Re: Crash for Armidillo

From: Jack Sprat (sib101_at_gmail.com)
Date: 08/12/04 

Date: 12 Aug 2004 06:20:21 -0700

greg@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu (Greg Kuperberg) wrote in message news:<cff447$q4a$1@conifold.math.ucdavis.edu>...
> In article <c0e0a1dd.0408111424.199a7765@posting.google.com>,
> John Carmack <johnc@idsoftware.com> wrote:
> >Crashing just isn't THAT big of a deal for us,
>
> I have to wonder how serious you really are about manned spaceflight
> after saying something like this. Is it,
>
> (a) "Crashing a manned flight also isn't that big of a deal
> for us, because our people are expendable,"
>
> (b) "Crashing a manned flight is a big deal, but we're going to learn
> not to crash very soon,"
>
> or
>
> (c) "Crashing a manned flight is a big deal, but we're going to risk it
> because we thrive on grief"?

Honestly, that's simply an absurd thing to post. If I'm developing
medical software where lives are at stake, and I get a compile error,
should I wring my hands in despair that I'm not taking it seriously
enough?

No, obviously, because I'm in development. At that stage of the
process, errors are expected. It's the end-product that matters, and
late-stage testing is different from early-stage testing.

Exactly whose life was put at risk here? The rockets are in
development. He knew there was a problem, yet decided to risk
launching, because he wanted to gather more data.

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