SpaceX Stats | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX Stats

spacexstats.com

142 pointspatopop00744 comments

That javascript slideshow style is really un-user-friendly, especially with largely static content. It's not enhancing anything more than simply assembling the whole thing into a single page with normal scrolling.

Even worse than simply changing the way it normally scrolls, it hijacks some gestures on OSX, so instead of being able to do a two finger sweep to get back to HN, I had to try a few times just to discover it was advancing the slides and not due to user error, then go to the back button.

My favourite part is how scrolling loops around - scrolling past the bottom takes you back to the top

Thank you. I hate these things... fancy UI shit that does nothing but degrade the UX.

Somebody cocked the UX on this one, might as well be a PDF. I was going to post the same thing as above.

Don't assume you know how fast I can read. Anything associated with Elon that wastes time is disrespectful of the man and his achievements.

Ugh, yes. The only way I made it usable was to use the arrow keys on my keyboard but even then it's so slow.

At least the headline wasn't, "He started SpaceX. What he did next made me want do dance."

At least one stat shown is already out of date; the quickest turnaround so far was 19 days, from launch 15 (DSCOVER) to launch 16 (two comsats). They will improve on this if they get the TurkmenAlem launch off today.

Agreed with others on the funky scrolling, btw: violating user expectations about how common UI actions ought to work is a bug in your site, not a feature.

Dev here. Quickest turnaround was actually 14 days last year, but yep, that needs fixing.

Scrolling will be removed in next release.

More stats here for context, also in perhaps a better format: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2014.html#rate

This is cool! It'd be cool to have a .json version of this page as well to see what other people could do with it! Stats are better with context - if you could do the same thing with NASA/ULA/China/India/ESA/etc it'd be even more illustrative.

Also, +1 for getting rid of the scroll-assist. Kind of annoying.

Slightly off topic: does anybody know if they're going to try controlled recovery of today's launch vehicle?

Dev here. Will remove scroll assist in next release :). API, allowing you to pull raw data planned.

No landing today, too heavy and going too far.

When you report stats you normally also report losses, not just wins, that may be something to add.

And what losses have SpaceX had with Falcon 9 exactly?

Secondary payload, the orbcomm satellite.

[I'm not the dev] That's an incredibly small nit to pick, I don't really think SpaceXStats needs to go so far into the details there. Specifically, and especially because the decision to cut off OG2 was NASA's decision, not SpaceX's. While the initial SpaceX Falcon 9 engine failure led to the decision being made, the F9 could technically have delivered the payload to the desired orbit for Orbcomm.

I think it's more fair to call that a bureaucracy failure than a SpaceX failure.

Edit: Woah, okay, maybe I'm wrong. [Unable to reply below (no button)]

I don't agree with that at all. If you're providing statistics you should show both the good and the bad. What the reason for the failure was is ultimately technical, the decision to call it off was a bureaucratic one but spelled out quite explicitly prior to launch. If the rocket had worked flawlessly the loss would have been prevented.

I'm very much a fan of SpaceX but I dislike ignoring failure to paint a more positive picture than reality. The site has sections on 'number of people on Mars'. Stats are stats, both good ones and bad ones. SpaceX has an incredible record to date including that one loss so why be afraid to show it?

Anyway, it appears this is not really a stats site but more of a tribute, the 'countless hours' section shows that pretty clearly so feel free to ignore my comments.

> does anybody know if they're going to try controlled recovery of today's launch vehicle?

Not today but on June 18th.

@lukealization: I like the site, I didn't even have problems with the scrolling, but your RSS link is broken and my email to contact@spacexstats.com bounced:

  Final-Recipient: rfc822;contact@spacexstats.com
  Action: failed
  Status: 5.7.1
  Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

The number of dragon missions of 6 is incorrect, there has so far been 6 CRS flights plus 2 demo flights.

"Vehicles landed" of 0 isn't technically correct. There have been several grasshopper and F9R-dev landings.

The "quickest turnaround" also says -62 days for me...

I get to see the Website for a brief second, then, "You need Javascript enabled to view this website. Try again... " even though it displays at first.

Nonsense.

Flash Of Styled Content?

Dev here. Good luck creating a countdown site without JS (and no, meta-refresh doesn't count).

The non-js version has "As of [page load time]" and static numbers.

The JS version first removes the "As of" and updates the numbers dynamically.

CSS animations? They've got really good support across most browsers (c. 90% coverage).

nice idea and looks pretty, but I hate the weird scroll hijacking.

Yes, it's rather awkward on non-discrete scrolling systems like trackpads and trackpoints.

This site isn't the only scrolljacking offender, even NYTimes has a subtle accelerate/decelerate that is counterproductive and annoying.

Is there a greasemonkey script or the like that can disable scrolljacking? I recognize that means it'll probably break layout for many cases, but at least to avoid some (like NYTimes).

This is very cool.

+1 on making it as static as possible, updated manually with a refresh and an optional small JS to update a figure inline.

What I don't quite understand is the number of launches:

When I have it set to "total", the large counter says 22, but the text says "As of August 2014, SpaceX has launched 17 rockets (all from its sole rocket family".

Is the big number more current than the text? These should probably agree, or maybe a text explaining why they are different.

When set to Falcon 9, the large counter is at 17, the text says "To date, it has launched on 11 occasions". So here there's no specific date, and the difference between the numbers is 6, whereas for the total it is 5. Looks odd.

Cool stats and description. One issue, in "Merlin 1D Inflight Operating Time" the paragraph text is cut off and I'm unable to scroll to see the rest of it.

Can anyone tell me what web framework is used to create a website like this? I've seen many websites in this "scrolling" style, and I want to create one myself!

Please don't!

Google "parallax JS" and you'll find a bunch of libraries. That said, it's horribly overused and often poorly implemented in a way that's frustrating to users.

Nice site and stats. Horrible UX with that scrolling...

I think there should be a width limit on text content, it's incredibly hard to read text on a big monitor.

Another example of great design married to great content almost totally marred by scroll hijacking.

Good luck keeping your domain name.

Are there astronauts in training?

yes:

http://www.americaspace.com/?p=16783

Looks pretty, clean design

It's easy to count hours worked, so it's not countless. It's also not a positive. Did space shuttle workers work unlimited hours?

Dev here. Stop taking such a literal interpretation. Unless you're being purposefully dense, it's obvious that it's meant to be a figurative statistic to represent the hard work that's gone into building SpaceX. Many workers who I know work their asses off there.

Right, but I would have preferred an attempt to estimate the stat. Isn't that what this page is all about?

Number of employees over time * number of workdays they made * 8 would be a reasonable estimate.

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