Hacker News Reader

Not pure luck though, they tried 15 different baffle configurations. Would of course be easier to filter configuration in simulations.

View on HN

There was enormous engineering effort put in with close coordination of physicists, but those 14 prior baffle configurations could have just as easily been 140.

For a relevant example, even just the oil formulation for Water Displacement on the exterior of the steel Atlas rockets took 40 iterations. Hence naming the product WD-40.

I wonder how many of the other baffle designs and water displacement formulations would still have been "good enough" - not optimal but usable?

At least for the baffles: None. That's why they kept going. Presumably there are even better possibly designs, but they were not discovered because one that works was found.

I don't know about the prior WD formulations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com