One comment

• Edward

  September 6, 2024 at 3:33 pm

  John Batchelor,
  You asked: “Do [engineers] get excited when they have a problem like this? Is this like joy for them?”

  First: John, thank you for the compliment. We are rarely thought of as the cool kids.

  To answer the question, we are much happier when our plans work the first time. Robert is right about that. When they go the way of the proverbial mouse’s plans (awry), we are first upset, but then we once again must prove to Mother Nature that we are the Masters of the Universe. Is it a joy to beat Mother Nature? Yeah.

  But she does not go gently into that good night. When ships sink too often, we build an unsinkable one. Of course, Mother Nature sends an iceberg our way in order to prove us wrong, so then we work out that problem too (e.g., sail farther south and ensure lifeboats for every person aboard).

  When the thrusters on Starliner don’t produce the expected thrust, we figure out a workaround, which our fearful leaders ignore and demand a different workaround that exposes the astronauts to a condition in which they spend September 6th through September 24th, or so, without proper (meaning: “safe”) life boat seating. I wonder what kind of “iceberg” Mother Nature will send in the way of ISS during that time; she teaches her nasty lessons through “tough love.” Sometimes we survive to learn the lesson.

  The engineers learned the lessons from the Titanic, but the “rocket scientist” politicians didn’t. The politicians still think that they can design successful rockets and space missions.*
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  * What moron thinks that it is a good idea to fund a Perseverance rover to Mars to collect return samples and fund the return mission separately, to be (mis)designed later?** NASA knew enough to not do that two-thirds of a century ago, when designing a mission to send man to the Moon. Engineers prefer one mission that works, rather than two missions where the second one has to clean up the mess made by the first. Less desirable but more designable is two missions designed simultaneously and coordinated with each other so that they work together as a team, not separately where the second looks like a rescue mission.

  ** Come to think of it, there are some problems that we just do not enjoy solving. It’s one thing to solve a problem to advance man’s conquest of the universe, especially in easing our lives or overcoming the dangers of Mother Nature, but it is another when we have to fix some dummkopf’s political error that should never have been made in the first place.