🚀 go-pugleaf

On 2012-08-06, Don McKenzie <5V@2.5A> wrote:

> Been there, done that :-)
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-06/nasa-celebrates-successful-mars-landing/4180454

I thought the over-hyped commentary during the landing and especially
in pre-landing videos (like the "Seven Minutes of Terror") was
embarassing and made the design engineers and mission planners sound
incompetent.

The commentators kept yammering on about how there was "zero margin
for error", and how "absolutely everything has to work right".

Really?  A design with _zero_ safety margin?  Who signs off on a
system design or mission plan like that? 

I'm pretty sure that the "absolutely everything has to work right" is
also bullshit.  I heard several people who seemd know know which way
was up talking about redundancy in the hardware design, the software
design, and in the mission planning itself.

The blockbuster-movie-preview-preview-style-over-hyped-bullshit just
detracted from what in reality was an utterly brilliant job.  Even
though nothing _did_ go wrong (AFAICT), and they hit center of the
bullseye, I'm confident that there was both redundancy and margin for
error designed/built into almost everything.

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