[AR] Re: Congratulations, Bill Claybaugh and Orbital Sciences!!!

  • From: JMKrell@xxxxxxx
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2013 10:20:33 -0400 (EDT)

Great video!
 
 
In a message dated 10/2/2013 6:54:10 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
monroe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

Bill
Here's one just for you from my friends on the satellite  tracker
mailing  list.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyMZkbtMVk

Monroe

>  -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [AR] Re: Congratulations,  Bill Claybaugh and Orbital
> Sciences!!!
> From: Norman Yarvin  <yarvin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Tue, October 01, 2013 8:43  am
> To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 30,  2013 at 04:00:57PM -0700, Rand Simberg wrote:
> >That's not what  we're insisting.  We're insisting that we should come 
up 
>  >with consistent terminology, on which everyone agrees.
> 
>  That's a bit much.  Words in human language are and have always  been
> vague; one writes precisely by using lots of words in such  a
> combination that the ambiguity is removed, not by nailing down  precise
> meanings of every word as one does in the hard sciences.   It's one
> thing to insist on words that were originally defined with a  precise
> meaning retaining that meaning, but to insist that words that  were
> originally defined imprecisely start having a precise meaning is  too
> much.  (And no, a hundred-page NASA spec is not a precise  definition;
> there are always plenty of ambiguities in such  specs.)  Especially
> when you admit there isn't much point in  using the term.
> 
> In this case, the meaningful distinction is  probably that Orbital's
> capsule is human-rated while its launch  vehicle is not, while in
> SpaceX's case both are human-rated.  (At  least from the discussion I
> presume this is the case.)  And it's  meaningful not because of any
> fundamental technical property but in  social terms: it means many
> man-years went into politely arguing with  NASA about many of those
> ambiguities in that long spec (whatever it  happens to be at the
> moment), and in changing the hardware whenever  they happened to win
> the argument.
> 
> There are always  going to be frivolous words and frivolous people;
> trying to stamp out  either is a waste of time -- and if you really
> want to try, icy  contempt is a better tool than passionate pleading.
> 
> 
>  -- 
> Norman Yarvin                http://yarchive.net/blog

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