Comment by pdonis
4 hours ago
> Wrong.
No, I'm not wrong. We're both right. Yes, the original decisions on the Shuttle design were braindead. But even given that, the decisions to ignore clear red flags from Shuttle missions were also braindead.
4 hours ago
> Wrong.
No, I'm not wrong. We're both right. Yes, the original decisions on the Shuttle design were braindead. But even given that, the decisions to ignore clear red flags from Shuttle missions were also braindead.
Agree. But I think that Shuttle didn't do intermediate tests of these things is part of the reason it never lived up to its potential. During development they lost fact of what they tried to achieve in the first place.
They sacrificed what worked for potential, but tried to take far to big of a step.
I would argue, if you design something that has so many potential pitfalls and so many operational constraints, and so many drivers that make it incredibly expensive and slow, it is understandable why they started overlooking red flags. They would have barley ever lunched at all if they had not overlooked red flags.