Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff

Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by blhack on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @08:53PM (#8524813)

I'm going to get up from my chair and go to the water cooler to fill up my water bottle. I bet I will succeed at it.

How is this different to you than launching rockets?

It's different to me because launching rockets is much more difficult. There are many more things that can cause you to fail catastrophically.

To me, failure is to be expected when you're doing something that is difficult. That is the definition of doing something difficult.

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Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by eitally on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @09:02PM (#8524861)

But in this case, as well as several others (like surgery, for example), that's not at all true. We make jokes about how nearly nothing is "rocket science" or "brain surgery" for a reason: those are fields in which mistakes are not acceptable and the cost of producing as well as the cost of insuring are incredible. There is really nothing comparable between a code jockey who weaves js frameworks and SaaS services together to build apps and the engineers who wrote the assembly 30, 40, 50 years ago to power and control our space craft... or the ones who do the same thing now using more modern hardware & tools at companies like Orbital Sciences or SpaceX.

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Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by louthy on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @12:19AM (#8525529)

> We make jokes about how nearly nothing is "rocket science" or "brain surgery" for a reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

My favourite of those.

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Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by rbanffy on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:45PM (#8525232)

> We make jokes about how nearly nothing is "rocket science" or "brain surgery"

Fun note: a very long time ago I dated a woman who happened to be a brain surgeon. She used to joke her work was actually easy because nobody realy expecting her patients to survive.

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Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by ajcarpy2005 on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @11:22PM (#8525356)

Exactly. The development of rocket software is a very precise business. Here's a Reddit AMA from the SpaceX software development team.http://www.reddit.com/comments/1853ap

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Re:Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff by GrinningFool on Wednesday October 29, 2014 @08:50AM (#8526864)

That's a fair point, and one I don't disagree with. Where I do disagree is the idea that failure is a measure of success or even the potential for success.

It's a potential indicator of either the difficulty of the task, the abilities of the people performing the task, or both[1]. It's also an indicator that no matter how many things were done right, one or more things were done wrong.

I feel that your original post and subsequent reply reflect the pervasive perception that failure is a requirement for doing something big successfully. I think that's a misconception that's running rampant in the startup community. Failure can happen and it can be learned from, but success is possible without it.

1. In this case I'm going with 'difficult' and 'some things not done right'. Strongly suspect incompetence was not a factor :)

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