I know we all want to focus on the poor monkey, but let’s not gloss over this other crazy actual part of the story:

It’s very likely true, but it’d take more than that to prove liability, that’s my point. What I’d like is to see a thorough investigation to conclusively prove it so that the government gets off its butt and actually does something about this sort of idiotic design choice. But with our incoming administration actually…

No matter what you’re anecdotal experience is, there is no doubt at all that these people died because of this stupid design.

Reminds me of the protagonists of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” trying to get the sundiving ship to stop its fatal sundive, and discovering how frustrating its cool black-on-black color scheme is, because all the text is written in black and the buttons are black and when you get it right, a little light lights…

Oh very much. In weaponry, a huge amount of requirements specification revolves around when the device *doesn’t* do things, because you want it to become lethal only in the extremely specific circumstance that it’s supposed to be. It kills exactly when you want it to. No other time.

This is fantastic. Wildland firefighting is some of the most dangerous peacetime flying there is, so being able to remove the pilot from it would be enormously helpful. And being able to automate such a heavy aircraft, and one that already exists, is a huge bonus.

THEY’RE ALL IN IT AGAINST US!!!11!!!ELEVENTY!!!!

They’re just using a lithobraking maneuver.

Yep!  If the US government had found evidence of aliens, he would 100% have blabbed it publicly by now.  Ergo, there ain’t any such evidence.

In their defense, there is an awful lot of news right now involving Musk and/or Trump.  I hear ya, though.  I could use a break from all of that.

Low orbit’s one thing, but Mars is a great deal further away. Heck, even the Moon is a great deal further way. The signal loss is the real problem. The reason the DSN antennas have such huge dishes is similar to why optical telescopes like to have big mirrors — aperture is king when you want to observe very faint…

YES!!!!!

Nah.  Salt.

I’m honestly humbled by that statement. Thank you. I’m gonna miss this place too if/when it shuts down. I’m already missing the rest of the whole Gizmodoverse. This is basically what’s left of it.

You can actually use Agile on a safety critical product. What matters the most is the discipline and mindset in which you’re working. You need your requirements and your tests very well defined from the start, and you must absolutely not deploy to the end user community before a high level of rigor in the test…

I don’t have a Tesla, but from what I’ve read, they all have emergency release levers. What they don’t all have is manual release levers. This seems like a weird distinction, but it’s real. So, the manual release lever is just a regular door latch that you can use anytime you want, except it’s mechanical instead of…

It’s the biggest problem with the Agile design methodology. You’re supposed to maintain momentum by focusing on producing a minimum viable product with each sprint. The idea is this keeps you from getting distracted, which is great, but the problem is that it enables business wonks who want to call that product done. I…

It is super cool, I‘m glad you’re enjoying it!

And the limiting factor for that isn’t the Mars satellites, as you just pinpointed the real problem. It’s the ground stations here on Earth. JWST is a stupendously amazing instrument, but it just exacerbated that problem massively, and that’s nothing compared to what Artemis is going to do to the problem.

Minor addendum: simultaneous to MAVEN, they’re also communicating with MRO. It’s listed that way on the DSN Eyes page because of the relay system; the reality is that only one of them is actually talking to Earth, but it’s sending and receiving data for both of them.