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by errantspark 1780 days ago
One pilot died, the other bailed out successfully.

Branson didn't fly on the first flights because SpaceShipTwo is a completely different beast to New Shepard. SpaceShipTwo is a pioneering space plane with MANUAL controls. New Shepard is basically the absolute most boring way you could claim to have "gone to space". It's vastly vastly less interesting and ambitious compared to what SpaceX and even Virgin Galactic are doing.
1 comments
WalterBright 1780 days ago
It didn't have to have manual controls, and in fact the fatal accident was caused by moving the wrong control.

Automated controls are more ambitious than manual controls. Note that the Apollo 11 was supposed to be totally automated, but Armstrong saved the mission by overriding it and doing it manually.

> most boring

Well, until the automation goes wrong, then it is briefly very exciting.

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tigershark 1780 days ago
Only because of resources limitation in the ‘60s. He had to shut down some non-essential system to let the main process go on. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/apollo-11s-120...

Nothing to do with the catastrophic bugs in Boeing’s Starliner that caused the failure to reach the ISS and that would have risked the astronauts life if they didn’t fix two issues (literally) on the fly.

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WalterBright 1780 days ago
> Only because of resources limitation in the ‘60s.

Doesn't matter what the excuses were. It was supposed to work, it failed, and Armstrong took over and saved the mission.

> Nothing to do with the catastrophic bugs

Most every software bug today, once rooted out, looks like a mistake only an incompetent programmer would make. Except the best programmers make these mistakes, because humans are fallible.

If I recall correctly, SpaceX had some unintended disassemblies from software problems, too.

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tigershark 1780 days ago
SpaceX had no RUD or any problem whatsoever because of software during the commercial crew test missions. Which RUD caused by a software bug are you referring to?
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WalterBright 1779 days ago
Some of the early (unmanned) landing failures, if I recall correctly.
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