On: The Shape of a Mars Mission

[Retric]

> a 50% chance of success.

On that specific launch, which is another way of saying they believed the project had a very good chance of having someone walking on the moon. Failure there wouldn’t even mean people died, just that they didn’t walk on the moon and then safely get back on that mission.

[ANewFormation → Retric]

That 50% was after years of bubble optimism and actively blinding themselves to data strongly suggestive otherwise.

Had the Apollo missions failed you would obviously be arguing, using the exact same data, that they 'knew they never had a chance.'

[Retric → ANewFormation]

> Had the Apollo missions failed you would obviously be arguing, using the exact same data, that they 'knew they never had a chance.'

No, an earlier post argued that 6 successes doesn’t mean the odds of success on every mission was high. “Got unbelievably lucky” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130343

The exact opposite position after 6 failures would be that the odds were good that at least 1 mission would have succeeded.

Obviously, things aren’t actually completely independent, but 6 lunar landings could have successfully been completed with a huge range of different odds. 50% odds of success on the first launch isn’t inconsistent with 6 successful launches or 6 failures, it’s just not enough data to really narrow things down.