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Comment by bandyaboot | Hacker News Reader

Ideally you want the iterative lesson learning to wrap up before you put the humans inside.

That's why they're called test pilots. They're not putting the general public into spacecraft.

FWIW, like many previous astronauts, both crew members are US Navy test pilots. They've literally made a career out of solving complex problems and navigating ultra-sticky situations.

The function of test pilots is to validate things that can only be validated by manual flight testing, like aircraft handling characteristics—not to risk their lives to do QA.

Sometimes the tests aren't green.

sometimes in the messy real world, things go wrong even when the tests are green.

Hmm. I hear ya, but this isn’t what I want test pilots spending effort on.

Test pilots are closer to an integration test in software. You expect the unit tests to pass green before you expect the related integration tests to work.

Multiple failures of maneuvering thrusters is technically a mission failure (in the flight plan sense), despite having nothing to do with the parameters of the mission, nor anything to do with adding humans. Maneuverability is the difference between a craft and junk.

I wouldn’t find this acceptable in a project I was managing or funding. Just sayin! Still impressed as hell.

You're not funding it yet until the government either nationalizes or bails out Boeing

The government is paying Boeing, no?

Yeah, that would be ideal. But it seems uncommon. Lots of complexity in a spacecraft.

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