00 minute mark, he talks about what he was actually scared about:

NASA is essentially, a business (my addition) -- that does not know how to communicate. The left hand very much does not know what the right hand is doing. He brings up a fantastic example of how many rockets are required for a particular phase of a mission and showed how multiple people gave different answers without even realizing their launch date is set in stone.

In essence, issues abound.

> He brings up a fantastic example of how many rockets are required for a particular phase of a mission and showed how multiple people gave different answers without even realizing their launch date is set in stone.

Careful here - multiple Starship refueling launches shown in the video (I've counted 24 tanker launches) are not set in stone and might be not that important for the mission itself, it's just an example of a valid question with added concern that we've yet to have this uncertainty resolved. It may look like an Exhibit A of mismanagement, but could be a very different thing.

I think the most important think he's saying is that NASA is not enough focused on the success of moving forward.

Relatively good AI summary: https://www.summarize.tech/youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU

Click on see more, to see 5 minute wise summaries.

I think his phrasing in that section was at best misleading. It's not 15 rockets, it's 1.5 rockets (one booster, one HLS second stage, one refueling second stage) used 15 times.

Good video, many good points.

"Focus on the mission"

What's the mission? We're "returning to the Moon" - what does it mean? Boots on the regolith? I somehow doubt that. USA did that half a century ago, we're supposed to go farther. What's the mission this time?

We're going to the Moon for a more serious, longer exploration this time, right? That's the mission, right? So, we want more people at the same time on the Moon, we want more payloads, we want longer duration stays on the surface - in fact, we state that we want to establish a permanent "outpost", to use it for exploration and future uses and as a basis of something - some Moon-based station even bigger and better. Right?

What options do we have now? Especially - do we have good options to do that now given that we plan to land in about 2 years?

It's kind of a hard technical question, and many would be tempted - with pretty good arguments - to answer negatively to that. Apollo program didn't have this as a good option - it actually turned out to have a tragedy of Apollo-1 and "successful failure" of Apollo-13 to have man on the Moon within 1960-s, with 6 landings. Should we say today "no, we don't have that kind of the urgency today, and we do have much more elevated safety requirements, so we should do things differently than what we can accomplish in 2 years"?

Maybe it's a good idea to still try to work as if we have some urgency. That is, we don't know when to land - we choose the time ourselves - and, frankly, this time the mission isn't just land and come back, as it was before - so we could justify a schedule slip. But how big? How long we can shift our plans to the right? Maybe we should do a waterfall-ish style rethinking and replanning and have a good, rather realistic plan for a modest sub-goal - say, analog of Apollo-10, or even Apollo-11, with "just" landing - but in such a way that it would lead us not to Apollo-17 and "bye", but towards the desired Moon outpost?

I don't quite agree with Destin's skepticism regarding multiple launches to refuel on LEO. We didn't do that before, but we didn't do a lot of things before Apollo which are practically taken for granted today, like successful launches from Earth and successful dockings. It's an interesting technical problem to solve for SpaceX, and I do believe they'll have a working solution (I'd probably start thinking with expandable flexible displacement device, inflatable with some gases, in the tanks), but I don't think it will be a show-stopper for orbital refueling plans.

However what Starship HLS brings us - and what other proposed solutions for lunar landers seems not to - is that transition from "boot on the regolith" missions to "permanent outpost" state. Yes it's harder to get to in the first place, and it's likely we won't have Starship HLS on the Moon in ~2 years, but it's still a pretty good component of what we need to have missions which go beyond Apollo achievements. So it might make sense to keep developing Starship, and LEO refueling, and if other Moon lander options will come first - good, if not, we'll have a landing system which is capable to scale for a bigger missions worthy of our century.

Why not just build a smaller Starship to go to the moon? It would probably negate the need for any orbital refueling. The reason of course is that Elon Musk wants NASA to fund his rocket to mars, not to the moon. I.e. technology demonstration is more important than the mission itself. This is how you get neither.

And who would pay for it? SpaceX's HLS bid was so cheap because they were developing 90% of it anyway. SpaceX has no desire for a smaller Starship, especially since that probably means no second stage reuse.

I sincerely hope this doesn’t destroy his career.

His career is on YouTube these days, he'll be fine.

Yes he's done a lot with NASA in the past but even if they blackballed him completely (unlikely) it's not the end of the world.

Few of his videos are done with NASA and his day job is developing anti-missile systems for the DoD. His career will not be meaningfully impacted lol

Yep, good stuff.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE someone post a TLDR. The dude is pleasant to listen to, but he goes ON and ON and ON about his life story and what not. Please just give us the bullet points.

I'm only about half-way through, but if you skip to 30:50 he makes a big point. And frankly the lead up to that point was necessary, which necessity is also part of the message he is delivering.

Q: 'How many Starship launches are needed to execute the Artemis III lunar landing?'

NASA: 'We don't know but at least 15'

Video: 'Oh well that's a huge problem to have a complex project like this and we don't even have an exact answer'

Isn’t this disingenuous? As far as I can tell, Starship can make it to the lunar surface with a significant payload without refueling. The refueling launches are only required if you want to maximize the payload per lunar trip.

The Artemis mission involves landing astronauts on the Moon and bringing them back to Earth. Not landing an empty Starship on the Moon. Maximizing the payload is really important when need to carry humans, and launch a whole large spacecraft off the Moon.

BOTE calculations, approximate numbers:

    - delta-V for LEO-to-the-Moon flight - 3100 m/s
    - delta-V to get to low Moon orbit (a-la Apollo) - 1000 m/s
    - delta-V to land on the Moon from low orbit - 1700 m/s
    - extra delta-V during landing like with Apollo LEM for
      emergencies - 700 m/s
    - delta-V to get back to the Moon orbit - 1700 m/s
    - extra delta-V during lift-off like with Apollo - 500 m/s

Total - 3100 + 1000 + 1700 + 700 + 1700 + 500 = 8700 m/s, that's a pretty large delta-V, almost like an Earth SSTO.

Raptor Isp - 3500 m/s, fueled mass - 1320 tons, empty mass - 120 tons, mass ratio - 1320 / 120 = 11. Tsiolkovsky formula:

    exp(8700 / 3500) = m_fueled / m_empty = 12

that is, we need Starship HLS to be somewhat lighter to get to the Moon surface and back to low Moon orbit from LEO than the current numbers for Starship, and that is without any payload.

It's definitely not the final numbers, so the results will change, but

> Starship can make it to the lunar surface with a significant payload without refueling

is questionable at the moment.

If you mean cargo flights with no return to the Moon orbit - rather than crewed flights as agreed with NASA today for Starship HLS - then of course the numbers are better.

Thanks for this!

He’s basically saying the complexity of current Artemis mission design is indicative of lack of communication, mainly due to politics. He points out some of the obvious problems that isn’t being discussed openly (e.g., large number of untested refueling procedure which needs to be done to get one vehicle to the moon). He is trying to persuade the audience to challenge the current way of doing things, and look to the past successful Apollo programs to see why they were so successful.

I did skip some life story part when watching the video - but the talk was not bad at all. You can use the FF button and use 1.25x speed if that helps. I think it was worth my time.

And to communicate truthfully about why things are being done in the way's they're done.

The in-orbit refueling with lots of Starship/SuperHeavy launches is to increase the payload capacity. That's partly needed due to limits imposed by the Gateway architecture (which are largely due to limits of the Orion capsule). But it's also, and IMO more importantly, due to the fact that a manned mission to Mars (which Artemis is supposed to develop technology for) will certainly need in-orbit refueling.

It's a more complex design than Apollo. Some of that is justified due to engineering goals of the eventual manned Mars mission, even though it is detrimental to the moon mission. Some is justified due to political expediency.

The public statements of the agencies involved have often omitted the real reasons for the decisions, and instead invented justifications expected to be more acceptable. They don't want to say "Orion & SLS are used because it's a jobs program" or "we're spending a lot of money & time now on an in-orbit refueling system a moon mission doesn't need because we got the budget for it and haven't gotten the Mars mission we hope to use it on funded yet".

I recommend you to watch it, it's really good.

But as I mentioned in another comment, here is a relatively good AI summary:

https://www.summarize.tech/youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU

Click on see more, to see 5 minute wise summaries.

(Not affiliated with this site, I just use it from time to time)

He is pointing out issues with communication and people not knowing a lot of the required information. Kind of like people only want TLDR instead of actually understanding the point of the information.

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