SmarterEveryDay
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2023–2025
1:05:20 · 5M views · Dec 3, 2023
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day gives a talk to an aerospace audience, comparing how Apollo was engineered and managed with NASA's Artemis program. He raises concerns about unresolved details, the number of launches and in-orbit fuel transfer needed to reach the Moon, and the loss of institutional knowledge.
Commenters point to it whenever Artemis, SLS or Starship refueling comes up, as a candid and critical engineering assessment delivered directly to NASA.
20 comments from Hacker News
This thinking, or questioning, is needed everywhere. There is so much security paranoia, that it affects any one, just trying to do something. From setting up a wifi router, to seeing up an email account. Passwords must be used. Walt for 2FA before proceeding. Change your password to include upper lower Roman numerals and at least 5 different fonts... Why? Instead of saying up a website in 15 minutes, there is an hour of preparing to set up a webpage. If I live in the country side, have no neighbors for 50 miles, I must secure my router going to my starlink. Why? Added complexity and regulations, seem to grow around us just as the beurocracies; schools, governments, companies - maybe our lives are just all dependent on the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Higher disorder? I recommend this amazing presentation, questioning the basics, and attitude in teamwork, of the Artemis project: this video
I am not affiliated, but as a fan… Smarter Every Day did a walkthrough with an actual Apollo engineer on the rocket and it was absolutely amazing. Definitely worth watching if you want to understand what this engineering program was up against — it’s kind of insane what they were doing with 1960s tech. [LINK] Same guy also have one of the bravest talks I’ve seen in a while about the lessons of the Apollo program for Artemis, including some criticisms that I thought were deeply valid. Much to learn about Apollo from this talk as well. this video Thus very document is the foundation of that talk and I’m sure why this is ending up on hacker news, so credit where credit is due please.
Do yourself a favor and look up moon landing 4k on youtube. There’s some amazing immersive stuff now: [LINK] There’s also a few amazing first person videos from space walks on the ISS: [LINK] The footage from Artemis is gonna be incredible. Also highly recommend this “are we going?” Talk on engineering issues in Artemis: this video Which is where I learned about this report from NASA called “What Made Apollo a Success”: [LINK]
I recommend you to watch it, it's really good. But as I mentioned in another comment, here is a relatively good AI summary: this video Click on see more, to see 5 minute wise summaries. (Not affiliated with this site, I just use it from time to time)
I came across this document in a talk Destin Sandlin gave to the American Astronautical Society [1]. The talk compares the architecture and process of the Apollo mission with the modern Artemis mission, and is very critical of the latter. I think both hold some great lessons, even for software engineers working on non-critical systems. [1] this video