SmarterEveryDay
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023
29:48 · 5.8M views · Apr 16, 2023
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explores molten glass and Prince Rupert's drops with a glass artist, including a process that freezes the moment glass shatters and an artisan who makes the drops.
Commenters recommend it for the striking glass-shattering visuals and the artist's attitude of treating failure as a space for discovery.
5 comments from Hacker News
Initially posted this as a reply, but going top-level, cause the hot takes are too spicy for my liking. So the plan was to test x, y, and z. Launch sequence and takeoff, stage separation and Starship engine light, and the post-launch stuff like booster wet landing, reentry, and heat tiles. The booster by itself is not aerodynamic, so the only way to test x is with a starship on top. And if you have starship, you might as well test y and z. But it's not a primary goal. Any more effort in polishing y and z is "premature optimization". X was the test. SpaceX did the X, we got max Q. On the most recent SmarterEveryDay video on encasing a Prince Rupert's drop in glass, sculptor Cal Breed talks about the moment when a process fails. He could stop there and restart, saving some time, but instead all the pressure is off, and he "makes as many mistakes as possible" for the rest of the build. Quote is towards the end, but the whole vid is worth a watch. this video [LINK] Edit: also, they needed the flight plan all the way through "total success" in order to file with the FAA. You can't just have "oh sweet, 100% of booster things worked, we now have a suborbital craft careening on a parabolic trajectory". I didn't read a flight plan, but I imagine they must have spelled out each possible outcome exhaustively.
If you are planning on several y and z anyways, absolutely. On the most recent SmarterEveryDay video on encasing a Prince Rupert's drop in glass, sculptor Cal Breed talks about the moment when a process fails. He could stop there and restart, saving some time, but instead all the pressure is off, and he "makes as many mistakes as possible" for the rest of the build. Quote is towards the end, but the whole vid is worth a watch. this video [LINK]
Shout out to Destin from SmarterEveryDay for his love of PRDs. Learn about and see how it’s made – [LINK] Encasing a shattering drop in glass – this video The process the team uses in the second video to freeze the break in glass is pretty awesome! (If you’re into that kind of thing)
It's funny, I've just discovered this drop two days ago, because it's mentioned at the end of Book 5 of Dungeon Crawler Carl ( [LINK] ) A coworker shared this video about the artisan who makes theses drops this video
Last time this was discussed on HN, someone raised the artist's approach to failure as a rich space for discovery, which was nicely put by him at this point in the video: this video