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this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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SpaceflightMemes
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People shit on NASA all the time, as if "private space exploration" is the future, but I did the math on their JUNO mission and their margin of error was 1%.
NASA is goated.
imo NASA's good for some stuff in space and private enterprise is good for other stuff, like finding high risk solutions cheaply, like making the falcon 9 land vertically, which halfed the cost per kilogram to orbit. NASA's def better for research and stuff though. the future is a combination of both
What kind of calculation?
Delta-V Budget assuming standard parts
Getting anywhere in space requires ∆V, think of it like "gas needed" to go somewhere in a car, in an extremely simplified form.
The long form is a dimensionless change in velocity. You can point to any object in the night sky and calculate the ∆V required, like Jupiter.
In this case, NASA needed to go say, 384 miles to get to Jupiter and made it with less than 4 miles of fuel remaining using the car analogy. That's a shocking degree of accuracy.
They then purposefully coasted into the gravitational terminus of Jupiter terminating the mission using the final 1% of fuel, while studying the planet over a number of years.
In space, informally, and also because I'm personally somewhat awful at space, a 20% margin of error in ∆V would be considered "good" for us mere mortals, because we need to have wiggle room for errors, mistakes, and course corrections.
(Flipping a lander or rover over on the Moon is considered to be average performance, see: IM-2)
I'll have you know I managed to land Jeb on mun with exactly zero fuel remaining, so suck it NASA.
20% is kinda a lot ngl, we could probably do better.
efficiency means failure under stress
resiliency means success under stress
efficiency doesn't mean that
if you worship it, it does
redundancy isn’t necessary waste
Doesn't resiliency mean "success after previous failures"?
if you’ve cut out too much in the pursuit of efficiency, your organization/project/vehicle/engine won’t be able to make another attempt after failure