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CatastrophicFailure

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    Tesla Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    6 hours ago, tater said:

    Really interesting to hear from someone who uses it. I tried it a little the few times I was trying friends' teslas, but only briefly.

    It's telling that so much criticism levied against Autopilot comes from people who've never used it at all, based on hearsay on what it's "supposed" to do. Like anything, it takes a bit of learning, for the moment. My wife loves the traffic-aware cruise control but pretty much never uses auto-steer, if she does she sends up unintentionally disengaging it by tugging the wheel a bit too hard. I've found you have to trust the system about half a second father than you want to. Where it's meant to work, it works really really good. Even where it's not meant to work, it still works pretty good. But you've got to know and accept its limitations as an incomplete system.

    6 hours ago, tater said:

    The difference vs actively driving if impaired is interesting. I end up staying awake most of the time when my wife gets called in to the OR in the middle of the night, particularly if she's already been on call a couple days in a row—concerned she might be so tired driving is less than ideal.

    I do a lot of long driving on nearly-deserted roads in the middle of the night, even as it is now, it's dang near perfect for that.

    45 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

    The listed sandwich, dryer, etc, differ from the "autopilot" requiring the driver's  constant attention without driver's actions.

    Not really, no. They are all things which have a specific set of circumstances where they can be used safely. If you deliberately-deliberately-ignore warnings and use them outside of those circumstances, that is on you, not on the item. You have made that choice and need to own that mistake.

    46 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

    an autopilot which can replace a human on the driver seat

    Except, it's NOT that. And it's not marketed or sold as that, either. Those warnings I posted above demonstrate that. Autopilot is a driver assist system, not full autonomy, and no one familiar with it actually thinks otherwise. Full Self Driving is coming, but it's not here yet, safe for a handful of carefully chosen beta test volunteers.

    49 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

    The only purpose of an autopilot is a long boring trip

    And this remains its primary use and selling point.

    Tesla Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    37 minutes ago, tater said:

    I use cruise control all the time, but I'm not sure I'd ever use autopilot the way it is currently available. If I'm paying attention anyway, I'd just steer. I'd see autopilot (if I had it) as a way to stretch, or change positions briefly on a long drive, maybe.

    …

    I would imagine I would consider autopilot to be about as mentally taxing as it is sitting in the right seat with one of my kids driving (they are both learning now). In some ways I think I am paying far more attention when supervising kids than when actually driving.

    I use Autopilot near constantly, and almost entirely on winding country roads. I’ve had a while now to get used to its quirks and features, and figure out where it works well and where it doesn’t. It’s an absolute Godsend when I get off work after a long day of, ironically, driving, and now have to drive home when I’m a virtual zombie. Autopilot handles the basic tasks of keeping speed and staying in the lane, so I can focus my admittedly compromised attention entirely on watching the road, not the minutia of driving itself. And even on long road trips where I’m not compromised, just like airplane AP it greatly reduces my mental workload, so at the end of the day I don’t have that drained feeling nearly as much, and you’ll hear this same sentiment echoed by other frequent Autopilot users. 

    Yes, it’s extremely surreal the first time you engage it, and that wheel starts moving on its own. It does take a while to learn how to trust it, but for the vast majority of users, that trust that leads to responsible, proper use comes fairly quickly. 

    28 minutes ago, tater said:

    Country roads I'm less sure about, animals, passing into oncoming lanes (common on undivided highways here), etc. On twisting roads I'd probably end up hyper aware prepping to take over, lol.

    It does extremely well on winding highway-speed (50-60mph) two-lanes, on some tighter 30-40mph suburban windies it’s struggled a bit in the past, but I’ve seen it improve remarkably over the last year or two. It even slows down for cyclists or walkers on the side of the road. I trust Autopilot far more than the rando coming the other way and inching closer to the centerline. 
     

    1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

    So, all those measures to attract the attention are just an attempt to drop the blame from the manufacturer onto the customer.

    The blame for blatant misuse of a product remains, as it always has, sorely on the shoulders of the user, not the manufacturer. Ever hear that gag about the guy with the wrecked RV who set the cruise control then went in back to make a sandwich?

    If you take a hair dryer into the shower, despite being warned not to, and get electrocuted, that’s on you, not the hair dryer. 
    If you spill hot coffee on yourself, after being warned it’s hot, and get burned, that’s on you, not the coffeemaker. 
     If you stick your hand in the garbage disposal… well, you get the idea. 
     

    This is the warning you have to acknowledge before you can ever engage Autopilot:

    Spoiler

    M04qrz4.jpg

    This is the warning you get every single time you do engage it:

    Spoiler

    ThohYQM.jpg

    If you choose to ignore all these warnings, and fail to pay attention to the point that you don’t even see the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle ahead, that is YOUR fault, not the machine’s.

    Every single Autopilot-involved accident up to this point has been a result of user error, pure and simple, full stop.

    And they remain extremely rare, because the vast majority of people are not, in fact, blithering idiots, and can responsibly operate a piece of equipment after sufficient “education.” But, “another Autopilot crash!” is sensational, and sensational gets those sweet sweet ad clicks. Double bonus points for Tesla, too, since anything negative involving Tesla is also sensational (it’s almost like someone(s) somewhere has a vested financial interest in all this sensationalism, hmm…)

    Pretty much every automaker has their own driver-assist system available now that kinda-sorta approaches what Autopilot can do, yet you never hear about those crashes, because those crashes are so unsensational that no one is even keeping data on them. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

    Just as a reminder, the way this discussion got (re-)started is that a poster here made a dismissive comment about "NIMBY environmentalists".

    I clarified my position already, but let me do it again: I used that term very specifically, to refer to a very specific subset of people: those for whom SpaceX can do no right, for whom it's mere existence is an affront not to be tolerated, largely because of its ties to Elon Musk. There is literally nothing SpaceX could do to please such people short of-maybe-completely disbanding, liquifying its assets and distributing them to some group or another, after, of course, completely un-making every construct it's made. For such people, rockets are bad, and civilization is bad, because humans are bad. The same kind of people who love to harp on Tesla for this or that, completely dismissing that actual good they're doing for the environment, because humans are bad. Based on all the information I've seen, everywhere, Spacex (and Tesla) is doing it's realistic best to be a good neighbor. Is it perfect? Of course not. There is no perfect. The perfect is the enemy of the good enough.  I've come to look on a great number of "environmentalists" with great cynicism, as if one pokes their motivations just a little, once finds them laced with, shall we say, conflicts of interest. Yes, my opinion on the matters at hand is absolutely biased, but remember, so is yours. 

    6 minutes ago, Beccab said:
    I... I don't even know what to say

    "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with..." well, you know... :P

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    It's a bit much to be talking about "environmentalist NIMBYs" when SpaceX picked a spot right next to a wildlife refuge knowing full well that it was right next a wildlife refuge.

    If they didn't want to have to worry about stuff like that, they should have picked a different location.

    There’s literally nowhere they can go on the east coast that isn’t going to rustle someone’s jimmies. It’s either protected land of one sort or another, too close to populations, or too far from road access, which would require its own sessions of jimmy rustling to build the needed roads. See @tater’s post up-thread for a proper dissertation on perceived (by a certain set of people) impacts to sensitive areas vs actual impacts. The wildlife at KSC ain’t exactly teetering on the brink… <_<

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

    My first thought as well.  Boondoggle.

    Just build a 'jetwash berm' however many miles long and call it a day.   MUCH cheaper

     

    Heck - using 'tilt-up' concrete wall construction techniques - they could build a building/ tunnel with a light covering of topsoil cheaper than trying to tunnel and keep dry for any reasonable length of time.

    Problem here is environmental impact. Most of the closures are simply for outsize load transport, the "easiest" solution would just be to drastically widen the existing road or build an entirely new, private road for SpaceX use only. But to do either one, especially the latter, they'd be doing some serious encroachment into the surrounding wetlands, which would no doubt drive the "local" environmentalist NIMBYs apoplectic, if such projects could even get approved. 

    So in the end, the real-world "path of least resistance" model might indeed be a finicky tunnel. Convenient that Musk also just so happens to be connected to a fledgling tunnel-boring company, which might even welcome to chance to expand its knowledge on how to build such a difficult tunnel, since dealing with such situations will no doubt become a factor in their expansion plans down the road... or through the tunnel...-_-

    Blue Origin thread.

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    27 minutes ago, Beccab said:

    Seriously, with ULA they have a delay of 4 years over an engine that should have been completed after 1 year and here they speed up

    This keeps up and Tory is gonna show up at Jeff Who's door with a lasso and a branding iron, mark my words. -_-

    Where are my engines, Jeff?

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    Got my Dishy up & working today! :D Some “real world” observations:

    Spoiler

    Setup is, indeed, stupidly easy. If you’re just using the included Starlink wifi router, which kind of stinks. Took a few minutes for the connection to “settle” into something usable, first speed test I got 60mbs download, second 130:

    FNL9iuZ.jpg
     

    6i0sKlV.jpg

    It’s very temporarily “installed” on a table on my back porch, in a pretty horrible location for obstructions. The dish comes with 100’ of Ethernet cable permanently installed, seems pretty stout and durable for outdoor use, as it should. I also ordered a simple pole mount I’ll switch to once I find a permanent spot, that’s kind of an impressive bit. Very heavy steel with a very thick powdercoat, and also dead simple: it slides over the end of a wood/metal pole, is secured with set screws, then the dish just latches in on top. Even comes with a couple dozen screw-in cable clips  

    So, crummy location aside, we were able to watch en episode of Loki just fine with no buffering or freezing (which is more than I can say for Comcast :mad:) through the included router. The WiFi signal seems pretty weak, it was showing red in the Starlink app just like 20 feet and a wall & a half away, but worked fine. Then I tried to integrate Dishy into the existing network… :wacko: First tried plugging my Linksys router into the aux port on the Starlink router, and all hell broke loose. Got everything patched back together but I’m now reminded of which devices on my net do not have static IPs which are supposed to, so now nothing else can find them. :P Problem for later.

    Solution was just to plug the Dishy directly into my existing router like a modem. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be as seamless as I’d hoped, as it looks like I’ll have to reboot the router each time I need to switch between Starlink and Comcast. Was hoping it would be just a simple cable swap so I could use an A/B switch. Anyways, downside is that without the Starlink router I can’t connect with the app to get this handy stats page:

    8DRsJD3.jpg
     

    As you can see, it’s listing a fair amount of outages, on the order of every couple of minutes for a few seconds. Now, in practice, I haven’t noticed at all so far. This was during that streaming episode, you can see the throughput there too. Running random speedtests the last couple hours I’ve seen burst speeds approaching 200mbs, or down as low as 40-ish. So far, pretty on-par with what I get from Comcast. When it works. IIRC, there are ways to integrate the Starlink router to still get this page, will have to research that next.

     

    What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

    in The Lounge

    Posted

    Finally found the load limit on the tractor. :cool:

    lJgeF8c.jpg

    Could lift this basket of alder but juuuust barely. Check how squooshed the front tires are, I could barely turn the steering wheel, either. Yup, split the whole load by hand, too. -_-

    And of course by “by hand” I mean my hands worked the levers on the wood splitter. Yet I still somehow feel like I got hit by a truck. :confused:  And that’s not even half of what needs splitting. :wacko:

    Also, this finally happened: 

    dYxwN5Y.jpg

    :D

    Temporarily “installed” our Dishy in a horrible location on the perennially dirty squirrel porch table.  And right off the get go, Comcast decided to plotz and not stream anything so we broke it in with the first episode of Loki, which worked perfectly well despite the app reporting disconnects every few minutes. 
    yes I drink the Kool-Aid, and it is sweet

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    29 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    don't know what you are talking about. Capsule recovery was fine on Starliner's OFT-1.

    What @Silavite said. Y'know, like how in-game you hit 70km and pop the service module only to have it come flying back moments later all "oh, hai Mark Bob!" :D

    32 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Do you really think nobody else builds test articles and prototypes?

    What's getting critiqued aren't boilerplate half-completed, ahem, mockups tho, pokes @kerbiloid with a stick, it's mission-ready hardware that's "supposed" to be finished. If Boeing was blowing up test articles and then being even remotely transparent about it, that would be different entirely, as would a "finished" Dragon capsule that suddenly experienced potentially life-threatening errors. 

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    53 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    True enough, but you know that if a crew had been on the Starliner first flight they would have survived just fine.

    Until, perhaps, they burned up on reentry cuz a certain engineer didn't remember Scott Manley's Golden Rule at the last minute and checked the staging. That kind of error is "not supposed" to happen on a mature design. 

    56 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Anyway, I'm not here to claim the Starliner hasn't had some embarrassing problems. But I still think there is a double-standard in this forum where SpaceX problems are, if anything, celebrated -- "move fast and break things!" -- while anybody else's problems are attacked.

    Again, there's that difference. "Move fast and break things!" Breaking things is an inherent, and necessary part of the process. "Go slow and don't break things!" is an equally valid, if frustrating for spectators, design philosophy too, but in that case things are not "supposed" to break. Breaking things is bad. Something has gone wrong when things should not go wrong. 

    59 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    Maybe it's just a disconnect in experience. I've been part of this industry for more than 30 years, and I know that internally the attitude toward competitors, while fierce, is quite different from the rather partisan nature of discussions in this forum. And it's hard not to react to partisan attacks with partisan counterattacks.

    I think, perhaps, what you're seeing is not so much a double standard as much as (rightfully earned) criticism towards certain other players for very certain things, not just simple tribalism. Most SpaceXers are very supportive of Rocketlab, for instance, through their recent tribulations. But Boeing has been really, really screwing up lately. What began as light rivalry for many of us has turned to frustrated consternation, because a, if not the, major aerospace company should not be making such "rookie errors" as not doing integrated system tests and checking they staging software. Not to mention something as mundane as stuck valves. Boeing should be better than that, it's Boeing for Jeb's sake! 

    And then the Chosen One of NewSpace flat out turned to the Dark Side and went full Vader on us... :unsure:

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

    I'm just once again struck by what seems to be a double standard among SpaceX fans. Anything that doesn't go perfectly in a test flight for somebody else is an abject failure, but if it's SpaceX, it's "a great learning experience".

    There's very clear differences that, ahem, non-SpaceX fans tend to ignore when pointing this out: 

    Starship is not an operational vehicle, it's not even close to being operational. Ship 20's test flight is at best a proof of concept, from the very outset its not expected to go perfectly, or even go well, it's purpose is to gather data, anything at all beyond that is just icing. 

    That's very different from, say, a verification test flight of a vehicle that's supposed to be "ready," that's intended to carry people on the very next flight, or is otherwise validating systems that are expected to be "finished."

    SpaceX Discussion Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    1 hour ago, MKI said:

    If you could bet on SN20+B4 chances of failure, what stage do you think would be the most likely to fail?

     

    Been mulling this over myself for a while, I think I give it 50/50 odds of surging to/through staging (that’s a LOT of plumbing), 50/50 that Starship makes it to SECO (Rvacs remain “untested”), then maybe 25% chance of surviving reentry intact enough to even try landing. So many unknowns here, but up til reentry SpaceX at least has a lot of data on things. 
     

    41 minutes ago, Elthy said:

    Im not sure about the separation using just rotation of the combined rocket which afaik has never been done before. Lots of stuff that can go wrong, we have also seen that SpaceX had issues with ullage before. And they lost a Falcon1 during this.

    Great opportunities to learn from those failures. :wink: That whole stagey-flippy thing sounded nuts to me til I saw the animation a couple pages back, I think it will seem much less extreme in the flesh, as it were. 

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