Preparing for this talk was a humbling process, as these systems are so complicated! I'm grateful for the countless conversations I had with people from all over the country in preparation for this talk. Also, if you feel like Smarter Every Day adds value to your life and you'd like to be in on the Sticker Team and STICK with me, I'd love to have your support on Patreon! Here's the link 👉 www.patreon.com/smartereveryday 👈 Thank you for considering.
2:22 That is how enginers are demoted , That is why EEVblog DAVE ended in a basement :D :D That is how I ended up in the smallest and most difficult office to find in my company :D
Huh?? Jesus! what’s going on here.?!? You nailed it. My name is Trevor, I’m an atheist, and Destin, I’m 100% sure you know what I meant by that. Well done. You never know with the internet, but I say “a hearty a-political well done”. 👍 My comment was a result of the one before, where someone seemed to not “fallow” what the message was, and now I happily see most of us get this. The “Destin”s of the world are how we got to the Moon in the first place. Hopefully our current generation lives up to the old guard’s standards and possibly surpasses.
I have to say you possess amazing communication skills! You are incredibly talented at presenting complex information in not only a fun and humorous way but also bringing deep and thoughtful insight into topics that otherwise people would be hesitant to talk about or even get into. But it's not just Presenting, but also reading the room, reading the body language of the person you are interacting with, listening with an open mind, and ultimately finding that connection with that other person even if you disagree on a range of topics, Even if you have fundamentally different worldviews your ability to find that connection no matter what never ceases to amaze me! I have to say, I'd be proud to see you in a real position of power in the industry. Even if politics isn't your thing, I totally understand. But if it were up to me, I'd absolutely nominate you to be the head of Public Relations or something for NASA. Your Professionalism, candor, skill in communicating effectively and dealing with people from all backgrounds and walks of life are all traits of a great leader. And honestly you are someone who I'd be proud to see in such a role of leadership.
Destin, I work at NASA-JSC. Several people sent me this today. Your message is being heard. I will say that the redundancy and testing are still there, but Apollo took incredible risks that we cannot afford today. You are 100% spot on re: not relying on technological miracles. Some of the artist concepts make me wonder if all my work is in vain. NOTE: My opinions are my own. I do not speak for NASA.
"... Apollo took incredible risks that we cannot afford today." This attitude is why NASA is a failed agency, crippled by cowardice. I recall the scene in the movie "Apollo 13" where the sniveling creep from Grumman is told, "I guess you'll get to keep your job, then." SpaceX is going places. NASA is a federal jobs boondoggle, not a space-faring agency.
It's not really that they took risks, but that they ignored them. Then the Apollo 1 fire killed three people. So NASA learned from that, made hundreds of changes to the spacecraft and the procedures. They mitigated the risks. When Apollo 13 suffered an accident, NASA was prepared to deal with it and get them home. NASA forgot those lessons during the shuttle program. They started to ignore risks again. They knew the SRB o-rings were a problem, but went ahead with the launch for political reasons and killed seven people. They knew that foam hitting the wings was a problem, but failed to mitigate it and killed seven more. We don't need to learn these lessons the hard way again. We should choose to learn from past mistakes, get things right, and avoid killing people. We can't just hand wave away problems. The number of launches needed to refuel starship is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. At least SpaceX has demonstrated the ability to reuse a booster more than 15 times. So those launches could theoretically be done with a single rocket. On orbit refueling has yet to be demonstrated. It will have to be practiced a lot before Artemis 3. One thing Destin didn't mention is the FAA. They are delaying SpaceX's test campaign. Of course they have good intentions, because they don't want anyone to get hurt by it. But Artemis can't afford to wait 8 months between Starship tests. The FAA needs to put starship reviews and launch licenses at top priority, so they get done as fast as possible. Starship might be able to launch 100 times on cargo missions before a human ever gets onboard. (The fact that a private company is planning to use the rocket whether NASA does or not is huge paradigm shift.) Despite that, further delays to Artemis are a good sign, because it signals that risks are being dealt with and not ignored. We just want as little delay as possible.
Destin, you say you were scared, but the importance of the message dictated you speak up. You prepared, you read manuals and reviewed other materials, you interviewed people who knew what happened in the past -- and held on tight to your courage and conviction -- and gave a presentation that hundreds of thousands of people are excited to see! Win-win-win all around. So proud of you!
What he didn't says is that if you are going to use a Starship derivative to land on the moon there is no reason to have SLS/Orion involved on that mission, use a Dragon capsule to deliver them to the HLS vehicle in earth orbit. A fully refueled HLS can get then to and from earth orbit. The >billion dollar SLS launcher can be used for other missions where it accomplishes something useful, like a deep space mission.
@@k53847 That's incredibly simplifying how complex Orion is. Real life isn't Kerbal Space Program you know. Starship HLS is designed to be very barebones and can currently only fit TWO people. It can't even return back to LEO.
In decades of working in Engineering I've worked with only one engineer that would hand me his design and ask me to tear it apart (a sort of pre-design review - design review). We'd later meet up in a glass walled conference room and discuss it. Often it would get quite animated. I later found out that my coworkers thought we hated one another as they took notice of our sometimes loud discussions. What they didn't know was that after those meetings we would go out to lunch together and yuk it up. In 30 years he was one of the very few engineers that had no ego and instead did whatever it took to make the design better.
That’s a great story. I wish more people were as confident to ask for someone to review and destroy their work to find flaws and make it so much better. I think more people should take that approach since it can lead to different ideas and discoveries. With this approach it forces the designer to put their best effort at the start as opposed to someone who’s overconfident and too certain of themselves.
My engineering company has a process where after we make a plan, we are required to call in 3-6 "retired" guys from the company who completely tear apart everything in our plan. I think it's something more companies need to have, it's so incredibly important to have people pick apart and look at every little piece of your plan.
I worked as a bicycle mechanic for almost a decade and the guy I first trained under was honestly the best within a 200 mile radius of our shop. He still had me test ride and give feedback on every bike he worked on after he deemed the repair complete. If I thought something was off he would address it and explain to me either how/why he had failed to catch what was causing the particular issue or explain why what I had noticed was within acceptable parameters for that particular work order. There was never any negative emotions associated with feedback. We would always check each other's work and took pride in collectively doing the best job we could possibly do. That experience taught me so much on what I wanted my working relationships to look like. It doesn't matter how good you are as an individual, you will always be best as a collective with a unified goal. That only works, though, if you're humble enough to say "Hey, new guy. Tell me what you think about this"
i've worked with a buddy of mine on some I.T. projects and some other pet projects of ours as a beta tester for games and programming, and thankfully he's a pretty chill and mellow guy so the most issue we had with feedback was the occasional use of slang leading to a misunderstanding in communication. granted we are on opposite sides of the planet so we cant exactly see the other test or all the design documents but its good to have someone test check blind spots and verify things without having hurt feelings. it reminds me of when I worked with my math tutor we both did the same problem and got different results and neither of us was arrogant about it, and even had a bit of a laugh when I explained part of my uncertainty in my answer was "I mean one of us must of made a mistake and I've only been doing this for maybe a couple of weeks so I'm no so confident that I can say clearly YOU made a mistake" we both made mistakes occasionally working on the math problems and we always just did the smartest option of going back through the problem bit by bit line by line and finding where we went off track. humility and a willingness to admit mistakes is very important as is clear communication on the subject material.
We did pair programming in high school and had to correct each others code to make the games work and it was a lot of fun. I also think that online math sites where you have to enter the answer and get feedback are great as it automates the error checking process somewhat, rather than having to look it up in the book.
I was a former engineer on the Orion propulsion system working on Artemis-1, 2 and 3. All the folk in our branch used to always joke that Orion was always two years from launching but I don't think it ever really clicked for us just how big of a communication issue was going on, I realize now that a lot of us were just so compartmentalized in our work and not actually seeing the bigger picture of what we were trying to do. So thank you for getting this out into the open Destin. It's important for us to be getting that negative feedback so we can achieve more and be better engineers.
Of course the people in management realize this. It's a feature not a bug. The politicians funding you look bad if you announce you'll need several times more funding or several decades to get to the moon this way (and their political goals forbid cheaper alternatives). So the top people make sure the schedule says soon and just keeps slipping.
Or also it exposes how if a thing slips so under our control think about the problems infront that may happen after the mission is halfway through that we wont even knkw wouldve been a problem until we got to the spot where it was harder to solve problems. Its a lot ahrder to solve the problems here before they arise when theyre om the dark side of the moon but its not easy to catch all these problems. If theres already schedualing issues at a minimum.
Destin, I work as a researcher at Purdue University, alma mater of Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee. The focus of my research is in space mission architectures. Multiple people (from my lab) sent me your video this week. Rest assured that, in academia, your words will also be used to carry out more in-depth investigations about the impact of the Artemis decisions and alternatives for future missions. Thank you for your bold presentation.
Seems Destin just wants up to go back to the 1960's especially with his hypergolic fuel comment. Hypergolic are not efficient Toxic and difficult to handle and we are innovating with starship seems like yall just want another SatV and Apollo with 0 innovation
@@JesusDied4U-n9v And what exactly is wrong with backup alternative, however not efficient and toxic it may be? Innovation - sure! But if I was in that rocket and all innovation blows up (and it does for whatever reason more often than you think) I would love to have some 0 innovation, not efficient toxic, difficult to handle hypergolic fuel on board to save my a**
@@bv1970 Lol bro what do you mean blow up? Falcon 9 is the safest rocket to exist on earth with a turn around time of just 5 days for a relaunch of a F9 booster. How much safer will a Starship be after all of the protypes are finished there. Starship will be like landing house on the Moon remember we are going back to the moon to stay and build actual bases on the moon there will be many starships landed on the moon before they send actual humans bro. Space X has the best Aerospace engineers in the world bud i think they know whatthey are doing
I'm a 76 year old grandma. I loved this video. You have such amazing thought processes and my curiosity is similar to yours. I'm always asking myself: How did they do that? How does that work? Why did they change it? Can I try it? Thank you for this video. I watched the one on your eclipse photos first. That was so much fun, as at the age of 76 I saw my first eclipse ever, and it was a total eclipse. As an amateur photographer I wanted to see your equipment and was amazed at your results. I am no mathematician, nor an engineer, I am a grade school to college teacher. I ended up teaching medical terminology to nursing students. YOU are amazing! Thank you for giving my curiosity a shot in the arm!
I love how the video timeline, described from 14:30, actually describes the presentation. That the presentation started with personality & low complexity, then ramped up the complexity and lowered the personality, and finished with a return to high personality & low complexity. Destin actually modelled the behaviour in his presentation to NASA.
Destin, I’m a 43 yr old principal data engineer in Huntsville. I’ve followed your channel for a little over 2 years, and this was the best video I’ve seen. My mom works on the ARTEMIS program as well. I’ve worked with everything from an IT side, but I couldn’t believe how much a lot of your logic tied into the same problems we have. Just here I’ve worked RDEC, LOGSA, MDA. If you ever have a few minutes to talk, let me know!. BYW, the tractor pull video and the metal stamping video were some of the best I’ve seen.
The tractor pull video was fantastic. Tell your mom I appreciate her and her colleague’s efforts, and that I’m rooting for y’all. And I’m not just saying that because I have a soft spot for Huntsville!
Tell your mom that I am really looking forward to Moon mission! I wasn't alive for the Apollo missions and I have dreamed of the day when we return! I hooe it is soon!
As a former Quality engineer for a supplier for the Artemis program, this brings a lot of clarity to some of the issues we ran into. This is definitely my favorite SED video.
@@CHMichael I am talking about the Titan sub by OceaGate, it imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, the amount of pressure at that depth would literally turn your body in to mush. If you haven't heard about it I highly suggest you watch a video summarizing that whole disaster, it is an interesting case and the perfect example of why accepting negative is important.
He did say he wanted to be remembered. So that milestone was hit several times over. You could say he failed to communicate his priorities (and many times ignored negative feedback)
@@CHMichael Yes, that sub. If you're interested in the topic i highly recommend alexander the ok's video about it, it's great if you don't want to watch the video about titan he has another video about the DSV Alvin if you're not interested in DSV topic he has an awesome video about the Space Shuttle his video about the space shuttle is what gave me the space rush again and basically is the reason why i'm watching seven month old destin talk about the artemis mission
I’m not engineering literal life and death systems for a living, but as a software engineer this really resonated. I think this may be the single smartest thing I’ve ever watched on RUclips. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud!
Absolutely. Destin has voiced something that has been plaguing me for years, and he's done it so well. I really hope he follows it up with another shorter video based on his typical template, because so many more people need to appreciate it. I've worked in nuclear, payments, insurance, telecommunications, medical, and half a dozen other domains. The communication issue persists across technical, non-technical, executives and general staff, in government, academia, and every form of business new and established. Some ways I've tried to make my point (though I'm going to steal from Destin in the future!): * Shout to the cheap seats. You make a system change? You make sure every stakeholder far and wide can understand as easily as possible whether it affects them. * Siloes are made to be emptied, their contents transferred. Don't sit on information, or questions, or concerns, it's just going to rot. Don't let your pride, or fear, or uncertainty, spoil the entire silo.
After 25 years in software, I've experienced the exact things Destin described. It's far too common for there to be simple communication failures, and there are too many organizations where they're more concerned with maintaining the hierarchy and status quo than they are with knowing the truth. It can be very frustrating. Companies are like complex systems; if one thing is wrong, it can have a significant impact on the system as a whole. I've sat in too many meetings where I knew the topic (or the people) was problematic in some way. Unfortunately, even when you speak the truth, there are occasions where powerful people don't want to hear it, and then all you can do is watch the system slowly fail. I really hope the people at NASA took Destin's words to heart.
I'm also a software engineer, but to be honest, I think KISS (which is part of what Destin pleads for) is way more entrenched in software engineering than it is in mechanical engineering. This is probably due to the fact that most if not all of the software we write has to be mathematically correct, meaning we have to be able to prove the correctness of every function we write, which in turn results in as little complexity on the individual function level as possible, because we have to understand it to perfect it (leaving aside ML which in my opinion is whole other topic). Mathematical perfection cannot be achieved in real life engineering. This is due to the fact that there's indefinitely more variables in real life systems (for example worksmanship, material quality, environmental factors etc.) than there is in computer systems. This leads to engineers having to pick their battles because accounting for everything is impossible anyways and this is where things can go wrong. Because sometimes this focus on specific aspects turns into obsession so that resetting the focus or reevaluating the problem goes out of the window. It's hard to stress enough how neccessary a fresh perspective can be in these kinds of situations.
@@B20C0 _"...most if not all of the software we write has to be mathematically correct, meaning we have to be able to prove the correctness of every function we write"_ Where do you work?! 😳 Ok, I'm kinda poking fun, but what do you mean by "prove the correctness"? If you're just talking about writing tests, I've seen the exact scenario Destin described on numerous occasions, i.e., if the test doesn't pass, delete/change the test. The real problem is that we're often chasing some arbitrary (i.e., not truly necessary) deadline, so as we scramble to meet it, we often cut corners instead of pushing back and saying, "We can't safely do what you're asking by the date you're asking." It's the famous triangle of time, scope, and cost. Funny how famous that triangle is yet how often it's ignored.
This video reminds me of the concept of 'code reviews' and 'pull requests'. You make your code visible to others, so they can criticise it, resulting in changes and therefore better results
This is not a condescending talk, this is a pep talk. It is incredible how you communicate your message. "If you loose your job because of the hard questions you ask, good for you!'. That is tough but the truth. If you don't ask the hard questions people are going to die. A strong message indeed. Thank you Destin as always, a very good video and a brilliant talk.
Losing your job based on principle will follow you all of your life. If you keep a job, but abandon your principles, this will also follow you all your life. Being followed by your demons is not how you want to live life...
@crystalfire6677 Are you smarter than a fifth grader, nasa's big risk... Admitting china and India use contradictory Moon cgi.? Stage production Nasa only sends a monkeys mind into space with Dunning Kruger's who corroborate their cgi BS.
@@DESOUSAB Yeah right, imagine you hesitated to argue a problem and in the end it took a life, man that would be devastating for your life as well. Be honest and fight mishaps even if means loosing your job.
Didn't expect myself to go through the whole hour-long video, but man was your talk captivating! The way you carry the presentation, throwing in humor in places to bring the tone back up in serious moments, and the hard-hitting points you bring, especially that one about time travelling, where we don't think about our actions as having as big a gravitas as it does on the future. I think everyone in the audience appreciates this talk, even if it meant rubbing them in the wrong way. Also, I can't stress how grateful I am to see someone with enough qualification to be in that room, delivering a speech of this caliber to an audience of the smartest minds, bringing up the truth in this world where everyone prefers to talk less. You truly are a gem in the society of science, man! This video has also inspired me in many ways other than to just be more open in communication, thanks a ton!
I am impressed with your brilliance! I worked in SPACETRACK in the 60's. Software guy. Philco 2000 in assembly language tracking satellites. No core protection. Updates often done by installing "octal patches" instead of recompiling. When I arrived in 65, they were still talking about the octal patch that set off the "bomb alarms" at SAC HQ. SAC scrambled... Afterwards, a three-star from SAC was roaming the NORAD hallways shouting: "You mean to tell me a civilian scrambled SAC? I don't even have authority to scramble SAC!" If possible, do testing in a non-live environment... 🙂
My experience as an engineer is that there is a communication blockade at middle management. I call this the "impermeable layer" inside a company. It is a combination of the fear of embarrassment and fear of loss of power. To overcome this problem, engineers need to learn to communicate themselves. If you are kicked out of a project for talking the truth, you probably wouldn't like to be part of it.
Exactly! One of the reasons SpaceX works so quickly and successfully, is that they have people from different departments and different management levels working together. It stops one department doing a load of work on something, only to find when they pass to the next department, what they were working on isn’t viable or affordable.
It's the layer above your reporting manager (usually a principal staff engineer who transitioned into management) where things start to appear...rather beaurocratic let's say 😅
It sounds good saying that, but it boils down to "Just get fired bro", not so easy when of you're wrong, which you may be, your family is going to be without an income, you can lose your house. It puts the burden on the employee who depends on the job. The emphasis should all be on managers listening, as if they do that the cost to them is 0.
This is how it is everywhere. It’s a business professional problem. Childish, really. You’re absolutely right about being kicked off, too. You wouldn’t like the project, team, or both. Professional management power-plays and shutting down others because of embarrassments or whatever it may be is wrong and could cost companies MORE money. If your ego takes precedence over the team’s goals, you should be exited from the project.
I am no rocket scientist, but as someone who has spoken up about problems in the workplace only to be fired later, thank you for helping to place a greater sense of value in communication. Not just for those who would speak up, but for those who need to listen.
Destin, the topic of communication is what my mom used to train aerospace companies in. I wish she was still alive for you to talk to her! I also wish my grandpa was still around for you to chat with too. He worked on the electrical components and heat shield for Friendship 7, and the electrical components for the lunar lander at Aeronca in Middletown, Ohio. He was also involved with getting the Aeronca Champ off the ground. Thank you for reminding people to focus on the actual mission and not hurting feelings. When lives and billions of cumulative hours of time, data, labor, and progress are on the line, you MUST be focused.
As an aerospace engineer, and someone that somewhat prides myself on effective communication and effective project management, I'm blown away. I believe this will go down as one of the most impactful talks in NASA's history. Just incredibly well structured, and spectacular use of very accessible, real-world examples.
you have a lot more patience than me...I only lasted about One minute it appeared to me to be just Click Bait Plus I noticed he's begging for patreon bucks as well and if he's just a click bait patrean begger why would NASA care what he has to say,..cuz I sure don't
That took balls of steel and a heart of gold. You left me gobsmacked. Destin, you do a wonderful job of making us smarter every day, but the communication skills you demonstrate in this presentation, with the nuance required for this specific audience and context, are absolutely over the top. The message you give is profoundly important, likely to many lives; and you nailed it.
I had a very similar experience to the reverse bike experiment. I was asked to take a friend's new model aeroplane for it's maiden flight. He had been building & flying models for years, but didn't trust himself to get the plane off the ground, trimmed & back down again. So he asked me to help out despite having flown for only a year or so. I loved flying, but didn't have the patience he had for building. I made a beginner's mistake and didn't check the control surfaces properly before take off and once airborne suddenly realised the ailerons were reversed! A crowd appeared to watch and somehow after a few gentle stick movements I figured out how to fly the plane with reversed ailerons. The plane went around the circuit smoothly and landed fine. Afterwards, one of the club's long-time expert flyers came over and couldn't believe what he just saw. He was convinced he wouldn't have been able to get around with crossed controls on an out-of-trim plane. Basically, at that time I was still new to flying (having learned at the age of 40) and was used to using full concentration to fly every flight, so it seemed easy to me to simply reverse one of the sticks. But once you have flown for years and the muscle memory has taken over from the conscious brain I think it would be harder to make the switch in your head. I just wanted to make a point that it's not necessarily a property of kids brains that means they can pick up skills quickly, but the level of focus a person of any age has for the task in hand that makes the difference. The brain can surprise even ourselves when put under a bit of pressure.
Did you catch the machiavellian aforethought as a fisher of politicians, demonstrating his acumen in the field? Me thinks an office could be getting the eye
this is EXACTLY what the internet is at its best. No trolls in the comments (or I just didn't scroll down far enough), just thousands sharing how you have lifted them, inspired them and encouraged them. Bless you for doing what you do and sharing sharing that with us all.
In a way, the sentiment in your post is kind of the problem Destin was talking about with communication. Communication does not need to always be pretty. It can be messy. If everyone who dissents feels like they are going to be called a troll for dissenting then you end up with the problem he outlined. Destin wants the negative feedback. Not all negative feedback is trolling.
RUclips now hides more of the trolling and negative comments - again, based on an algorithm of what it deems to be positive and relevant to the video's content or what other people will agree on. This is to try and promote a more positive experience on RUclips, for the creators and the community. But they obviously haven't seen Destin's talk on the PID control loop, where you need negative feedback! Although, in my opinion, a lot of communities (especially Reddit) have a bit of a hive mind, where someone will be ridiculed and bullied if they have an opinion different to a majority's, so I kinda get it.
As a federal employee in an aviation related capacity, I applaud you speaking about the ELEPHANT in the room! This talk applies to everything, not just NASA! There are too many "yes men" and not enough critical thinkers in government/management especially!
This has been one of the most powerful videos I've ever watched. The only RUclips video I've ever posted to my Facebook and pleaded with people to watch. Not only engineers, There are lessons here for everyone. First video I've commented on. Thank you for showing me how to be smarter today!
I'm an engineer. I have 40 years under my belt. Every single engineering problem in every single company I've worked for, especially the government (who I work for now) had its root cause in the lack of communication. It's always bothered me, I've always spoken out about it, and I've been fired because I called out some executives for their lack of it. What you've pointed out here is 100% correct, and I hope they all listened. FWIW, my uncle, the man who got me interested in engineering at age 9, worked on the Apollo program. It's a small world.
They might have all listened, but that does not help them ride that different bike, and 99% of them will give up trying after the first few falls, much less the months it took you without your job on the line. ;-) PS, did you try crossing your arms and putting your hands on the 'wrong' hand-grip? (I think it might be easier to learn that way.)
@@you2tooyou2too The problem with that is you don't get the arm extension and movement you need for good control. This reminds me of the first time I rode a three-wheeler after years of rising a motorcycle. I almost ran into a wall because I tried to steer it like a motorcycle.
As an engineer, getting fired is part of the cost of doing your job. No matter what, you have to hold the safety and general health of the public paramount. Bad engineering kills people-chemical engineers can kill people, computer engineers can kill people, mechanical engineers can DEFINITELY kill people-and those problems you raised are the source of bad engineering. You did the right thing.
@johnmoser3594 I was fired from my last job for fixing issues I found with my boss' code. It was a good thing though, as the result was a new job with a better contractor, two tiers higher, with a significant increase in pay. As well, my old boss and the director were demoted, other's fired, and I believe the company fined.
Destin, worked for NASA recently and raised these questions. You're spot on, politics play a huge role in every architecture decision. Only the most bold leaders are willing to stand up to the politicians and say the hard truths. They're out there, some in the right places, some buried under bureaucracy. There's definitely a balance between "tech push" and "flight proven". A tech advocate said "The problem is, as it stands right now, you can't fly a robot in space until you've flown that robot in space." But the other side of that coin is, as you said, relying on "this has never been done before" mission-critical components like cryogenic fluid transfer on-orbit. The question is: How do you balance these two wisely? By letting people raise their concerns (both ways) in a professional manner, and actually listening to them.
I moved from engineering to management and meetings I’m in now ale full of politics and money, and although I was embarrassed I got to convey problems that I predicted. Not without my boss kicking me in my leg. (Once:) Communication, yes
"standing up to the people who literally fund your organisation isn't easy. IT also doesn't change anything ususally. dealing with politics is slow hard and tedious work. . Especially since you BOTH are completely dependent on public support. At least the stupid SpaceX hype has created much more support and public interest into space flight. So getting out of it to save money isn't the most popular option anymore. Ir definitely was wehn Apollo ended and the Shuttle program was castrated into near uselessness.
To be fair to politicians, it is their job to do something out of mutually conflicting goals. But if you don't tell them anything about those goals, they will never know or assume about them incorrectly.
Dude, you rock! I'm an old engineer and I watch your videos with great pleasure. I have to say this is your absolute best ever and I believe to be the most consequential. You moved the cup. Lives will have been saved because of this. I wish you all the success you deserve.
Destin, I am a dad and I took great inspiration from what I think is the most important point and conveyed it to my two teenage sons. Criticism is GOOD (cosntructive), asking questions is really good GOOD, and not being afraid of risking the consequencse to stand up for your assessment of a qualified gut feeling that something is off - or plain wrong - is best - I am glad you didn't chicken out on this one and I am particularly glad I could use this as a constructive example to show what I mean when I tell my kids: You gotta speak up, ot no one will know!
Great talk, Dr. I am an old MD, trauma surgeon and health systems manager and today I learned a lot of interesting things suitable to be applied on risky procedures and plans. I’ve got smarter this day.
Thank you Destin. This inspiring message comes to me just when I need it. I'm an aeronautical engineer myself and I have some very bad news to give my team tomorrow. Just like your example I will be faced with managers with a schedule they want to keep, and technicians whose work did not meet the standard. The safety issue implicated will make this discussion very tense and it will only be resolved if I don't back down, meanwhile I have to give them what they need to understand and make the new plan work. Your approach will prove to be helpful to at least one more aeronautical engineer out there. This is one of your best episodes IMO.
Good luck! A nice trick is to end your explanation with a call to action that focuses on finding the solution. Such as "I know we have a great team here, I'm looking forward to everyone's ideas on the solution."
@@calebpurvis6195 you're right, I did just that. Meetings almost wrapped up but without the follow-up action decided yet, so I kept people in their chairs until it was decided
Short version: wow, this is an incredibly good talk! Full version: This talk is a masterclass not only in communication (know your topic, know your audience, establish rapport, get to the point), it is also inspiring (makes a strong case to invite action), entertaining (keeps the audience engaged), educational (backs up claims with demonstrable knowledge and experience), journalistic (quotes relevant sources) and scientific (shows experiments to demonstrate points). The smarter every day series is a great series, this talk is several notches up again. I would be tempted to suggest to simplify it for more impact, but I think any simplification would cause the loss of a key point. I am scared to think about the amount of work that must have gone into its preparation. Fantastic.
I almost didn't watch it because of how long it was, but I 100% agree. It did not feel like an hour, nor was I bored at any moment during it. Destin is an incredible speaker and this was a great video.
Same here. I hesitated in the beginning because I saw that it was about an hour long. And it felt like it was over too soon and kept me longing for more! brilliant.
I didn't think I'd sit through this whole video but I'm so glad I did. This was great, I hope all those folks in the room with you took your insight and words all to heart.
I would have never thought I would watch a 1h+ lecture on Christmas morning. One of the best presentations ever. Critical negative feedback is super important. I would say to all, start using this in your own field. If you are in charge of something, make sure the whole team knows that it's ok to give negative feedback. When the atmosphere doesn't allow negative feedback, people may hide important info or cover their mistakes because of fear.
I was thinking how inspiring this could be to many other fields, not just aerospace. Generation after generation tend to dismiss or ignore the experience of the previous generation and end up “reinventing the wheel” instead of improving it.
I can’t believe I watched and understood a talk given to the smartest people on earth. I’m a farmer with ADHD and can’t sit in a 15 minute meeting without getting distracted. You prepared yourself in a way that very few can and I was engaged the whole time. I needed a teacher like this growing up and today. The world is a better place with you and 51:56 this channel. Thank you for sharing the whole message!
Hey man, also a farmer with adhd. We are some of the smartest guys on earth man. We have alot of time to build knowledge, and that turns our adhd into a super power. Idk about you but im constantly learning things while im farming. Embrace your genius friend.
Hey man, back in the day farmers with whatever goin on were who built NASA. You are a champ doing rocket science too, god only knows what the next decades will bring!
Destin, I am so happy you are talking about this. I've been involved with Artemis as a young engineer in Huntsville my whole career and the issues you're bringing up need to be discussed at every level. I didn't know you were doing this talk and I'm super bummed I missed it, but thank you for sharing this with us and thank you for a great example of how some of us should be communicating within our own teams.
As I worked on the Constellation/Artemis program a friend asked me my opinion of Dustin's RUclips video. My response is below and I thought I would share it here. I had watched this video before and I re-watched it to respond to your request. I love what Dustin has done with his RUclips channel Smarter Every Day. I have watched a number of his videos and I always learn so much. In this video I believe that Dustin’s “mistake” is that he seems to assume that the goal of the Artemis Mission is the same as was the Apollo Mission. That is not the case. The goal of Apollo was to send a man to the surface of the Moon and return him safely before the 60’s were over. The goal of the Artemis mission is to help mankind develop the means of exploring our solar system and possibly even exploring beyond our solar system; not by the end of the 2020’s, but to help develop the capability for mankind to explore forever in the future. It may take 12 or more rockets to land people back on the Moon, but once we have developed that refueling and rapid relaunch capability we may get that down to 6 rockets launched in two days. And we are not going to the Moon just to be able to bring back 842 lbs. of Moon rocks like Apollo. We are going to establish a colony on the Moon as a learning platform for exploration of Mars and beyond. This is a capability that will make mankind a multi-planetary species so that if “the big one" happens mankind may survive. Dustin attempts to simplify the “lessons learned” from Apollo and apply them to Artemis, but misses the point that the goals of the missions are dramatically different. I believe that we can learn a lot from Apollo, but we have to be aware of what our goals are and then apply the current technologies to those goals in light of the current funding and political landscape.
It has nothing to do with the technical goals of the programs, it has to do with honesty, communication, and functional feedback... All of which are lacking in modern NASA.
That was without a doubt, one of the best lectures I have ever watched. Your father can only be beyond proud of you. If every person in that room didn't learn something from your lecture, they are NOT Smarter Every Day.
I finished the whole hour and I’m kind of shocked. The message here is bigger than just Artemis and the way you convey it is important. Thanks for this!
It was interesting how he mentioned an Apollo document Artemis people should be familiar with. I am not surprised that no one has read it. I just finished the book "Homesteading Space" which covers Project Skylab, and guess what no one read the findings from that program either when ISS was being developed. NASA made the same mistakes on ISS, when it came to some of the interior design and locations of equipment, airlocks etc. It was really an interesting book.
My favorite part of this talk is how every time you say "...that's very interesting!" you can replace it with "...that's very stupid". I think all of your audience knew that. You say that preparing for this speech was humbling for you. I think most of your audience left that day more humbled than you were. Great job on this
This reminds me of Feyman's take on the Challenger disaster: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I had a general chemistry lecture series in college given by a man who was a great fan of Feynman. His explanation of the scientific method has stood me in great stead in the 50 years since, in particular in being struck by all the unscientific offenses made in the climate controversy! Feynman's friend the late Freeman Dyson has spoken well on the climate and is well worth reading. He is a man of great depth and breadth of knowledge and experience and puts his points well. His books are available through the usual outlets and used book stores. Even if you are weak in physics.
I'm a 72 year old grandmother. I love to learn something new every day. I loved this video. I can apply this to so many thing. I can learn to speak up when things are going the wrong way.
@@Voidapparate But he didn't know a thing about the 2024 Atlantean event coming to everyone's neighborhood soon...It will be all over before 2025.. World population, perhaps 2 billion..
This has probably taken the top spot in my favorite SED series. You were willing to get on their level of intellect, and try to get them "grounded" in a sense. Communication is lost today, because ego, and humility and judgement but also fear. People are afraid to say WORDS that they feel need to be said, and you Destin, are bringing that to their attention. Well done!
Watched this video when it first came out, but i came back to rewatch after a conversation with a friend. The call to action for simplicity and effective communication is so powerful and a timeless message that can be applied everywhere
This man right here. This is who I want to be when I grow up. A man full of knowledge, yet humble enough to understand when to listen and when to speak. Not speaking like a fool, but speaking with a life time of experiences, and an authority that has been earned. Destin, you are a inspiration to a generation, and I pray that as I step towards my adult life soon, that I can one day meet you with my head held high. Not meeting you as a fan, or random onlooker to the fishbowl of youtube, but someone who has created substance with their life. Praying for you and your family, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas season.
Less the praying part, (just my view), I totally agree. Shoot for the stars, and keep picking role models like this. I think you’re on the right track. 👍
My Dad worked on the Saturn V and finished his career working on ISS. He would totally agree with your message. He spoke up and had to find new assignments because he spoke his mind. He was frustrated with the Shuttle Program knowing what was accomplished with Apollo/Saturn V. Will be interesting to see what happens. I grew up in Huntsville!
i generally think politics have to much say in securitythings (guessing it was) in stuff like for example space programs. Politics should have no wote in anything involving stuff like this. Just "sc. nice to have/do" nothing else.
@@jvsyoutube3298 Destin is referring to the fact egos and personal agendas get in the way of group decision making in organizations. It happens in businesses as well as projects like the Apollo Program and the Artemis Lunar mission. This is not referring to Democrats vs Republicans.
I grew up in Florence Alabama. I read a book in school “You will go to the moon” I got to hold a space shuttle panel as a scientist hit the other side with a propane torch, and walk through the sky Lab module before it went up during a field trip to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. I thought we would be further by now. Really great presentation, thank you 🙏
This seems a bit unfair. Most of us have careers that we've worked very, very hard to build. Very few in the engineering world (be it hardware, software, etc) have been in situations where there was a difficult political element to improving the product. Some step up and carefully do the right thing, others play it safe and stay quiet. Destin did the former. I sincerely doubt he would ever equate the risk he's taking with those of our astronauts. Going to guess you're having a bad morning.
I’m so proud of him. His talk may have worked already. The US government accountability office announced a few days ago that Artemis 3 is likely to be delayed a few years mainly because of the exact issues he mentioned, the HLS refueling issue.
It almost seems to me, that with this magnitude of incompetence, that the powers that be just don't care. They know they have so many problems, that no one person thinks they can or actually can turn it around. I worked at KSC during the early phases of this program and heard even non-technical people for one of the major contractors talking about these issues all the time, BUT, they were not on the design team, did not have the ear of the program manager, too far away from NASA HQ and were too late in the stack process to be taken seriously. In other words, it was all ignored common sense.
Destin, late to the show here, but just wanted to say, this was a fantastic talk. Why couldn't they just build off of the Saturn V and make it bigger and more technologically updated without reinventing the wheel so to speak!
My father was the chief ground systems engineer for the Titan program. As a kid I overheard soooo many midnight meetings held between some of the great minds of that time as they were struggling mightily to solve the issues confronting the quite literally "do or die", height of the Cold War ICBM development program in the struggle against the U.S.S.R. As you spoke, memories began flooding back of those times, the global significance of which only became clear to me some decades later. I congratulate you on making what I consider a meaningful contribution to the future of the Artemis mission. My father used to tell me that when engineers can be convinced that the solution to a given problem not only already exists, but that it has ALWAYS existed, and that they accordingly only have to discover it; their chances of not only finding the solution, but also finding it in a timely manner, are algebraically increased. Subscribed and Thumb's Up.
What was really cool about this talk was the strategy. Destin spent time building up his chops to be in the room scientifically, but then he gave a talk about humanities, communication, and history. That's amazing. No matter what field we are in, we have to understand how we got here, why we are here, and why we operate the way we operate. I needed that message for sure. Thank you! Also. Matt Whitman would be super proud of the way you weaved his field into your literal rocket science. 😉
I’m a healthcare IT program manager. I deal with risk and bureaucracies every day. I understand the problems that you were pointing out. I’m sure they were a ton of people in that audience that were relieved that you finally said the truth. Although it seems like this was just one talk, I bet it will have a rippling effect to really assure that our program to the moon actually works and happens. Thank you for doing extra work and due diligence.
he did them a huge favor. he made it ok for them to talk about specifically relevant stuff they may have been too afraid to broach. sometimes (maybe most times) you really need a neutral third-party to clear the air
The fear is that if they talk about it, they will never have a chance to work in the industry. The worst part of industries is to point out best practices. The HRs would blacklist resources that criticised companies before. They take it as a red flag no matter how competent the resource is. The politics that play on highend jobs plays a big role in who gets which title and responsibilities at the end. This is why he did break the ice and did a huge favour to them by simply coming in and rattle the hive. Ofc someone would be behind this and these things do not happen on it's own. The point of this video was to make stakeholders realize about engineers perspective so stakeholders do not rush about things they do not understand. It's good to have 3rd party coming in and create questions that are healthy. Take this as highend, well planned and well thought consultation that would reflect throughout this mission now.
Unfortunately, the additional unspoken truth is that Artemis is a contract generation program as much as it's a moon program. The value of the contract dollars lost, were anyone to take Destin's advice seriously, will forbid any changes or simplification. Congress decides the architecture just a tiny bit less than NASA. Try changing anything which removes a contractor in any Senator's district and watch how fast you find yourself working on cropduster engines in Iowa.
@kryptonite365 a 3rd party isn't (shouldn't be) really needed if the first two are being honest and being adults about it. There shouldn't be any egos bruised if there is intellectual and emotional honesty. The fact that Destin had to give this talk is very telling. It's good he made them squirm. I've seen what happens when ground combat missions are planned based of careers and egos. Headstones get added at Arlington. The families would rather not have shadow boxes full of medals on the mantle
You are an incredibly compelling individual. At the beginning of your talkie - talk presentation I was tense, my body was tense, my brain was tense. I'm 72 yrs. old. A gov. accredited chemist. Cockpit qualified ex- military, hard core. You had me on the edge of my seat with your style. You said alot, very inspirational. Thank- you
Dude, I am just partially through watching this and I am moved to write this. I am an engineer (long retired) and have recently run for our Town Council. I ran on a simple concept I called "Dee's C's". The are 1) Communication, 2) Collaboration, and 3) Commitment. I think you can see where this is going. Most of my career was based on solving difficult problems that seemed too difficult to solve. So I adopted these concepts into my problem solving process. (There is a 4th "C" for Community. That said, I think you have quite literally hit the nail on the head. I'd love to discuss this with you at some length, but this is not that venue. I hope I might get a chance to expand these concepts.
There are a lot of engineers who fail at this stuff. I know a lot of people who are drawn to engineering can be awkward, maybe loners... as an old engineer myself I see a lot of them struggle when it's time to join the workplace. The days of the lone engineer solving complex problems are long gone, you have to learn to work with people--and I really feel like your first C--communication--is the most important and I see a lot of people stumble there. I go out of my way to make junior engineers feel welcome and to let them know that I want to hear what they think. I come from (and work on) submarines, and if *anyone* comes to you with concerns, YOU LISTEN.
By quite literally I take it you mean effectively made a point that the metaphor of hitting a nail strongly applies. Lol. To me it's sad the informal usage you used has made it into the popular American lexicon. Anyway, I wish you success in politics!
@@sisyphuscranerigging7792 so I used to be sorta nitpicky about this usage of the word too, but I have my BA in linguistics from the UW, and I took a class in historical linguistics where we learned about language shift and there is a really common phenomenon that happens with words that mean "literally" where they end up becoming synonymous with "to an extreme degree". For instance, the word "very" comes from the latin "veritas" meaning truth. The same thing happened with the word "really". There are a ton more examples in other languages as well. But when I view this usage of the word "literally" in this light, it no longer bugs me. It just becomes an interesting feature of language change in motion.
I’ve been watching you and other science educators for a long time and I have to say that this video was one of the bravest things I’ve seen someone willingly do. I hope that you do a follow-up with how the audience reacted (privately and publicly) as well as if anything changed. And even if you didn’t change anything within the program, you most definitely impacted those young engineers in the front rows.
If nothing else at least he was able to get NASA to announce how many Rockets they expect to launch to send the Artemis to the Moon. So even if nothing else happens that's something.
Destin, you may have just become the John Houbolt of the Artemis program! Outstanding!!! I'm humbly demanding to hear a follow up about what post presentation Q&A was like and what outside-the-auditorium conversations may have occurred. As my Department of the Army higher-ups always said about their Pentagon briefings of the battlefield systems analysis that we did, we earned our agency credibility by speaking truth to power, and, that if you are not relevant, you are wasting everyone's time. Please tell us what feedback you received from your danger signs advisory. This story is not complete without an AAR!
Watching this a second time, I remembered what an OHS Consultant told me what a lot of his work entailed. A company with a work injury problem would employ him to suggest problem fixes. He would go to the factory floor, ask the workers what the problem was and if they had any ideas on how to fix it. He would take those fixes, write them up in "Managementese language" and present them with a bill for consultancy. His point was that management's reluctance to accept that workers knew their job better than others, led to a breakdown in communication which hampered problem solving.
Greetings ! A very funny story but also a little sad, although the guy could profit from using his talent of communication to directly influence and support the communication between others. Lead by example, This video has been so inspirational for me ! Awesome !
@@swississue8550 This was a conversation from the late 90s but would still apply in many factories today. The point was that top down management would rather pay a consultant than risk relinquishing the power dynamic. I've worked in factories where I was told "You're paid to work! Not to think!" It was an attitude that sent the place into receivership.
You see that attitude with a lot of professional managers. They want to keep the separation of people who are “in” (managers) and people who are “out” (workers). So they can’t really talk to workers because that would mean they are giving up their power. The same type of manager now wants people to return to office because they have no idea how to evaluate the work of people.
Having worked in aerospace for over 40 years I can tell you that, as an engineer, the most common thought in people's minds during a meeting was "I knew that". At the end of a meeting, if it appeared to me that there wasn't clarity or consistency of understanding, I would go to the grease board and start writing things down to provide the 'Strawman' necessary to pull thoughts from the engineers they wouldn't otherwise offer. We also had a final meeting on every project that we called a 'Post-Mortum' to record what we thought we did right & what we did wrong, so any future build could benefit from our experience.
I needed to hear this. Not an engineer, but negative feedback is just as important for me and my team. Didn’t realize I’d been avoiding it for years until I watched your talk. Thank you.
I think there's 2 problems. First main problem is that people often get upset if their viewpoint/opinion is challenged which causes people to want to make waves. No pun intended there. Second one is that many people don't know how to challenge someone's opinion/viewpoint/design/etc... in a nonconfrontational way. Best way I've found is if you think there's a flaw then instead of just pointing out the flaw instead try asking a question. Example: Let's say someone thinks the carburetor on an engine is broken but you think it's fine. Instead of saying "no the carburetor is fine" try saying "is there anything at all besides the carburetor that it could possibly be?"
@@shadowprince4482 The leading question is an incredibly powerful tool. Another tool I like to use "playing dumb" to get the other side to explain there whole reasoning. (because often there are hidden assumptions driving decisions and it best to make everyone aware of them)
I’m work in aerospace engineering and I can tell you straight up that almost anytime I’ve encountered any failure with design, testing, manufacturing, etc. it ultimately ended up being a communication issue. It’s always extremely frustrating because it’s the most avoidable type of issue in hindsight.
This video was for me one of the best of your channel. I think it can be used as a professional training in every company. I will suggest it in mine. "If you loose your job because of the hard questions you ask, good for you!' Thank you!
As a young engineer, I thank the brave people like you who make me want to change the world. Your speech in this video truly spoke to me and promise you that although it was uncomfortable it was not in vain. Thank you man
Old farts? Hmmm...so bc destin is relatively young, his perspective is correct? Truth is not the perview of any generation. Comments like that only create discourse. You're elders do hold wisdom you may want to consult.
@@kidcasco1966 Sure, I agree that senior people hold a lot of wisdom. I'm in my early thirties, yet I contact my parents the second I have some questions they may know the answer too. That being said! I've worked with some semi retired 70+ years old engineers and scientists, who just refuse to quit their jobs. Those people where very respectful towards young people, and their ideas. I've also worked with a ton of 50 to 70 year old colleagues, they're usually the worst! They always think they know best, are disrespectful towards younger colleagues, and refuse to even test or try out new ideas. So yes! I believe that the current senior generation in the workforce, was kinda spoiled during their lifetime. Which reflects in an increased amount of ego, getting in the way towards progress!
Out. STANDING and spot on. As a now retired Army Aviator I can say that I saw too many times leadership get blinded by dazzling new tech. They lost sight of the mission. So often we wished for simple - simple works. Thank you Destin...
I have no beef in this, but I watched all 1:05:19 and I learned what an amazing storyteller you are and it gave me joy in my day to see how excited you were you to deliver truth to this room. I’m proud of you, and grateful you shared.
@smartereveryday most people with a brain knows that basic science tell us that human space travel is impossible and only driven by the fantasy of it. It's easy to show using basic proven science.
I'm no expert, but as someone who has raised concerns at work only to be fired later, I want to thank you for fostering a stronger appreciation for communication. For those who need to listen, as well as for those who would speak up.
As a mechanical engineer, one of my functions was to create documents for field repair of some of our products. Once I was done with the initial writing I would give it to someone for review before it was released. What I DIDN"T do was give it to another engineer or someone who was responsible for the assembly of the product. I felt that they were to close to the product and would easily miss things that I left out, because they could do the repairs in their sleep. Instead I chose a single mother home owner who could use simple hand tools and was an intelligent person, but was an office worker, not someone who built and tested things for a living. She never got through a document without me having to make some sore of change or addition. But I knew that if she could do it, any field technician could as well. I am retired now, so any writings that I do I have my wife (retired teacher) or son(s) (one is a PHd in English, not very mechanically inclined, the other an Auto Technician, who has more trouble shooting skills than anyone I have ever met) review it before I release the document. I think more people need to swallow their pride, and not be ashamed to use others to verify their work.
I'm currently replaying and studying a number of videogames from the 90s because I want to start making one of a similar type myself, and I immediately noticed the importance of that myself. So many of these old games are really hard at the beginning and I remember giving up and losing interest in them very quickly because of that when I previously tried 20 years ago. I now have more experience with these types of games and I can get through the difficulties with brute force and persistence, but it's really not fun. Once I have become familiar enough with the games after some 10 to 15 hours, those really hard and frustrating parts really are not that difficult to replay again. But when you give them to a new player who has no familiarity, they are much too hard. And I feel certain that these sections had only been tested by people who had already played with the game mechanics before for many hours. Those issues should have been immediately detected by anyone testing them with no prior experience of the game, and would have been trivial to fix.
I have seen many assembly/repair/operational manuals that were obviously written by soemone who knew the product inside and out. Total mistake, as you say, when you know it well it is easy to assume others would see the 'little things'.
My Ex's dad worked on a part that failed during the Challenger launch. Him and other engineers actually had voiced concerns, but weren't listened to for some reason. I think being able to effectively communicate can't be undervalued.
@@harrybarrow6222not just allowed, but hosting an environment in which people can feel comfortable enough to voice their concerns. And not just doing that by saying "please feel comfortable to say whatever blah blah blah"
Feynman's second book ('What do you care what other people think') talks about this, and his comments during the investigation of the Challenger disaster.
How was the private reception after the talk? Anyone come up to you and tell you they cant believe you said these things? I thought it was awesome, and it would be a great blueprint for any large organization with a common mission.
@@PetraKannpeople got sick, people died, you gotta be more specific when asking question man, rhetorical question only works when you know the context. Destin's rhetorical question works because he knows what the audience know and vice versa. Not with your question though
I am not an engineer, nor do I have anything to do with rocket science (I am just interested in it). But as a banker, watching our ship going down due to a number of failed IT projects, I hear your message, and this is so important in our everyday life, whoever you are, whatever you are doing. We need this in all of our society. This was such a good speech. I am going to share this with as many co workers as I possibly can. I will be honest: Not many will watch the video, since English isnt our first language, but those who are, can maybe change a thing in the future and learn from our desasters that happened recently.
I didn’t know how or what to comment, but ditto to your comment we need similar motivational speeches like this in all areas. As a maintenance manager for a company that manufactures farm/tractor implements, I strive to excel myself and my subordinates to learn how to improve what we repair. Ask yourself these questions, Why did it fail, and what can we do to improve it so it won’t fail again? and so on… thanks for that comment I intend to the same and share this speech.
And Artimis with 1/3 of the budget of Apollo Mission I say, ti's going pretty good so far. As a banker you should know, going for reusable rockets instead of 1-time use rockets, will save a lot of money.
@@YR2050 Its not that I am criticizing Artemis. I dont think the speech was doing it. Its about speaking up. And thats what was going wrong at least in our bank with some major projects we had. I learned so much in this video. How to talk to co workers and superiors for example. Negative and positive feedback. :) Thats it.
It is always great listening to someone who knows what they are talking about and not scared to even ask the difficult questions! Awesome video Destin!
Thank you very much, Dustin, from an aeronautical engineer up north in Canada. This talk applies to so much more than engineering and the world is better now that you shared it. It takes courage, leadership to “speak up”. And it takes great emotional intelligence skills to deliver such a talkie talk respectfully, humbly and with a touch of humour. Bravo. Hope I can do as good and have as much courage when I have a chance to address tough feedback in small situations as well as in front of larger groups. Cheers.
Never have I been so interested in a topic I know nothing about. The way you talk about such a complex topic is exceptional. Hats off to you Destin. The graph where you talk about the way you make your videos is what brought me here in the first place.
It's an interesting presentation, and in many senses I agree completely with your arguments about what must be done to make the mission successful. The one place I think we diverge is our understanding of what the mission actually is, which leads me to very different conclusions when I follow the approach you lay out so well in this video. So in the spirit of #1 and # 3 of your When You Leave here goals, let me look at the mission differently than you and ask some hard questions. If I take as a given that the goal of the Artemis program is to land humans on the moon again and return them safely, then I more or less fully agree with basically all your points. Orbital refueling a starship in Earth orbit and landing something that size on the moon is both completely unnecessary and unnecessarily risky as a means to achieve that goal, and NASA SP287 is a sufficient and much less risky recipe. However, to quote part of NASA's description of the Artemis program "...We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon...". That's a very very different mission goal than the Apollo program, and in a sense is so ambitious that I think a lot of people don't take it seriously and think this is just going to be flags and footprints part 7, and I don't even blame them for thinking that. However, if we take that mission description seriously, setting up a sustainable long-term presence on the Moon changes the engineering trades dramatically. We're going to need a ton of stuff to live long term on the moon, so now maybe having something as large as a Starship landing, in terms of both mass and volume, might actually be simpler than landing an order of magnitude more smaller landers? If we're going to be going back and forth constantly, maybe the added complexity of multiple launches and fuel depots and propellant boil off and reusable rockets make more fiscal sense, as fuel is cheap compared to building and expending whole rockets? If we're envisioning a world where when a lunar lander blasts off from the moon, there will be people intentionally left behind, maybe the toxicity and corrosion hazards of hypergolic fuels for the remaining crew outweighs the benefits in simplicity for the departing crew? If there's a nice comfy permanent moon base people can chill at if they "miss the bus", as you put it, maybe it's not as big a deal to have to catch the next bus? I'm not by any means saying all or even any of these unambiguously cut in the direction of my argument, but they are additional considerations I didn't see taken into account. Finally, I mean absolutely no disrespect to the Apollo engineers by these arguments, I'm in complete agreement that it was one of the most amazing engineering feats of all time. My only point is that they were making their engineering tradeoffs towards one specific goal, and the Artemis program has very different goals. I'm quite sure that if you gathered up every Apollo engineer and said that their new goal was to build a permanent moon base, the solution for that goal they came back with would not be to send up hundreds of exactly Apollo-like missions to bring the station up one piece at a time, so at some point even they would be making very different trades from what they themselves had selected for the Apollo program. That said, to your broader point, this could all simply be a symptom of the communication problems at the core of your talk. If NASA truly is committed to trying to create a long-term presence on the moon, but even very smart people like you think that's just aspirational talk to be ignored and are instead focusing on the very hard but still relatively more modest goal of landing astronauts on the moon and bringing them back, then clearly they are not communicating their own goals to the broader public well.
Thanks for putting it into words. When he asked "what is the mission" I started yelling at the screen "it's STAYING", and him talking like this is going to be just Apollo 2: Electric Boogaloo was ridiculous. We need that increased payload mass to get there, and so we need more complexity. Von Braun was the first one who wanted to have a space station somewhere to test human presence in space, and let's not forget Kennedy's reply to those plans when James Webb brought them to him in a private meeting: it was, tldr: "But we need one moonshot. The rest IDGAF, maybe later". (At least we got half a dozen moonshots thanks to what the public heard...) Talk about cutting tests; because that's exactly what Apollo was: full of cutted corners, just to reach that goal. And we took a lot of risks to accomplish it, it was an Odyssey. And then there was no infrastructure left to keep doing it. No one is ignoring the safety aspects nowadays, because we have something that they couldn't do back then: the capability to do repeated unmanned test landings AND liftoffs. That's what the NASA contracts requires btw. No one is going to put people on any lander until those architectures can demonstrate a full mission. So if we want to achieve our new goals in a competitive way, we need to build that infrastructure. Otherwise, it's just going to be another throwaway effort.
I do get your point and you're probably right that the mission scope is larger than mentioned. But the thing with a lander is that it needs to be able to take off again. Things we want to place on the moon do not need to take off again and there is no desire for it to do so. We only need to launch things at the moon and have them land safely and be ready for setup, since those things are things and not humans, it's possible to do so with cheaper methods without risking lives. We can do so easily on earth with 1G and we've done so on Mars, which is much further away. There is no reason to send a lorry truck to the moon when we can airdrop things, unless we want to bring large things off of the moon. Apart for playing with, and testing the lorry truck, of course. Which is not part of the mission. It also cannot possibly be cheaper to send it over with said lorry truck when it needs at least 15 rockets to refuel it so that it can take off from the moon again. Those are 15 rockets that could have been used to send payloads to the moon. For each trip of the lorry truck. This with its much more complex and time consuming path, with the increased risks as well. Later on, however, when the base is established and enough has happened with it, there could be reasons to send lorry trucks over to bring things home. But for establishing a base on the moon, we could as well have used Apollo style landers for the people, since the only thing we're taking away from there are humans. Then send the non-living material with one-way tickets. Even if this isn't exactly what was mentioned in the video, the point still stands. This comes off as Musk having a new toy he wants to play with and try out and having NASA finance as much of it as possible, instead of selecting the simplest solution to solve the problem.
Thank you Destin for putting this inspiring talk on the internet for everyone to see. Even if it wouldn't make an impact at NASA, I still find it highly valuable and important to talk about, because the points you were making apply to all fields of engineering and possibly beyond. Our society needs it, and I am grateful for you.
I don't believe we are going to the moon, before 2070, not because tecnology problems, but because lack of Communication, departamental (inside NASA and other space agencies) and social (between people). Communication problems on the ground and in orbit + unnecessary complexity is a recipe to disaster. Whoever goes in the rocket will not be back on the ground alive.
I'm an engineer working for a subcontractor on parts of the Artemis 2 and other future missions. This was an incredible video, so inspiring! And I'll go ahead and read SP287. Shame on me I guess! Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you, I love you and your work, you are one of the inspirations that keep me going.
I've watched this video at least 10 times. Thank you Destin! I would really love to have quick video updates from you on Artemis, I'm so curious about this mission now :)
This is a golden example for delivering difficult messages to executives, leadership team and authorities figures and I learn alot as a guy in his mid-career. Thank you very much Destin
I think this is probably one of your best videos. Not only is the presentation awesome, but perhaps more importantly, the presentation was really important. Now I'm not saying all your videos should be like this, that would be a little heavy. But you should be proud about this. Very well done!
How much would you wager there is at least one unqualified person on the team that came up with the flight path? And disagreeing with that person can get you labeled a rayyycisss?
Oh man this material is gold! I wish wider audience would see this: corporates, schoolchildren, graduates, teambuilding events, courses in leadership... This touches so many important topics and is delivered in highest quality. Thank you Destin. A virtual hug, a high five and an inverted handshake 🤝
56:08 In the unlikely event that you are ever challenged by one of these perverted bicycles, try crossing your hands. Left hand on right side (doesn't have to be all the way to the end) handlebar, right hand on left side. This should help you compensate for the engineering mix up. Note: DO NOT do this with a regular bicycle.
I really enjoyed this talk. I worked 20 years for NASA and am retired now at 74. They really needed to hear what you have to say. There was a culture there during the Shuttle program where I worked, that this is the way we have always done it. I have been in many meeetngs and yes, people are afraid to speak up when they had tough questions and concerns.. This is part of the reason for the two disasters that happened with Challenger and Columbia.
Not an Engineer, but another 74 year old Space, NASA, Rocket, Flight enthusiast. I was thinking of Challenger in particular because of the situation that was not addressed before launch, and you nailed it. Wish Destin had brought it up, but he probably did not for good reason. And oddly, my name is Jim also.
I think you really nailed the negative feedback problem in the current internet ecosystem. RUclips dislikes are the most direct example to everyone watching this video
Hey, it came from the same dude that ran away from public discourse and tried (probably would still be trying if they were a thing now) to push NFTs on YT and is the brains behind some of the worst decisions at YT. YT's CEO saga is the exemplification of "out from the frying pan and into the fire".
The massive engineering balls that Destin has to compile this presentation and present it in person. I work on the aerospace industry and its true the lack of proper comunication is astoningly frustrating. I really appreciate this video and the message. Also I might take the joke about the slide with your wife on it for my next about me presentation. You are amazing and thank you for another video making me smarter everyday!!!
It is really impressive that you can successfully work ON the aerospace industry, when everyone else in your field are working IN it. I appreciate folks like you who go against the grain of the herd… 😉
Hello, I know you might not read this, but first of all, I want to tell you that you left me impressed. I’ve been watching you for years, but I never imagined the story you have, and it’s amazing how much you’ve done in your life. I’m impressed by this conversation, by how you can stand in front of such brilliant people and tell them how you see things without fear of being judged, and how you can demonstrate such complex ideas in such a simple way, like how changing just one variable can change everything. You are incredible, and I’ll keep watching your videos. I really like the way you educate and share information. Thank you for doing it.
I love the Destin managed to get his dad at least 2 maybe 3 rounds of applause for his dad from some of the greatest minds in aerospace just by saying "this is my dad' 😂
Wow, that was one of, if not the best talks I‘ve seen in the last decade. You speak up without being judgmental and bring it home for everyone to understand the important things that shall lead to success in the mission. Thank you for that and keep it up for all of us. Greetings from Germany!
Short of Dr. Richard Feynman's demonstration during the Shuttle Challenger Rogers Commission investigation, this is the best example of speaking truth to power I've seen... and we need more of it. We need Destin and folks like him brought in by Congress to ask the right and honest questions at hearings.
The government accountability office announced a few days ago that Artemis 3 is likely to be delayed a few years mainly because of the exact issues he mentioned, the HLS refueling issue. His talk may already have worked.
@@jaredf6205HLS refueling is not actually a safety problem though... its an engineering problem, if you are scared of engineering problems to the point that it makes you dysfunctional you certainly aren't going to be even getting to the safety problems to solve them. The entire reason SpaceX has control of HLS now... is because nobody else was making any baby steps in the right direct EXCEPT SpaceX. Everyone else was trying to pull off big space post apollo cash grab projects. Will SpaceX be late... maybe, but there is zero chance that any of the other projects would have ever made it to the moon... look at the past 30 years littered with dozens of projects by all these space companies that never saw any real human rated flights. SpaceX is the only company doing real ground to LEO orbital fights today... everyone else is just being a venture capitalist instead of getting anything done.
As a retired Boeing Project Manager, man I wish I could send this to the quacks working on the FAILING Boeing aspects of this project. THANK YOU DESTIN!🎉
Hi Destin, I’m sure this is a lot of work for you, but I do think you are doing good with your channel. Words I think of? Interesting, respectful, honest, and intelligent. Also reasonably humble. You are helping. Your work is appreciated.
Preparing for this talk was a humbling process, as these systems are so complicated! I'm grateful for the countless conversations I had with people from all over the country in preparation for this talk.
Also, if you feel like Smarter Every Day adds value to your life and you'd like to be in on the Sticker Team and STICK with me, I'd love to have your support on Patreon! Here's the link 👉 www.patreon.com/smartereveryday 👈 Thank you for considering.
Teamwork makes the Dream work🇺🇲🗽⚖️
2:22 That is how enginers are demoted , That is why EEVblog DAVE ended in a basement :D :D That is how I ended up in the smallest and most difficult office to find in my company :D
SpaceX amount of refill rockets is ridiculous and its beyont time that people other than Thunderfoot or CommonSenseSceptic called this out.
Huh?? Jesus! what’s going on here.?!?
You nailed it. My name is Trevor, I’m an atheist, and Destin, I’m 100% sure you know what I meant by that. Well done.
You never know with the internet, but I say “a hearty a-political well done”. 👍
My comment was a result of the one before, where someone seemed to not “fallow” what the message was, and now I happily see most of us get this. The “Destin”s of the world are how we got to the Moon in the first place. Hopefully our current generation lives up to the old guard’s standards and possibly surpasses.
I have to say you possess amazing communication skills!
You are incredibly talented at presenting complex information in not only a fun and humorous way but also bringing deep and thoughtful insight into topics that otherwise people would be hesitant to talk about or even get into.
But it's not just Presenting, but also reading the room, reading the body language of the person you are interacting with, listening with an open mind, and ultimately finding that connection with that other person even if you disagree on a range of topics, Even if you have fundamentally different worldviews your ability to find that connection no matter what never ceases to amaze me!
I have to say, I'd be proud to see you in a real position of power in the industry. Even if politics isn't your thing, I totally understand. But if it were up to me, I'd absolutely nominate you to be the head of Public Relations or something for NASA.
Your Professionalism, candor, skill in communicating effectively and dealing with people from all backgrounds and walks of life are all traits of a great leader. And honestly you are someone who I'd be proud to see in such a role of leadership.
Destin, I work at NASA-JSC. Several people sent me this today. Your message is being heard. I will say that the redundancy and testing are still there, but Apollo took incredible risks that we cannot afford today. You are 100% spot on re: not relying on technological miracles. Some of the artist concepts make me wonder if all my work is in vain.
NOTE: My opinions are my own. I do not speak for NASA.
"... Apollo took incredible risks that we cannot afford today." This attitude is why NASA is a failed agency, crippled by cowardice. I recall the scene in the movie "Apollo 13" where the sniveling creep from Grumman is told, "I guess you'll get to keep your job, then." SpaceX is going places. NASA is a federal jobs boondoggle, not a space-faring agency.
Well, how many rockets will it take?
Anyone get the sense Artemis is overly complicated and filled with compromises like the shuttle was?
"Took incredible risks"
This sounds like something that is said and repeated.
List the risks taken that are too risky today.
It's not really that they took risks, but that they ignored them. Then the Apollo 1 fire killed three people. So NASA learned from that, made hundreds of changes to the spacecraft and the procedures. They mitigated the risks. When Apollo 13 suffered an accident, NASA was prepared to deal with it and get them home.
NASA forgot those lessons during the shuttle program. They started to ignore risks again. They knew the SRB o-rings were a problem, but went ahead with the launch for political reasons and killed seven people. They knew that foam hitting the wings was a problem, but failed to mitigate it and killed seven more.
We don't need to learn these lessons the hard way again. We should choose to learn from past mistakes, get things right, and avoid killing people. We can't just hand wave away problems. The number of launches needed to refuel starship is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. At least SpaceX has demonstrated the ability to reuse a booster more than 15 times. So those launches could theoretically be done with a single rocket.
On orbit refueling has yet to be demonstrated. It will have to be practiced a lot before Artemis 3.
One thing Destin didn't mention is the FAA. They are delaying SpaceX's test campaign. Of course they have good intentions, because they don't want anyone to get hurt by it. But Artemis can't afford to wait 8 months between Starship tests. The FAA needs to put starship reviews and launch licenses at top priority, so they get done as fast as possible. Starship might be able to launch 100 times on cargo missions before a human ever gets onboard. (The fact that a private company is planning to use the rocket whether NASA does or not is huge paradigm shift.)
Despite that, further delays to Artemis are a good sign, because it signals that risks are being dealt with and not ignored. We just want as little delay as possible.
Destin, you say you were scared, but the importance of the message dictated you speak up. You prepared, you read manuals and reviewed other materials, you interviewed people who knew what happened in the past -- and held on tight to your courage and conviction -- and gave a presentation that hundreds of thousands of people are excited to see! Win-win-win all around. So proud of you!
Scared, but still talking the facts..I believe it's called courage.
What he didn't says is that if you are going to use a Starship derivative to land on the moon there is no reason to have SLS/Orion involved on that mission, use a Dragon capsule to deliver them to the HLS vehicle in earth orbit. A fully refueled HLS can get then to and from earth orbit. The >billion dollar SLS launcher can be used for other missions where it accomplishes something useful, like a deep space mission.
@@k53847gos doesn’t have the range to get to and land on the moon and return to leo
@@k53847 That's incredibly simplifying how complex Orion is. Real life isn't Kerbal Space Program you know. Starship HLS is designed to be very barebones and can currently only fit TWO people. It can't even return back to LEO.
Seriously good work, great performance! In your element Destin 😑👌 You can just tell, like you said @lisawyzard4122
In decades of working in Engineering I've worked with only one engineer that would hand me his design and ask me to tear it apart (a sort of pre-design review - design review). We'd later meet up in a glass walled conference room and discuss it. Often it would get quite animated. I later found out that my coworkers thought we hated one another as they took notice of our sometimes loud discussions. What they didn't know was that after those meetings we would go out to lunch together and yuk it up. In 30 years he was one of the very few engineers that had no ego and instead did whatever it took to make the design better.
That’s a great story. I wish more people were as confident to ask for someone to review and destroy their work to find flaws and make it so much better. I think more people should take that approach since it can lead to different ideas and discoveries. With this approach it forces the designer to put their best effort at the start as opposed to someone who’s overconfident and too certain of themselves.
Awesome, more should be open to criticism.
My engineering company has a process where after we make a plan, we are required to call in 3-6 "retired" guys from the company who completely tear apart everything in our plan. I think it's something more companies need to have, it's so incredibly important to have people pick apart and look at every little piece of your plan.
I worked one time (one to short of a time) with a engineer like that, great smart guy who died to young
Wow brother. That’s next level!
I worked as a bicycle mechanic for almost a decade and the guy I first trained under was honestly the best within a 200 mile radius of our shop. He still had me test ride and give feedback on every bike he worked on after he deemed the repair complete. If I thought something was off he would address it and explain to me either how/why he had failed to catch what was causing the particular issue or explain why what I had noticed was within acceptable parameters for that particular work order. There was never any negative emotions associated with feedback. We would always check each other's work and took pride in collectively doing the best job we could possibly do. That experience taught me so much on what I wanted my working relationships to look like. It doesn't matter how good you are as an individual, you will always be best as a collective with a unified goal. That only works, though, if you're humble enough to say "Hey, new guy. Tell me what you think about this"
i've worked with a buddy of mine on some I.T. projects and some other pet projects of ours as a beta tester for games and programming, and thankfully he's a pretty chill and mellow guy so the most issue we had with feedback was the occasional use of slang leading to a misunderstanding in communication. granted we are on opposite sides of the planet so we cant exactly see the other test or all the design documents but its good to have someone test check blind spots and verify things without having hurt feelings.
it reminds me of when I worked with my math tutor we both did the same problem and got different results and neither of us was arrogant about it, and even had a bit of a laugh when I explained part of my uncertainty in my answer was "I mean one of us must of made a mistake and I've only been doing this for maybe a couple of weeks so I'm no so confident that I can say clearly YOU made a mistake"
we both made mistakes occasionally working on the math problems and we always just did the smartest option of going back through the problem bit by bit line by line and finding where we went off track. humility and a willingness to admit mistakes is very important as is clear communication on the subject material.
"Hey, new guy, tell me what you think about this" is a really powerful line. Love it
We did pair programming in high school and had to correct each others code to make the games work and it was a lot of fun. I also think that online math sites where you have to enter the answer and get feedback are great as it automates the error checking process somewhat, rather than having to look it up in the book.
I was a former engineer on the Orion propulsion system working on Artemis-1, 2 and 3. All the folk in our branch used to always joke that Orion was always two years from launching but I don't think it ever really clicked for us just how big of a communication issue was going on, I realize now that a lot of us were just so compartmentalized in our work and not actually seeing the bigger picture of what we were trying to do. So thank you for getting this out into the open Destin. It's important for us to be getting that negative feedback so we can achieve more and be better engineers.
Of course the people in management realize this. It's a feature not a bug. The politicians funding you look bad if you announce you'll need several times more funding or several decades to get to the moon this way (and their political goals forbid cheaper alternatives). So the top people make sure the schedule says soon and just keeps slipping.
Nice to see somebody admit it
We have never been to the moon. Stop lying to people. People are waking up. NASA is a joke.
Or also it exposes how if a thing slips so under our control think about the problems infront that may happen after the mission is halfway through that we wont even knkw wouldve been a problem until we got to the spot where it was harder to solve problems. Its a lot ahrder to solve the problems here before they arise when theyre om the dark side of the moon but its not easy to catch all these problems. If theres already schedualing issues at a minimum.
SLS - the “Someday Launch System” 😂
Destin, I work as a researcher at Purdue University, alma mater of Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee. The focus of my research is in space mission architectures. Multiple people (from my lab) sent me your video this week.
Rest assured that, in academia, your words will also be used to carry out more in-depth investigations about the impact of the Artemis decisions and alternatives for future missions.
Thank you for your bold presentation.
Hey! Really random I know, but is there anywhere I can find out some more about what you do? I’m really curious 😂
Seems Destin just wants up to go back to the 1960's especially with his hypergolic fuel comment. Hypergolic are not efficient Toxic and difficult to handle and we are innovating with starship seems like yall just want another SatV and Apollo with 0 innovation
It just blew.
@@JesusDied4U-n9v
And what exactly is wrong with backup alternative, however not efficient and toxic it may be? Innovation - sure! But if I was in that rocket and all innovation blows up (and it does for whatever reason more often than you think) I would love to have some 0 innovation, not efficient toxic, difficult to handle hypergolic fuel on board to save my a**
@@bv1970 Lol bro what do you mean blow up? Falcon 9 is the safest rocket to exist on earth with a turn around time of just 5 days for a relaunch of a F9 booster. How much safer will a Starship be after all of the protypes are finished there. Starship will be like landing house on the Moon remember we are going back to the moon to stay and build actual bases on the moon there will be many starships landed on the moon before they send actual humans bro. Space X has the best Aerospace engineers in the world bud i think they know whatthey are doing
I'm a 76 year old grandma. I loved this video. You have such amazing thought processes and my curiosity is similar to yours. I'm always asking myself: How did they do that? How does that work? Why did they change it? Can I try it? Thank you for this video. I watched the one on your eclipse photos first. That was so much fun, as at the age of 76 I saw my first eclipse ever, and it was a total eclipse. As an amateur photographer I wanted to see your equipment and was amazed at your results. I am no mathematician, nor an engineer, I am a grade school to college teacher. I ended up teaching medical terminology to nursing students. YOU are amazing! Thank you for giving my curiosity a shot in the arm!
You are amazing too, grandma! Thank for all your dedication to your students, from one professor to another.
you're actually amazing, please keep thinking! and doing what you're doing.
I love how the video timeline, described from 14:30, actually describes the presentation. That the presentation started with personality & low complexity, then ramped up the complexity and lowered the personality, and finished with a return to high personality & low complexity. Destin actually modelled the behaviour in his presentation to NASA.
Yes, that was brilliant and especially for *this* presentation. It really forced the audience to engage at multiple levels.
Otaaaay
That was the most meta part about his presentation, great presentation that described his presentation to talk about his presentation.
The moment he showed that in the presentation, it was very clear that's how the presentation itself is going to go.
22:00
Destin,
I’m a 43 yr old principal data engineer in Huntsville. I’ve followed your channel for a little over 2 years, and this was the best video I’ve seen. My mom works on the ARTEMIS program as well. I’ve worked with everything from an IT side, but I couldn’t believe how much a lot of your logic tied into the same problems we have. Just here I’ve worked RDEC, LOGSA, MDA. If you ever have a few minutes to talk, let me know!.
BYW, the tractor pull video and the metal stamping video were some of the best I’ve seen.
The tractor pull video was fantastic. Tell your mom I appreciate her and her colleague’s efforts, and that I’m rooting for y’all. And I’m not just saying that because I have a soft spot for Huntsville!
Tell your mom that I am really looking forward to Moon mission! I wasn't alive for the Apollo missions and I have dreamed of the day when we return! I hooe it is soon!
Looking forward to the collab / interview / video that is the follow up to this comment!
@@blakerh thank you! Will do!
As a former Quality engineer for a supplier for the Artemis program, this brings a lot of clarity to some of the issues we ran into. This is definitely my favorite SED video.
not accepting negative feedback is what made a certain CEO a literall paste for fish to eat near the wreckage of the Titanic
Why paste? And who? That last private sub?
@@CHMichael I am talking about the Titan sub by OceaGate, it imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, the amount of pressure at that depth would literally turn your body in to mush. If you haven't heard about it I highly suggest you watch a video summarizing that whole disaster, it is an interesting case and the perfect example of why accepting negative is important.
being surrounded by yes men is weak.
He did say he wanted to be remembered. So that milestone was hit several times over. You could say he failed to communicate his priorities (and many times ignored negative feedback)
@@CHMichael Yes, that sub. If you're interested in the topic i highly recommend alexander the ok's video about it, it's great
if you don't want to watch the video about titan he has another video about the DSV Alvin
if you're not interested in DSV topic he has an awesome video about the Space Shuttle
his video about the space shuttle is what gave me the space rush again and basically is the reason why i'm watching seven month old destin talk about the artemis mission
I’m not engineering literal life and death systems for a living, but as a software engineer this really resonated. I think this may be the single smartest thing I’ve ever watched on RUclips. Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud!
Absolutely. Destin has voiced something that has been plaguing me for years, and he's done it so well. I really hope he follows it up with another shorter video based on his typical template, because so many more people need to appreciate it.
I've worked in nuclear, payments, insurance, telecommunications, medical, and half a dozen other domains. The communication issue persists across technical, non-technical, executives and general staff, in government, academia, and every form of business new and established.
Some ways I've tried to make my point (though I'm going to steal from Destin in the future!):
* Shout to the cheap seats. You make a system change? You make sure every stakeholder far and wide can understand as easily as possible whether it affects them.
* Siloes are made to be emptied, their contents transferred. Don't sit on information, or questions, or concerns, it's just going to rot. Don't let your pride, or fear, or uncertainty, spoil the entire silo.
After 25 years in software, I've experienced the exact things Destin described. It's far too common for there to be simple communication failures, and there are too many organizations where they're more concerned with maintaining the hierarchy and status quo than they are with knowing the truth. It can be very frustrating.
Companies are like complex systems; if one thing is wrong, it can have a significant impact on the system as a whole. I've sat in too many meetings where I knew the topic (or the people) was problematic in some way. Unfortunately, even when you speak the truth, there are occasions where powerful people don't want to hear it, and then all you can do is watch the system slowly fail.
I really hope the people at NASA took Destin's words to heart.
I'm also a software engineer, but to be honest, I think KISS (which is part of what Destin pleads for) is way more entrenched in software engineering than it is in mechanical engineering. This is probably due to the fact that most if not all of the software we write has to be mathematically correct, meaning we have to be able to prove the correctness of every function we write, which in turn results in as little complexity on the individual function level as possible, because we have to understand it to perfect it (leaving aside ML which in my opinion is whole other topic).
Mathematical perfection cannot be achieved in real life engineering. This is due to the fact that there's indefinitely more variables in real life systems (for example worksmanship, material quality, environmental factors etc.) than there is in computer systems. This leads to engineers having to pick their battles because accounting for everything is impossible anyways and this is where things can go wrong. Because sometimes this focus on specific aspects turns into obsession so that resetting the focus or reevaluating the problem goes out of the window. It's hard to stress enough how neccessary a fresh perspective can be in these kinds of situations.
@@B20C0 _"...most if not all of the software we write has to be mathematically correct, meaning we have to be able to prove the correctness of every function we write"_
Where do you work?! 😳
Ok, I'm kinda poking fun, but what do you mean by "prove the correctness"? If you're just talking about writing tests, I've seen the exact scenario Destin described on numerous occasions, i.e., if the test doesn't pass, delete/change the test.
The real problem is that we're often chasing some arbitrary (i.e., not truly necessary) deadline, so as we scramble to meet it, we often cut corners instead of pushing back and saying, "We can't safely do what you're asking by the date you're asking." It's the famous triangle of time, scope, and cost. Funny how famous that triangle is yet how often it's ignored.
This video reminds me of the concept of 'code reviews' and 'pull requests'. You make your code visible to others, so they can criticise it, resulting in changes and therefore better results
This is not a condescending talk, this is a pep talk. It is incredible how you communicate your message. "If you loose your job because of the hard questions you ask, good for you!'. That is tough but the truth. If you don't ask the hard questions people are going to die. A strong message indeed. Thank you Destin as always, a very good video and a brilliant talk.
I hope there is a change in the organisational structure that can work instead of good people taking personal risk for the program.
Losing your job based on principle will follow you all of your life. If you keep a job, but abandon your principles, this will also follow you all your life. Being followed by your demons is not how you want to live life...
@crystalfire6677 Are you smarter than a fifth grader, nasa's big risk...
Admitting china and India use contradictory Moon cgi.?
Stage production Nasa only sends a monkeys mind into
space with Dunning Kruger's who corroborate their cgi BS.
At least it's on the record as being put forth.
@@DESOUSAB Yeah right, imagine you hesitated to argue a problem and in the end it took a life, man that would be devastating for your life as well. Be honest and fight mishaps even if means loosing your job.
Didn't expect myself to go through the whole hour-long video, but man was your talk captivating!
The way you carry the presentation, throwing in humor in places to bring the tone back up in serious moments, and the hard-hitting points you bring, especially that one about time travelling, where we don't think about our actions as having as big a gravitas as it does on the future. I think everyone in the audience appreciates this talk, even if it meant rubbing them in the wrong way.
Also, I can't stress how grateful I am to see someone with enough qualification to be in that room, delivering a speech of this caliber to an audience of the smartest minds, bringing up the truth in this world where everyone prefers to talk less. You truly are a gem in the society of science, man!
This video has also inspired me in many ways other than to just be more open in communication, thanks a ton!
❤❤❤
I am impressed with your brilliance!
I worked in SPACETRACK in the 60's. Software guy. Philco 2000 in assembly language tracking satellites. No core protection. Updates often done by installing "octal patches" instead of recompiling. When I arrived in 65, they were still talking about the octal patch that set off the "bomb alarms" at SAC HQ. SAC scrambled... Afterwards, a three-star from SAC was roaming the NORAD hallways shouting: "You mean to tell me a civilian scrambled SAC? I don't even have authority to scramble SAC!"
If possible, do testing in a non-live environment... 🙂
Your Dad must be so proud sitting in the room watching you do this!
You are awesome Destin!
My experience as an engineer is that there is a communication blockade at middle management. I call this the "impermeable layer" inside a company. It is a combination of the fear of embarrassment and fear of loss of power. To overcome this problem, engineers need to learn to communicate themselves. If you are kicked out of a project for talking the truth, you probably wouldn't like to be part of it.
Exactly! One of the reasons SpaceX works so quickly and successfully, is that they have people from different departments and different management levels working together. It stops one department doing a load of work on something, only to find when they pass to the next department, what they were working on isn’t viable or affordable.
It's the layer above your reporting manager (usually a principal staff engineer who transitioned into management) where things start to appear...rather beaurocratic let's say 😅
It sounds good saying that, but it boils down to "Just get fired bro", not so easy when of you're wrong, which you may be, your family is going to be without an income, you can lose your house. It puts the burden on the employee who depends on the job. The emphasis should all be on managers listening, as if they do that the cost to them is 0.
Exactly. Think of the engineer who talked about the problems with Ocean Gate, and got fired.
This is how it is everywhere. It’s a business professional problem. Childish, really.
You’re absolutely right about being kicked off, too. You wouldn’t like the project, team, or both.
Professional management power-plays and shutting down others because of embarrassments or whatever it may be is wrong and could cost companies MORE money.
If your ego takes precedence over the team’s goals, you should be exited from the project.
I am no rocket scientist, but as someone who has spoken up about problems in the workplace only to be fired later, thank you for helping to place a greater sense of value in communication. Not just for those who would speak up, but for those who need to listen.
Try deodorant
@@AllahDoesNotExist troll. Nobody take it seriously.
@@AllahDoesNotExist man you are SO FUNNY! HAHA.
cringelord. 🤦♂
Well said. I know it's a crappy experience but you should be proud because not everyone has the courage to do so.
Worked for corporate America, 40 years. Corporate America is rarely concerned about money.
Destin, the topic of communication is what my mom used to train aerospace companies in. I wish she was still alive for you to talk to her! I also wish my grandpa was still around for you to chat with too. He worked on the electrical components and heat shield for Friendship 7, and the electrical components for the lunar lander at Aeronca in Middletown, Ohio. He was also involved with getting the Aeronca Champ off the ground.
Thank you for reminding people to focus on the actual mission and not hurting feelings. When lives and billions of cumulative hours of time, data, labor, and progress are on the line, you MUST be focused.
As an aerospace engineer, and someone that somewhat prides myself on effective communication and effective project management, I'm blown away. I believe this will go down as one of the most impactful talks in NASA's history. Just incredibly well structured, and spectacular use of very accessible, real-world examples.
I wasn't expecting to watch a whole 1-hour lecture, yet you managed to keep me thoroughly engaged. Hope you really made a difference back there
Same here
Same here also. Really made points we should all take into consideration.
He is a very good RUclipsr.
you have a lot more patience than me...I only lasted about One minute
it appeared to me to be just Click Bait
Plus I noticed he's begging for patreon bucks as well and if he's just a click bait patrean begger why would NASA
care what he has to say,..cuz I sure don't
same here!
That took balls of steel and a heart of gold. You left me gobsmacked. Destin, you do a wonderful job of making us smarter every day, but the communication skills you demonstrate in this presentation, with the nuance required for this specific audience and context, are absolutely over the top. The message you give is profoundly important, likely to many lives; and you nailed it.
I had a very similar experience to the reverse bike experiment. I was asked to take a friend's new model aeroplane for it's maiden flight.
He had been building & flying models for years, but didn't trust himself to get the plane off the ground, trimmed & back down again. So he asked me to help out despite having flown for only a year or so. I loved flying, but didn't have the patience he had for building.
I made a beginner's mistake and didn't check the control surfaces properly before take off and once airborne suddenly realised the ailerons were reversed! A crowd appeared to watch and somehow after a few gentle stick movements I figured out how to fly the plane with reversed ailerons. The plane went around the circuit smoothly and landed fine.
Afterwards, one of the club's long-time expert flyers came over and couldn't believe what he just saw. He was convinced he wouldn't have been able to get around with crossed controls on an out-of-trim plane.
Basically, at that time I was still new to flying (having learned at the age of 40) and was used to using full concentration to fly every flight, so it seemed easy to me to simply reverse one of the sticks. But once you have flown for years and the muscle memory has taken over from the conscious brain I think it would be harder to make the switch in your head.
I just wanted to make a point that it's not necessarily a property of kids brains that means they can pick up skills quickly, but the level of focus a person of any age has for the task in hand that makes the difference. The brain can surprise even ourselves when put under a bit of pressure.
This talk is so meta… Destin is giving the audience a rundown of how his talks work, while he’s giving a talk to them. Awesome. On so many levels.
Not the point, though.
@@numbereightysevenOfc it's not the point, just a really cool observation.
Did you catch the machiavellian aforethought as a fisher of politicians, demonstrating his acumen in the field?
Me thinks an office could be getting the eye
Someone had to say it ! Thank you
this is EXACTLY what the internet is at its best. No trolls in the comments (or I just didn't scroll down far enough), just thousands sharing how you have lifted them, inspired them and encouraged them. Bless you for doing what you do and sharing sharing that with us all.
Somehow I'm seeing this comment 1 minute after you made it. No trolls in sight. Awesome community or youtube finally got something right
In a way, the sentiment in your post is kind of the problem Destin was talking about with communication. Communication does not need to always be pretty. It can be messy. If everyone who dissents feels like they are going to be called a troll for dissenting then you end up with the problem he outlined. Destin wants the negative feedback. Not all negative feedback is trolling.
RUclips now hides more of the trolling and negative comments - again, based on an algorithm of what it deems to be positive and relevant to the video's content or what other people will agree on.
This is to try and promote a more positive experience on RUclips, for the creators and the community. But they obviously haven't seen Destin's talk on the PID control loop, where you need negative feedback! Although, in my opinion, a lot of communities (especially Reddit) have a bit of a hive mind, where someone will be ridiculed and bullied if they have an opinion different to a majority's, so I kinda get it.
@@Crushnaut Trolling brings nothing to the table. It adds nothing. Negative feedback is completely different
As a federal employee in an aviation related capacity, I applaud you speaking about the ELEPHANT in the room! This talk applies to everything, not just NASA! There are too many "yes men" and not enough critical thinkers in government/management especially!
This has been one of the most powerful videos I've ever watched. The only RUclips video I've ever posted to my Facebook and pleaded with people to watch. Not only engineers, There are lessons here for everyone. First video I've commented on. Thank you for showing me how to be smarter today!
I'm an engineer. I have 40 years under my belt. Every single engineering problem in every single company I've worked for, especially the government (who I work for now) had its root cause in the lack of communication. It's always bothered me, I've always spoken out about it, and I've been fired because I called out some executives for their lack of it.
What you've pointed out here is 100% correct, and I hope they all listened.
FWIW, my uncle, the man who got me interested in engineering at age 9, worked on the Apollo program. It's a small world.
They might have all listened, but that does not help them ride that different bike, and 99% of them will give up trying after the first few falls, much less the months it took you without your job on the line. ;-)
PS, did you try crossing your arms and putting your hands on the 'wrong' hand-grip? (I think it might be easier to learn that way.)
@@you2tooyou2too The problem with that is you don't get the arm extension and movement you need for good control.
This reminds me of the first time I rode a three-wheeler after years of rising a motorcycle. I almost ran into a wall because I tried to steer it like a motorcycle.
As an engineer, getting fired is part of the cost of doing your job. No matter what, you have to hold the safety and general health of the public paramount. Bad engineering kills people-chemical engineers can kill people, computer engineers can kill people, mechanical engineers can DEFINITELY kill people-and those problems you raised are the source of bad engineering. You did the right thing.
@johnmoser3594 I was fired from my last job for fixing issues I found with my boss' code. It was a good thing though, as the result was a new job with a better contractor, two tiers higher, with a significant increase in pay. As well, my old boss and the director were demoted, other's fired, and I believe the company fined.
Does he remember how they made the radiation shields for the Van Allen belt? The Artemis mission needs it
Destin, worked for NASA recently and raised these questions. You're spot on, politics play a huge role in every architecture decision. Only the most bold leaders are willing to stand up to the politicians and say the hard truths. They're out there, some in the right places, some buried under bureaucracy.
There's definitely a balance between "tech push" and "flight proven". A tech advocate said "The problem is, as it stands right now, you can't fly a robot in space until you've flown that robot in space." But the other side of that coin is, as you said, relying on "this has never been done before" mission-critical components like cryogenic fluid transfer on-orbit.
The question is: How do you balance these two wisely? By letting people raise their concerns (both ways) in a professional manner, and actually listening to them.
I moved from engineering to management and meetings I’m in now ale full of politics and money, and although I was embarrassed I got to convey problems that I predicted. Not without my boss kicking me in my leg. (Once:) Communication, yes
"standing up to the people who literally fund your organisation isn't easy. IT also doesn't change anything ususally. dealing with politics is slow hard and tedious work. . Especially since you BOTH are completely dependent on public support.
At least the stupid SpaceX hype has created much more support and public interest into space flight. So getting out of it to save money isn't the most popular option anymore. Ir definitely was wehn Apollo ended and the Shuttle program was castrated into near uselessness.
To be fair to politicians, it is their job to do something out of mutually conflicting goals. But if you don't tell them anything about those goals, they will never know or assume about them incorrectly.
Is this communications issue related to DEI?
Ofc politics is involved. If you dont play politics you dont get a budget. And no budget no program. Its that simple.
Dude, you rock! I'm an old engineer and I watch your videos with great pleasure. I have to say this is your absolute best ever and I believe to be the most consequential. You moved the cup. Lives will have been saved because of this. I wish you all the success you deserve.
i agree
That cup metaphor was really clever
I don't know why I often forget how awesome he is. Its like every time I remember and come back hes like 10x more awesome
Are you me? You spoke my words here. 😎
Destin, I am a dad and I took great inspiration from what I think is the most important point and conveyed it to my two teenage sons. Criticism is GOOD (cosntructive), asking questions is really good GOOD, and not being afraid of risking the consequencse to stand up for your assessment of a qualified gut feeling that something is off - or plain wrong - is best - I am glad you didn't chicken out on this one and I am particularly glad I could use this as a constructive example to show what I mean when I tell my kids: You gotta speak up, ot no one will know!
Great talk, Dr. I am an old MD, trauma surgeon and health systems manager and today I learned a lot of interesting things suitable to be applied on risky procedures and plans. I’ve got smarter this day.
A lot of good advice for MANY occupations and processes.
Thank you Destin. This inspiring message comes to me just when I need it. I'm an aeronautical engineer myself and I have some very bad news to give my team tomorrow. Just like your example I will be faced with managers with a schedule they want to keep, and technicians whose work did not meet the standard. The safety issue implicated will make this discussion very tense and it will only be resolved if I don't back down, meanwhile I have to give them what they need to understand and make the new plan work. Your approach will prove to be helpful to at least one more aeronautical engineer out there. This is one of your best episodes IMO.
Please let us know how the meeting goes and how they receive your feedback 🙏 maybe make them all watch this video first 😂
Very nice words. Good luck tomorrow.
Good luck!
A nice trick is to end your explanation with a call to action that focuses on finding the solution. Such as "I know we have a great team here, I'm looking forward to everyone's ideas on the solution."
Good luck and God speed.
@@calebpurvis6195 you're right, I did just that. Meetings almost wrapped up but without the follow-up action decided yet, so I kept people in their chairs until it was decided
This was so so good. Thank you for fighting the algorithm and posting the full presentation.
Seeing as this has almost 1 million views in a day, I don't think the algorithm is a problem.
@@Dyanosis a testament to great content
Short version: wow, this is an incredibly good talk!
Full version: This talk is a masterclass not only in communication (know your topic, know your audience, establish rapport, get to the point), it is also inspiring (makes a strong case to invite action), entertaining (keeps the audience engaged), educational (backs up claims with demonstrable knowledge and experience), journalistic (quotes relevant sources) and scientific (shows experiments to demonstrate points).
The smarter every day series is a great series, this talk is several notches up again. I would be tempted to suggest to simplify it for more impact, but I think any simplification would cause the loss of a key point. I am scared to think about the amount of work that must have gone into its preparation. Fantastic.
i just watched a 1 hour talk. and it felt like 5 minutes, not once was i bored or got lost in the words, incredible
you are right, I had no idea the video were that long until I saw this comment, It felt more like the standard 20 - 30 minute video.
Me too, Destin is incredible
I almost didn't watch it because of how long it was, but I 100% agree. It did not feel like an hour, nor was I bored at any moment during it. Destin is an incredible speaker and this was a great video.
Same here. I hesitated in the beginning because I saw that it was about an hour long. And it felt like it was over too soon and kept me longing for more! brilliant.
I didn't think I'd sit through this whole video but I'm so glad I did. This was great, I hope all those folks in the room with you took your insight and words all to heart.
I just did the thing where I watched it without looking at the duration so didn’t realize how long it was until about halfway lol
I would have never thought I would watch a 1h+ lecture on Christmas morning. One of the best presentations ever. Critical negative feedback is super important. I would say to all, start using this in your own field. If you are in charge of something, make sure the whole team knows that it's ok to give negative feedback. When the atmosphere doesn't allow negative feedback, people may hide important info or cover their mistakes because of fear.
I was thinking how inspiring this could be to many other fields, not just aerospace. Generation after generation tend to dismiss or ignore the experience of the previous generation and end up “reinventing the wheel” instead of improving it.
same....
Same
Watching this Christmas evening, but same
Same here, on Jan 1st. i Will apply those concepts for life and My job. THX. For real.
This should be a mandatory watch item for engineering 101.
I can’t believe I watched and understood a talk given to the smartest people on earth. I’m a farmer with ADHD and can’t sit in a 15 minute meeting without getting distracted. You prepared yourself in a way that very few can and I was engaged the whole time. I needed a teacher like this growing up and today. The world is a better place with you and 51:56 this channel. Thank you for sharing the whole message!
Well said. This is a top RUclips channel by a great person!
Hey man, also a farmer with adhd. We are some of the smartest guys on earth man. We have alot of time to build knowledge, and that turns our adhd into a super power. Idk about you but im constantly learning things while im farming. Embrace your genius friend.
I'm the exact same, can't stand videos longer than 15min... stayed the whole hour and even watched through the ads... fantastic video
Hey man, back in the day farmers with whatever goin on were who built NASA.
You are a champ doing rocket science too, god only knows what the next decades will bring!
I choose not to believe in ADHD. Doctors don’t know much about anything. Pharma don’t know much either. Lifetime of Meds can’t be healthy
Destin, I am so happy you are talking about this. I've been involved with Artemis as a young engineer in Huntsville my whole career and the issues you're bringing up need to be discussed at every level. I didn't know you were doing this talk and I'm super bummed I missed it, but thank you for sharing this with us and thank you for a great example of how some of us should be communicating within our own teams.
I am not a rocket scientist but listening to this was one of the best spent hours of my life. Thank you.
As I worked on the Constellation/Artemis program a friend asked me my opinion of Dustin's RUclips video. My response is below and I thought I would share it here.
I had watched this video before and I re-watched it to respond to your request.
I love what Dustin has done with his RUclips channel Smarter Every Day. I have watched a number of his videos and I always learn so much.
In this video I believe that Dustin’s “mistake” is that he seems to assume that the goal of the Artemis Mission is the same as was the Apollo Mission. That is not the case. The goal of Apollo was to send a man to the surface of the Moon and return him safely before the 60’s were over. The goal of the Artemis mission is to help mankind develop the means of exploring our solar system and possibly even exploring beyond our solar system; not by the end of the 2020’s, but to help develop the capability for mankind to explore forever in the future. It may take 12 or more rockets to land people back on the Moon, but once we have developed that refueling and rapid relaunch capability we may get that down to 6 rockets launched in two days.
And we are not going to the Moon just to be able to bring back 842 lbs. of Moon rocks like Apollo. We are going to establish a colony on the Moon as a learning platform for exploration of Mars and beyond. This is a capability that will make mankind a multi-planetary species so that if “the big one" happens mankind may survive.
Dustin attempts to simplify the “lessons learned” from Apollo and apply them to Artemis, but misses the point that the goals of the missions are dramatically different.
I believe that we can learn a lot from Apollo, but we have to be aware of what our goals are and then apply the current technologies to those goals in light of the current funding and political landscape.
It has nothing to do with the technical goals of the programs, it has to do with honesty, communication, and functional feedback... All of which are lacking in modern NASA.
That was without a doubt, one of the best lectures I have ever watched. Your father can only be beyond proud of you.
If every person in that room didn't learn something from your lecture, they are NOT Smarter Every Day.
I finished the whole hour and I’m kind of shocked. The message here is bigger than just Artemis and the way you convey it is important. Thanks for this!
It was interesting how he mentioned an Apollo document Artemis people should be familiar with. I am not surprised that no one has read it. I just finished the book "Homesteading Space" which covers Project Skylab, and guess what no one read the findings from that program either when ISS was being developed. NASA made the same mistakes on ISS, when it came to some of the interior design and locations of equipment, airlocks etc. It was really an interesting book.
You're absolutely right. It is INCREDIBLY important.. in all walks of life.
Exactly. This is what influencing is really about.
This was one of the best Smarter Every Day I've seen. Fantastic talk and message!
My favorite part of this talk is how every time you say "...that's very interesting!" you can replace it with "...that's very stupid". I think all of your audience knew that. You say that preparing for this speech was humbling for you. I think most of your audience left that day more humbled than you were. Great job on this
This reminds me of Feyman's take on the Challenger disaster:
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I had a general chemistry lecture series in college given by a man who was a great fan of Feynman. His explanation of the scientific method has stood me in great stead in the 50 years since, in particular in being struck by all the unscientific offenses made in the climate controversy! Feynman's friend the late Freeman Dyson has spoken well on the climate and is well worth reading. He is a man of great depth and breadth of knowledge and experience and puts his points well. His books are available through the usual outlets and used book stores. Even if you are weak in physics.
@@tobyw9573what was his explanation?
I'm a 72 year old grandmother. I love to learn something new every day. I loved this video. I can apply this to so many thing. I can learn to speak up when things are going the wrong way.
Sigh unzips.
@@Voidapparate ???????? WHAT
@@Voidapparate But he didn't know a thing about the 2024 Atlantean event coming to everyone's neighborhood soon...It will be all over before 2025..
World population, perhaps 2 billion..
@@marcgottlieb9579 lol
@@marcgottlieb9579 sounds like a generous number. Thought we were gonna end up at 500 million.
This has probably taken the top spot in my favorite SED series. You were willing to get on their level of intellect, and try to get them "grounded" in a sense. Communication is lost today, because ego, and humility and judgement but also fear. People are afraid to say WORDS that they feel need to be said, and you Destin, are bringing that to their attention. Well done!
Watched this video when it first came out, but i came back to rewatch after a conversation with a friend. The call to action for simplicity and effective communication is so powerful and a timeless message that can be applied everywhere
This man right here. This is who I want to be when I grow up. A man full of knowledge, yet humble enough to understand when to listen and when to speak. Not speaking like a fool, but speaking with a life time of experiences, and an authority that has been earned.
Destin, you are a inspiration to a generation, and I pray that as I step towards my adult life soon, that I can one day meet you with my head held high. Not meeting you as a fan, or random onlooker to the fishbowl of youtube, but someone who has created substance with their life.
Praying for you and your family, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas season.
You and we all will get there
Keep it up there man
I also want to meet him
Less the praying part, (just my view), I totally agree. Shoot for the stars, and keep picking role models like this. I think you’re on the right track. 👍
My Dad worked on the Saturn V and finished his career working on ISS. He would totally agree with your message. He spoke up and had to find new assignments because he spoke his mind. He was frustrated with the Shuttle Program knowing what was accomplished with Apollo/Saturn V. Will be interesting to see what happens.
I grew up in Huntsville!
Except it was all a cover program for money laundering.
i generally think politics have to much say in securitythings (guessing it was) in stuff like for example space programs. Politics should have no wote in anything involving stuff like this. Just "sc. nice to have/do" nothing else.
Your dad is a liar
@@jvsyoutube3298 Destin is referring to the fact egos and personal agendas get in the way of group decision making in organizations. It happens in businesses as well as projects like the Apollo Program and the Artemis Lunar mission. This is not referring to Democrats vs Republicans.
I grew up in Florence Alabama. I read a book in school “You will go to the moon” I got to hold a space shuttle panel as a scientist hit the other side with a propane torch, and walk through the sky Lab module before it went up during a field trip to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. I thought we would be further by now. Really great presentation, thank you 🙏
Destin out here taking social risks for other people's physical risks. What a legend.
This seems a bit unfair. Most of us have careers that we've worked very, very hard to build. Very few in the engineering world (be it hardware, software, etc) have been in situations where there was a difficult political element to improving the product. Some step up and carefully do the right thing, others play it safe and stay quiet. Destin did the former. I sincerely doubt he would ever equate the risk he's taking with those of our astronauts.
Going to guess you're having a bad morning.
I’m so proud of him. His talk may have worked already. The US government accountability office announced a few days ago that Artemis 3 is likely to be delayed a few years mainly because of the exact issues he mentioned, the HLS refueling issue.
It almost seems to me, that with this magnitude of incompetence, that the powers that be just don't care. They know they have so many problems, that no one person thinks they can or actually can turn it around. I worked at KSC during the early phases of this program and heard even non-technical people for one of the major contractors talking about these issues all the time, BUT, they were not on the design team, did not have the ear of the program manager, too far away from NASA HQ and were too late in the stack process to be taken seriously. In other words, it was all ignored common sense.
☝This comment is what I came here to say
More people need to be brave like Destin. Competent and courageous just like him.
Destin, late to the show here, but just wanted to say, this was a fantastic talk. Why couldn't they just build off of the Saturn V and make it bigger and more technologically updated without reinventing the wheel so to speak!
My father was the chief ground systems engineer for the Titan program. As a kid I overheard soooo many midnight meetings held between some of the great minds of that time as they were struggling mightily to solve the issues confronting the quite literally "do or die", height of the Cold War ICBM development program in the struggle against the U.S.S.R. As you spoke, memories began flooding back of those times, the global significance of which only became clear to me some decades later.
I congratulate you on making what I consider a meaningful contribution to the future of the Artemis mission. My father used to tell me that when engineers can be convinced that the solution to a given problem not only already exists, but that it has ALWAYS existed, and that they accordingly only have to discover it; their chances of not only finding the solution, but also finding it in a timely manner, are algebraically increased. Subscribed and Thumb's Up.
Beautifully put, thank you for sharing ❤
What was really cool about this talk was the strategy. Destin spent time building up his chops to be in the room scientifically, but then he gave a talk about humanities, communication, and history. That's amazing. No matter what field we are in, we have to understand how we got here, why we are here, and why we operate the way we operate. I needed that message for sure. Thank you!
Also. Matt Whitman would be super proud of the way you weaved his field into your literal rocket science. 😉
A James Burke for the 2020s.
💯 🎉 14:23
I’m a healthcare IT program manager. I deal with risk and bureaucracies every day. I understand the problems that you were pointing out. I’m sure they were a ton of people in that audience that were relieved that you finally said the truth. Although it seems like this was just one talk, I bet it will have a rippling effect to really assure that our program to the moon actually works and happens. Thank you for doing extra work and due diligence.
he did them a huge favor. he made it ok for them to talk about specifically relevant stuff they may have been too afraid to broach. sometimes (maybe most times) you really need a neutral third-party to clear the air
The fear is that if they talk about it, they will never have a chance to work in the industry.
The worst part of industries is to point out best practices. The HRs would blacklist resources that criticised companies before. They take it as a red flag no matter how competent the resource is.
The politics that play on highend jobs plays a big role in who gets which title and responsibilities at the end.
This is why he did break the ice and did a huge favour to them by simply coming in and rattle the hive. Ofc someone would be behind this and these things do not happen on it's own.
The point of this video was to make stakeholders realize about engineers perspective so stakeholders do not rush about things they do not understand.
It's good to have 3rd party coming in and create questions that are healthy. Take this as highend, well planned and well thought consultation that would reflect throughout this mission now.
Unfortunately, the additional unspoken truth is that Artemis is a contract generation program as much as it's a moon program.
The value of the contract dollars lost, were anyone to take Destin's advice seriously, will forbid any changes or simplification.
Congress decides the architecture just a tiny bit less than NASA. Try changing anything which removes a contractor in any Senator's district and watch how fast you find yourself working on cropduster engines in Iowa.
@kryptonite365 a 3rd party isn't (shouldn't be) really needed if the first two are being honest and being adults about it. There shouldn't be any egos bruised if there is intellectual and emotional honesty. The fact that Destin had to give this talk is very telling. It's good he made them squirm. I've seen what happens when ground combat missions are planned based of careers and egos. Headstones get added at Arlington. The families would rather not have shadow boxes full of medals on the mantle
You are an incredibly compelling individual. At the beginning of your talkie - talk presentation I was tense, my body was tense, my brain was tense. I'm 72 yrs. old. A gov. accredited chemist. Cockpit qualified ex- military, hard core. You had me on the edge of my seat with your style. You said alot, very inspirational. Thank- you
Dude, I am just partially through watching this and I am moved to write this. I am an engineer (long retired) and have recently run for our Town Council. I ran on a simple concept I called "Dee's C's". The are 1) Communication, 2) Collaboration, and 3) Commitment. I think you can see where this is going. Most of my career was based on solving difficult problems that seemed too difficult to solve. So I adopted these concepts into my problem solving process. (There is a 4th "C" for Community. That said, I think you have quite literally hit the nail on the head. I'd love to discuss this with you at some length, but this is not that venue. I hope I might get a chance to expand these concepts.
There are a lot of engineers who fail at this stuff. I know a lot of people who are drawn to engineering can be awkward, maybe loners... as an old engineer myself I see a lot of them struggle when it's time to join the workplace. The days of the lone engineer solving complex problems are long gone, you have to learn to work with people--and I really feel like your first C--communication--is the most important and I see a lot of people stumble there.
I go out of my way to make junior engineers feel welcome and to let them know that I want to hear what they think. I come from (and work on) submarines, and if *anyone* comes to you with concerns, YOU LISTEN.
By quite literally I take it you mean effectively made a point that the metaphor of hitting a nail strongly applies. Lol. To me it's sad the informal usage you used has made it into the popular American lexicon. Anyway, I wish you success in politics!
@@sisyphuscranerigging7792 so I used to be sorta nitpicky about this usage of the word too, but I have my BA in linguistics from the UW, and I took a class in historical linguistics where we learned about language shift and there is a really common phenomenon that happens with words that mean "literally" where they end up becoming synonymous with "to an extreme degree". For instance, the word "very" comes from the latin "veritas" meaning truth. The same thing happened with the word "really". There are a ton more examples in other languages as well. But when I view this usage of the word "literally" in this light, it no longer bugs me. It just becomes an interesting feature of language change in motion.
very similar to my concept I call "Dee's N's"
I’ve been watching you and other science educators for a long time and I have to say that this video was one of the bravest things I’ve seen someone willingly do. I hope that you do a follow-up with how the audience reacted (privately and publicly) as well as if anything changed. And even if you didn’t change anything within the program, you most definitely impacted those young engineers in the front rows.
If nothing else at least he was able to get NASA to announce how many Rockets they expect to launch to send the Artemis to the Moon. So even if nothing else happens that's something.
Destin, you may have just become the John Houbolt of the Artemis program! Outstanding!!! I'm humbly demanding to hear a follow up about what post presentation Q&A was like and what outside-the-auditorium conversations may have occurred. As my Department of the Army higher-ups always said about their Pentagon briefings of the battlefield systems analysis that we did, we earned our agency credibility by speaking truth to power, and, that if you are not relevant, you are wasting everyone's time. Please tell us what feedback you received from your danger signs advisory. This story is not complete without an AAR!
Watching this a second time, I remembered what an OHS Consultant told me what a lot of his work entailed. A company with a work injury problem would employ him to suggest problem fixes. He would go to the factory floor, ask the workers what the problem was and if they had any ideas on how to fix it. He would take those fixes, write them up in "Managementese language" and present them with a bill for consultancy. His point was that management's reluctance to accept that workers knew their job better than others, led to a breakdown in communication which hampered problem solving.
Greetings ! A very funny story but also a little sad, although the guy could profit from using his talent of communication to directly influence and support the communication between others. Lead by example,
This video has been so inspirational for me ! Awesome !
@@swississue8550 This was a conversation from the late 90s but would still apply in many factories today. The point was that top down management would rather pay a consultant than risk relinquishing the power dynamic.
I've worked in factories where I was told "You're paid to work! Not to think!" It was an attitude that sent the place into receivership.
You see that attitude with a lot of professional managers. They want to keep the separation of people who are “in” (managers) and people who are “out” (workers). So they can’t really talk to workers because that would mean they are giving up their power. The same type of manager now wants people to return to office because they have no idea how to evaluate the work of people.
Tell that to Musk...and a whole bunch of (more usually) right wing politicians...
@@jimbob-robob ? Musk is actually known for accepting and acting on input from non-traditional sources.
Having worked in aerospace for over 40 years I can tell you that, as an engineer, the most common thought in people's minds during a meeting was "I knew that". At the end of a meeting, if it appeared to me that there wasn't clarity or consistency of understanding, I would go to the grease board and start writing things down to provide the 'Strawman' necessary to pull thoughts from the engineers they wouldn't otherwise offer.
We also had a final meeting on every project that we called a 'Post-Mortum' to record what we thought we did right & what we did wrong, so any future build could benefit from our experience.
I needed to hear this. Not an engineer, but negative feedback is just as important for me and my team. Didn’t realize I’d been avoiding it for years until I watched your talk. Thank you.
Negative feedback is your friend, but sometimes difficult to hear.
I think there's 2 problems. First main problem is that people often get upset if their viewpoint/opinion is challenged which causes people to want to make waves. No pun intended there. Second one is that many people don't know how to challenge someone's opinion/viewpoint/design/etc... in a nonconfrontational way. Best way I've found is if you think there's a flaw then instead of just pointing out the flaw instead try asking a question. Example: Let's say someone thinks the carburetor on an engine is broken but you think it's fine. Instead of saying "no the carburetor is fine" try saying "is there anything at all besides the carburetor that it could possibly be?"
@@shadowprince4482 Effective and accurate communication is a skill that needs to be trained as most things in life.
@@shadowprince4482 The leading question is an incredibly powerful tool. Another tool I like to use "playing dumb" to get the other side to explain there whole reasoning. (because often there are hidden assumptions driving decisions and it best to make everyone aware of them)
I’m work in aerospace engineering and I can tell you straight up that almost anytime I’ve encountered any failure with design, testing, manufacturing, etc. it ultimately ended up being a communication issue. It’s always extremely frustrating because it’s the most avoidable type of issue in hindsight.
NASA Scientists hate this one weird trick...
Haiyaa
@kunalarora9116I'm sorry to hear that
What is that?
NASA space exploration gone wrong!
@kunalarora9116what she commented? Your home address and full legal name?
This video was for me one of the best of your channel. I think it can be used as a professional training in every company. I will suggest it in mine.
"If you loose your job because of the hard questions you ask, good for you!'
Thank you!
As a young engineer, I thank the brave people like you who make me want to change the world. Your speech in this video truly spoke to me and promise you that although it was uncomfortable it was not in vain. Thank you man
You solved declining EROEI?
It ain't easy to change a world, filled with old farts that hate change...
As an engineer myself with some work experience, I wish you a lot of luck!
Old farts? Hmmm...so bc destin is relatively young, his perspective is correct? Truth is not the perview of any generation. Comments like that only create discourse. You're elders do hold wisdom you may want to consult.
@@kidcasco1966 "You're elders..." Ok boomer, what's the solution to declining EROEI?
@@kidcasco1966 Sure, I agree that senior people hold a lot of wisdom.
I'm in my early thirties, yet I contact my parents the second I have some questions they may know the answer too.
That being said! I've worked with some semi retired 70+ years old engineers and scientists, who just refuse to quit their jobs. Those people where very respectful towards young people, and their ideas. I've also worked with a ton of 50 to 70 year old colleagues, they're usually the worst! They always think they know best, are disrespectful towards younger colleagues, and refuse to even test or try out new ideas.
So yes! I believe that the current senior generation in the workforce, was kinda spoiled during their lifetime. Which reflects in an increased amount of ego, getting in the way towards progress!
Out. STANDING and spot on. As a now retired Army Aviator I can say that I saw too many times leadership get blinded by dazzling new tech. They lost sight of the mission. So often we wished for simple - simple works. Thank you Destin...
I have no beef in this, but I watched all 1:05:19 and I learned what an amazing storyteller you are and it gave me joy in my day to see how excited you were you to deliver truth to this room. I’m proud of you, and grateful you shared.
Thank you for the kind words
This!!!
@smartereveryday most people with a brain knows that basic science tell us that human space travel is impossible and only driven by the fantasy of it.
It's easy to show using basic proven science.
I'm no expert, but as someone who has raised concerns at work only to be fired later, I want to thank you for fostering a stronger appreciation for communication. For those who need to listen, as well as for those who would speak up.
As a mechanical engineer, one of my functions was to create documents for field repair of some of our products. Once I was done with the initial writing I would give it to someone for review before it was released. What I DIDN"T do was give it to another engineer or someone who was responsible for the assembly of the product. I felt that they were to close to the product and would easily miss things that I left out, because they could do the repairs in their sleep. Instead I chose a single mother home owner who could use simple hand tools and was an intelligent person, but was an office worker, not someone who built and tested things for a living. She never got through a document without me having to make some sore of change or addition. But I knew that if she could do it, any field technician could as well. I am retired now, so any writings that I do I have my wife (retired teacher) or son(s) (one is a PHd in English, not very mechanically inclined, the other an Auto Technician, who has more trouble shooting skills than anyone I have ever met) review it before I release the document. I think more people need to swallow their pride, and not be ashamed to use others to verify their work.
I'm currently replaying and studying a number of videogames from the 90s because I want to start making one of a similar type myself, and I immediately noticed the importance of that myself. So many of these old games are really hard at the beginning and I remember giving up and losing interest in them very quickly because of that when I previously tried 20 years ago. I now have more experience with these types of games and I can get through the difficulties with brute force and persistence, but it's really not fun.
Once I have become familiar enough with the games after some 10 to 15 hours, those really hard and frustrating parts really are not that difficult to replay again. But when you give them to a new player who has no familiarity, they are much too hard.
And I feel certain that these sections had only been tested by people who had already played with the game mechanics before for many hours. Those issues should have been immediately detected by anyone testing them with no prior experience of the game, and would have been trivial to fix.
Software dev is just like this. Other people can spot mistakes in your code way faster than you can.
I have seen many assembly/repair/operational manuals that were obviously written by soemone who knew the product inside and out. Total mistake, as you say, when you know it well it is easy to assume others would see the 'little things'.
My Ex's dad worked on a part that failed during the Challenger launch. Him and other engineers actually had voiced concerns, but weren't listened to for some reason.
I think being able to effectively communicate can't be undervalued.
Being ALLOWED to communicate is even more important.
@@harrybarrow6222not just allowed, but hosting an environment in which people can feel comfortable enough to voice their concerns. And not just doing that by saying "please feel comfortable to say whatever blah blah blah"
Amazing how 7 Survivors of the Challenger Shuttle Psy-OP didn't bother to even change their Names.
Look into it. Only 1 of them is unaccounted for.
Feynman's second book ('What do you care what other people think') talks about this, and his comments during the investigation of the Challenger disaster.
Concerns had been voiced but were not listened to, and you're pinning this on the ones raising the issue rather than the ones ignoring it?
How was the private reception after the talk? Anyone come up to you and tell you they cant believe you said these things? I thought it was awesome, and it would be a great blueprint for any large organization with a common mission.
To me its insane how easy it is to listen to you! I think not many people are able to deliver a topic like you do
What needs to be said isn’t always what we want to hear but needs triumphs over wants.
Thank you for all you do!
So what happened during the Pandemic?
what has the pandemic to do with this comment, let alone this video?@@PetraKann
This is just some person who's trying to hijack the conversation for whatever reason. Pretty low level stuff @@SuSa13182
@@PetraKannpeople got sick, people died, you gotta be more specific when asking question man, rhetorical question only works when you know the context. Destin's rhetorical question works because he knows what the audience know and vice versa. Not with your question though
@@PetraKann elaborate pls
I am not an engineer, nor do I have anything to do with rocket science (I am just interested in it). But as a banker, watching our ship going down due to a number of failed IT projects, I hear your message, and this is so important in our everyday life, whoever you are, whatever you are doing. We need this in all of our society. This was such a good speech. I am going to share this with as many co workers as I possibly can. I will be honest: Not many will watch the video, since English isnt our first language, but those who are, can maybe change a thing in the future and learn from our desasters that happened recently.
I didn’t know how or what to comment, but ditto to your comment we need similar motivational speeches like this in all areas. As a maintenance manager for a company that manufactures farm/tractor implements, I strive to excel myself and my subordinates to learn how to improve what we repair. Ask yourself these questions, Why did it fail, and what can we do to improve it so it won’t fail again? and so on… thanks for that comment I intend to the same and share this speech.
And Artimis with 1/3 of the budget of Apollo Mission I say, ti's going pretty good so far. As a banker you should know, going for reusable rockets instead of 1-time use rockets, will save a lot of money.
@@YR2050 Its not that I am criticizing Artemis. I dont think the speech was doing it. Its about speaking up. And thats what was going wrong at least in our bank with some major projects we had. I learned so much in this video. How to talk to co workers and superiors for example. Negative and positive feedback. :) Thats it.
A hundred people in the audience, and soon to be millions watching through a web screen. Great teachers have an astronomical reach.
I'm so glad you commented. I lost my Google account, thus lost my subscriptions.
Couldn't remember your yt name. I work on junk for a living😂
Perfectly said. Thank you
It is always great listening to someone who knows what they are talking about and not scared to even ask the difficult questions! Awesome video Destin!
Thank you very much, Dustin, from an aeronautical engineer up north in Canada. This talk applies to so much more than engineering and the world is better now that you shared it. It takes courage, leadership to “speak up”. And it takes great emotional intelligence skills to deliver such a talkie talk respectfully, humbly and with a touch of humour. Bravo. Hope I can do as good and have as much courage when I have a chance to address tough feedback in small situations as well as in front of larger groups. Cheers.
Never have I been so interested in a topic I know nothing about. The way you talk about such a complex topic is exceptional. Hats off to you Destin.
The graph where you talk about the way you make your videos is what brought me here in the first place.
Definitely worth watching the entire video.
It's an interesting presentation, and in many senses I agree completely with your arguments about what must be done to make the mission successful. The one place I think we diverge is our understanding of what the mission actually is, which leads me to very different conclusions when I follow the approach you lay out so well in this video. So in the spirit of #1 and # 3 of your When You Leave here goals, let me look at the mission differently than you and ask some hard questions.
If I take as a given that the goal of the Artemis program is to land humans on the moon again and return them safely, then I more or less fully agree with basically all your points. Orbital refueling a starship in Earth orbit and landing something that size on the moon is both completely unnecessary and unnecessarily risky as a means to achieve that goal, and NASA SP287 is a sufficient and much less risky recipe.
However, to quote part of NASA's description of the Artemis program "...We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon...". That's a very very different mission goal than the Apollo program, and in a sense is so ambitious that I think a lot of people don't take it seriously and think this is just going to be flags and footprints part 7, and I don't even blame them for thinking that. However, if we take that mission description seriously, setting up a sustainable long-term presence on the Moon changes the engineering trades dramatically. We're going to need a ton of stuff to live long term on the moon, so now maybe having something as large as a Starship landing, in terms of both mass and volume, might actually be simpler than landing an order of magnitude more smaller landers? If we're going to be going back and forth constantly, maybe the added complexity of multiple launches and fuel depots and propellant boil off and reusable rockets make more fiscal sense, as fuel is cheap compared to building and expending whole rockets? If we're envisioning a world where when a lunar lander blasts off from the moon, there will be people intentionally left behind, maybe the toxicity and corrosion hazards of hypergolic fuels for the remaining crew outweighs the benefits in simplicity for the departing crew? If there's a nice comfy permanent moon base people can chill at if they "miss the bus", as you put it, maybe it's not as big a deal to have to catch the next bus? I'm not by any means saying all or even any of these unambiguously cut in the direction of my argument, but they are additional considerations I didn't see taken into account.
Finally, I mean absolutely no disrespect to the Apollo engineers by these arguments, I'm in complete agreement that it was one of the most amazing engineering feats of all time. My only point is that they were making their engineering tradeoffs towards one specific goal, and the Artemis program has very different goals. I'm quite sure that if you gathered up every Apollo engineer and said that their new goal was to build a permanent moon base, the solution for that goal they came back with would not be to send up hundreds of exactly Apollo-like missions to bring the station up one piece at a time, so at some point even they would be making very different trades from what they themselves had selected for the Apollo program.
That said, to your broader point, this could all simply be a symptom of the communication problems at the core of your talk. If NASA truly is committed to trying to create a long-term presence on the moon, but even very smart people like you think that's just aspirational talk to be ignored and are instead focusing on the very hard but still relatively more modest goal of landing astronauts on the moon and bringing them back, then clearly they are not communicating their own goals to the broader public well.
This comment needs to go to the top.
Very insightful addition to this video's point, thank you.
Thanks for putting it into words.
When he asked "what is the mission" I started yelling at the screen "it's STAYING", and him talking like this is going to be just Apollo 2: Electric Boogaloo was ridiculous.
We need that increased payload mass to get there, and so we need more complexity.
Von Braun was the first one who wanted to have a space station somewhere to test human presence in space, and let's not forget Kennedy's reply to those plans when James Webb brought them to him in a private meeting: it was, tldr:
"But we need one moonshot. The rest IDGAF, maybe later".
(At least we got half a dozen moonshots thanks to what the public heard...)
Talk about cutting tests; because that's exactly what Apollo was: full of cutted corners, just to reach that goal. And we took a lot of risks to accomplish it, it was an Odyssey. And then there was no infrastructure left to keep doing it.
No one is ignoring the safety aspects nowadays, because we have something that they couldn't do back then: the capability to do repeated unmanned test landings AND liftoffs. That's what the NASA contracts requires btw. No one is going to put people on any lander until those architectures can demonstrate a full mission.
So if we want to achieve our new goals in a competitive way, we need to build that infrastructure. Otherwise, it's just going to be another throwaway effort.
I do get your point and you're probably right that the mission scope is larger than mentioned.
But the thing with a lander is that it needs to be able to take off again.
Things we want to place on the moon do not need to take off again and there is no desire for it to do so.
We only need to launch things at the moon and have them land safely and be ready for setup, since those things are things and not humans, it's possible to do so with cheaper methods without risking lives. We can do so easily on earth with 1G and we've done so on Mars, which is much further away.
There is no reason to send a lorry truck to the moon when we can airdrop things, unless we want to bring large things off of the moon.
Apart for playing with, and testing the lorry truck, of course.
Which is not part of the mission.
It also cannot possibly be cheaper to send it over with said lorry truck when it needs at least 15 rockets to refuel it so that it can take off from the moon again.
Those are 15 rockets that could have been used to send payloads to the moon. For each trip of the lorry truck.
This with its much more complex and time consuming path, with the increased risks as well.
Later on, however, when the base is established and enough has happened with it, there could be reasons to send lorry trucks over to bring things home.
But for establishing a base on the moon, we could as well have used Apollo style landers for the people, since the only thing we're taking away from there are humans.
Then send the non-living material with one-way tickets.
Even if this isn't exactly what was mentioned in the video, the point still stands.
This comes off as Musk having a new toy he wants to play with and try out and having NASA finance as much of it as possible, instead of selecting the simplest solution to solve the problem.
If you can’t even do the basics, or do the research, you should not be increasing the scope and complexity.
Thank you Destin for putting this inspiring talk on the internet for everyone to see. Even if it wouldn't make an impact at NASA, I still find it highly valuable and important to talk about, because the points you were making apply to all fields of engineering and possibly beyond. Our society needs it, and I am grateful for you.
I don't believe we are going to the moon, before 2070, not because tecnology problems, but because lack of Communication, departamental (inside NASA and other space agencies) and social (between people). Communication problems on the ground and in orbit + unnecessary complexity is a recipe to disaster. Whoever goes in the rocket will not be back on the ground alive.
I'm an engineer working for a subcontractor on parts of the Artemis 2 and other future missions. This was an incredible video, so inspiring! And I'll go ahead and read SP287. Shame on me I guess!
Anyways, I just wanted to say thank you, I love you and your work, you are one of the inspirations that keep me going.
@@countryfucius And what is that reason?
@@countryfucius “Artemis 3.” Google it and get back to me.
I've watched this video at least 10 times. Thank you Destin! I would really love to have quick video updates from you on Artemis, I'm so curious about this mission now :)
This is a golden example for delivering difficult messages to executives, leadership team and authorities figures and I learn alot as a guy in his mid-career. Thank you very much Destin
I think this is probably one of your best videos. Not only is the presentation awesome, but perhaps more importantly, the presentation was really important. Now I'm not saying all your videos should be like this, that would be a little heavy. But you should be proud about this. Very well done!
How much would you wager there is at least one unqualified person on the team that came up with the flight path? And disagreeing with that person can get you labeled a rayyycisss?
@@לךתזדיין-פ1ת if that's the case then it could be any number of labellings you can get. I'd rather not perform that mental exercise.
Oh man this material is gold! I wish wider audience would see this: corporates, schoolchildren, graduates, teambuilding events, courses in leadership... This touches so many important topics and is delivered in highest quality. Thank you Destin. A virtual hug, a high five and an inverted handshake 🤝
On that note, it could be a postgraduate commencement speech.
56:08
In the unlikely event that you are ever challenged by one of these perverted bicycles, try crossing your hands. Left hand on right side (doesn't have to be all the way to the end) handlebar, right hand on left side. This should help you compensate for the engineering mix up. Note: DO NOT do this with a regular bicycle.
I really enjoyed this talk. I worked 20 years for NASA and am retired now at 74. They really needed to hear what you have to say. There was a culture there during the Shuttle program where I worked, that this is the way we have always done it. I have been in many meeetngs and yes, people are afraid to speak up when they had tough questions and concerns.. This is part of the reason for the two disasters that happened with Challenger and Columbia.
Not an Engineer, but another 74 year old Space, NASA, Rocket, Flight enthusiast. I was thinking of Challenger in particular because of the situation that was not addressed before launch, and you nailed it. Wish Destin had brought it up, but he probably did not for good reason. And oddly, my name is Jim also.
Agreed. Human Greed and impatience happened. Take your time and get it right, do the mission and go home to your families
I think you really nailed the negative feedback problem in the current internet ecosystem. RUclips dislikes are the most direct example to everyone watching this video
I would have never thought I'd hear a comparison between youtube dislikes and a feedback loop for a PID-controller, but it is true 😀
@@blackkissi i wrote my comment before he mentioned the controller, to be honest. I was already thinking about it and it came naturally after that
You absolutely nailed it!
Hey, it came from the same dude that ran away from public discourse and tried (probably would still be trying if they were a thing now) to push NFTs on YT and is the brains behind some of the worst decisions at YT. YT's CEO saga is the exemplification of "out from the frying pan and into the fire".
@@snarkyliveno it was to protect political messages that mass amounts of viewers disagree with.
The massive engineering balls that Destin has to compile this presentation and present it in person. I work on the aerospace industry and its true the lack of proper comunication is astoningly frustrating. I really appreciate this video and the message. Also I might take the joke about the slide with your wife on it for my next about me presentation. You are amazing and thank you for another video making me smarter everyday!!!
It is really impressive that you can successfully work ON the aerospace industry, when everyone else in your field are working IN it.
I appreciate folks like you who go against the grain of the herd… 😉
@@JROD082384 thanks for the correction. English isn't my native language.
I thought that joke was funny but yeah it definitely whooshed a lot of the audience ("isn't she (the rocket) hot? Also my wife is cute too")
Another massive engineering balls is to admit that we NEVER landed or went to the moon. You've been brainwashed if you cannot see the truth of that.
@@defenestrated23 That was a pressious joke ;)
Hello, I know you might not read this, but first of all, I want to tell you that you left me impressed. I’ve been watching you for years, but I never imagined the story you have, and it’s amazing how much you’ve done in your life. I’m impressed by this conversation, by how you can stand in front of such brilliant people and tell them how you see things without fear of being judged, and how you can demonstrate such complex ideas in such a simple way, like how changing just one variable can change everything. You are incredible, and I’ll keep watching your videos. I really like the way you educate and share information. Thank you for doing it.
I love the Destin managed to get his dad at least 2 maybe 3 rounds of applause for his dad from some of the greatest minds in aerospace just by saying "this is my dad' 😂
His dad has more "NASA experience" than most of that room lol
@@zequilomogamer'Greatest minds in aerospace' no longer impresses anyone smart. NASA has been politically and socially corrupted for decades now.
Also it's just beautiful and respectable to see them having such a good father-son relationship :)
It's almost like that Spongebob scene where Spongebob appears on stage for a second and everyone applauds.
I know , so very cool !
Wow, that was one of, if not the best talks I‘ve seen in the last decade. You speak up without being judgmental and bring it home for everyone to understand the important things that shall lead to success in the mission. Thank you for that and keep it up for all of us. Greetings from Germany!
Short of Dr. Richard Feynman's demonstration during the Shuttle Challenger Rogers Commission investigation, this is the best example of speaking truth to power I've seen... and we need more of it. We need Destin and folks like him brought in by Congress to ask the right and honest questions at hearings.
@@BasedPatriot-USA That's an unfair generalization.
@@wfemp_4730
Then why are there so many problems with known solutions that are left undone? If not for the lack of will to do it?
@@BassGoThump your usage of they is the generalization. It is only a few that are preventing the fixes.
The government accountability office announced a few days ago that Artemis 3 is likely to be delayed a few years mainly because of the exact issues he mentioned, the HLS refueling issue. His talk may already have worked.
@@jaredf6205HLS refueling is not actually a safety problem though... its an engineering problem, if you are scared of engineering problems to the point that it makes you dysfunctional you certainly aren't going to be even getting to the safety problems to solve them. The entire reason SpaceX has control of HLS now... is because nobody else was making any baby steps in the right direct EXCEPT SpaceX. Everyone else was trying to pull off big space post apollo cash grab projects. Will SpaceX be late... maybe, but there is zero chance that any of the other projects would have ever made it to the moon... look at the past 30 years littered with dozens of projects by all these space companies that never saw any real human rated flights. SpaceX is the only company doing real ground to LEO orbital fights today... everyone else is just being a venture capitalist instead of getting anything done.
As a retired Boeing Project Manager, man I wish I could send this to the quacks working on the FAILING Boeing aspects of this project. THANK YOU DESTIN!🎉
Hi Destin, I’m sure this is a lot of work for you, but I do think you are doing good with your channel. Words I think of? Interesting, respectful, honest, and intelligent. Also reasonably humble. You are helping. Your work is appreciated.
His like means yes
You also forgot funny