 Can you think of a few things that have zero margin for error, and I mean absolutely no margin for error? I can. Spaceflight. A million things have to go right for a rocket to make it orbit, and all it takes is for one thing to go wrong. But is space really actually hard, or is it an effortless thing that we do all the time? Well, that's the question for this space pod for July 3rd, 2015. As many of us know, earlier this week SpaceX suffered its first in-flight failure of a Falcon 9, and failure with rockets is kind of an inevitability. This is something that I constantly try to remind myself when I'm watching launches, which is that control can be lost at any second, and earlier this week over the Atlantic it was. Shortly after, a bevy of tweets were sent out that echoed the same idea about the difficulty of spaceflight, which is, space is hard. A multitude of persons carried on this idea. Science advocate Bill Nye, from onboard the International Space Station, astronaut Scott Kelly, even I took the time to relay that old adage as SpaceX engineers began to save their data for later use and form up to commence the long road of tracing that first painful failure. But an article written by science reporter Lauren Grush for Verge less than 24 hours after the failure of CRS-7 caught my attention. It made quite a bold statement in the wake of the vapor-strewn wreckage, stop saying space is hard. At face value, this seems like an utterly ridiculous thing to say, and as a rocket scientist myself, I was puzzled as to how someone could make this assertion, so naturally, I had to read the article. Believe it or not, there are actually some ideas in that article that I agree with, but there's also some major fallacies that I feel like need to be addressed and corrected. Let's begin with a great point that Lauren brings up. How we handle our technology's failure defines us as much as the fact that we created the technology at all. When a commercial plane crashes, a thankfully rare occurrence these days, we don't just stand idly by. A team of analysts quickly swoop in, determine the root cause of the plane's demise, and then decide what precautions should be taken so that a similar accident doesn't occur again. The general attitude for these scenarios is often the same. We should have done better. That's a great point. That's how we as aerospace engineers actually approach the problem. First, we figure out what it was, we repeat it, we rectify it, and then we refly it. However, comparing rockets to commercial aviation is an excessively large leap in logic. The total number of rockets that we've actually launched to orbit is somewhere around 5,500. The Air Transportation Action Group released data as to how many aircraft flights happened per day. And the average number is 102,465 flights every single day. That is two orders of magnitude higher than the total number of rockets that have flown into space in the over 60 years, we've actually been sending things into space. Comparing commercial aviation to spaceflight is, well, ridiculous. The complexity involved in spaceflight doesn't even give you the type of assurance that commercial aviation does. And you can't even think about looking at the maturity that rockets have gone through and then looking at the maturity that commercial aviation has gone through and expect them to be exactly the same. But let's continue on with the article. Lauren writes, but when technological failure occurs during spaceflight, the public's attitude isn't nearly as chastin. Yes, teams of engineers and researchers immediately analyze the problem in order to pinpoint the origin of the failure. And updates are almost always made so as to prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. But in the immediate post-mortem of a lost rocket, a familiar excuse always seems to surface pardoning the debacle. Space is hard. We've heard that following Orbital Sciences' Antares explosion on October 28, 2014, as well as when Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 crashed on October 31. We again start off with a great point. The public often doesn't take launch failures of unmanned vehicles seriously because, after all, it is cargo. But to suggest that space is hard as being used as a pardon by us engineers, that couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, I don't really see anyone saying space is hard with a grin on their face. No one in mission control shouted out, space is hard, and then gave the console next to them a high five. That's because the reality of space being hard makes us push ourselves to do these things. The complexity of the immensity and the undertaking of spaceflight is, by its very nature, exceptionally difficult and haphazardly risk-inherent. Everything must work correctly. Lauren then goes on to say that we don't really need to say space is hard because, of course, space is hard. Lauren continues, But our species is characterized by our ability to make last year's miracle seem like this year's child's play. Just over 50 years ago, color televisions were a novelty. Now we're working on fully immersive virtual reality. Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone. We eradicated it with vaccination. We achieved the seemingly impossible and then moved beyond that to accomplish the even more impossible. It's what we do. Comparing complex rocket technology to color televisions is just silly. I mean, do I need to go find the number of how many color TVs are produced every year? And also with the smallpox vaccine, we actually had to go through different vaccines to find one that worked. And then when we found one that worked, it didn't work for everybody. So the smallpox vaccine, like rockets, has a failure rate. Lauren continues, Except in spaceflight, where we always let ourselves off the hook. Saying space is hard gives us a pass for our mistakes. Like an adult comforting a toddler after a nasty fall. It's a way of patting ourselves on the back when things don't go the way we want them. It's okay that you didn't succeed. It was really hard. If we intend to be serious about space, we should say, yes, it was hard. Why didn't you succeed? Suggesting we aren't serious about space is a false assertion, if you ask me. When something goes wrong, nobody, and I mean nobody, is ever, ever let off the hook. And engineers, we're really not babies trying to find the comfort of our parents when something goes wrong. We go back to the drawing board. Build, test, fly, rinse, lather, repeat, continue. We don't just ask, why didn't you succeed? We ask, why didn't you succeed? And how can we assure we will in the future? Let's continue on with the article. We need a significant attitude shift in how we think of spaceflight. Rocket science is no longer fringe or experimental. It is marching into the mainstream. And it should be held to the same high standards as other pervasive technological systems. Accidents in the field are not okay. They're embarrassments. That's not because we're incompetent. It's because we can and should make rocket failures a thing of the past. Spaceflight is not a novelty. Spaceflight mistakes should be. I agree, there does need to be an attitude shift in spaceflight, but in the exact opposite direction that Ms. Grush is expecting it to go. Spaceflight is often thought of as too routine, which is why the article's suggestion of rocket science being neither fringe nor experimental anymore makes little if any sense, especially to all of us who are actually in this industry. A rocket launch will never, ever, ever be routine. There is nothing normal involved in sending several thousand pounds of exotic metals up to 28,000 kilometers an hour on top of a fuel tank which is propelled by a column of barely controlled explosion. These complicated vehicles are right on the bleeding edge of what humanity thinks that it can control. There have been accidents, there are accidents, and there always will be accidents. These types of things are to be expected when you're pushing the envelope as hard as we do. No one would be doing this if we didn't think that the risk of failure was worth it. Now back to the article. Mistakes will never be eliminated, of course. They shouldn't be routine. Three resupply accidents in the last 12 months is frankly alarming, and they certainly shouldn't be excused. Space is hard is an excuse, and it's one that we should stop using, because NASA has its sights set on Mars. That excuse won't fly when human lives are on the line. If space is so hard that we cannot routinely send supplies to the International Space Station, how do we expect to get people to the red planet? What confidence can that possibly create in NASA's ambitious programs for human spaceflight? Again, I agree. Mistakes will never be eliminated, and they shouldn't become a routine thing. But both Orbital ATK's Antares and SpaceX's Falcon 9 are relatively new rockets. If you could show me a rocket that didn't have growing pains during its development, well, you'd think it'd be dominating the launch market by now, wouldn't it? A string of launch failures isn't alarming. No one is in danger here. Not the US's launch capability, not Orbital ATK, not even SpaceX, NASA, or the International Space Station. Space is hard is not used as an excuse. It's a harsh reality that many of us in this industry have to deal with on a daily basis, and it's one of the reasons why safety is paramount when we are lifting humans off of this planet. Spaceflight is the only industry in human history where perfection is the expectation, not the exception. This is why I disagree with so much in Miss Grush's article, because, really, space is hard. Thanks for watching this space pod. I'm Jared Head. Go ahead and let us know what you think about space. Is it an easy thing, or is it hard? And we want to say thank you to our Patreon contributors who are helping bring these awesome space pods to you. And if you have a little bit to help us out, throw it our way. That way we can continue to make these exceptional pieces of information for you to help understand the cosmos a little bit better. Next Friday, I'll be getting you prepared for New Horizons flyby of Pluto. So, until the next space pod, keep exploring.