That has been my experience too.

Autoconf is kind of the partner of automake, right?

Did you find out if this works? I'm interested because last time I tried to do complex cross-platform compilation with cmake, I eventually gave up completely and wrote my own build script for several different projects. I would be happy to know that actually it does work.

I think the best way to go about this might be to create a front-end to autotools. Once you have are really nice syntax system, then eventually the underlying system can be re-implemented. But setting up the syntax system is something a single person can do, and may be best done by a single person.

(btw as an aside, I recently had to make some .deb files without using dpkg. I was really impressed with how clean the file format was. I don't know if you are the one who did that).

You think having the part designed to handle five times the load it actually experienced to not be "with sufficient margin"? How much of a margin do you want them to put, 100x?

RTFA. They were doing statistical-sampling quality control testing of struts. The problem was that most of them were just fine, but there were a very small number which were totally defective and broke at a tiny fraction of their rated value. And no, SpaceX did not make the parts, it was an outside supplier. And yes, SpaceX A) will now be testing 100% of them, and B) is ditching the supplier.

It's not just about the cost of a failed launch, there's also a huge cost to a company's reputation if a rocket fails. And to their schedule.

Out of curiosity, is there any lightweight way to sense how close a part is to failure *in use*? I mean, finding defects on the ground is great, no question. But what if something would doom a mission not due to a part having a manufacturing defect, but due to an oversight somewhere in the rocket design process, or assembly, or transportation, or launch setup, or unexpected weather conditions, or whatnot? It seems to me it could be a massive boost to launch reliability if one knew that a part was about to fail - for example, in this case, the computers could automatically have throttled back to the rocket to reduce stresses, at the cost of expending more propellant, and possibly been able to salvage the mission. And then the problem could be remedied for future missions, without having to have a launch failure first.

To pick a random, for example, would there potentially be a change in resistance or capacitance or other electrical properties when a strut nears its breaking point?

Obviously, though, if adding sensing hardware would add a high weight or cost penalty, that would be unrealistic.

Couldn't last forever, like any proper winning streak, and often times more is learned from one's failures.

Carry on Elon, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Funny ;) But the main point is that its surface is high radiation and very oxidizing; and as far as we know there's no liquids anywhere on Mars except for possible transients or extremely perchlorate-rich brines (aka, something you'd use to sterilize a rock of life).

On the other hand, subsurface water oceans are common elsewhere in the solar system, and colder bodies are known and/or theorized to have a wide range of alternative liquids.

Also, maybe it's just because I've never worked in that industry before, maybe it's common practice in rocketry, but is anyone else impressed with the use of sound triangulation to figure out which part broke? I've never heard of that being done before.

Sad that the Falcon Heavy won't be launched until next spring, I've been really looking forward to that. Oh well...

This gadget of which you speak...

It would be a rainmaker.

Elon is surely really fuming about this one, as I know from past interviews with him that he really doesn't like having to source hardware from outside suppliers. He has the old "robber baron" mindset of wanting to get the whole production chain start-to-finish in house, and it's one of the things that really frustrated him when he started Tesla: at the time of the last interview I read on the subject (something like 3 or 4 years ago), he had gotten SpaceX up to 80% in-house, but Tesla was only up to 20% in-house. Car manufacture has long been all about sourcing parts from a wide range of outside suppliers.

But even at 80% in-house at SpaceX, looks like that remaining 20% still bit them : Seriously, failing at 1/5th the rated failure value? The vendor might as well have given them a cardboard cutout with the word "strut" written on it in sharpie.

The parachute is for if they don't reopen, after shuttlecock mode has done it's job.

Really? Which features are you thinking will be worth that much? The improved Azure integration? The slick Agile planning tools? The brand new XAML editor?

"How about improving intelligent life here at home instead? "

You mean building better humans?

The politically correct orthodoxy would have you burned at the stake if you announced a $100M initiative to create stronger, more intelligent and more disease-resistance strains of homo sapiens.

"...we have no reason to suspect we know what to look for."

The progression of our own technology gives us a very good reason to believe we know what to look for. At least *some* of what to look for. Namely radio frequency transmissions. It's logical to assume that any advanced civilization would have discovered and experimented with radio waves before developing a more sophisticated communication technology.
Yes, we might be unable to detect "sub space" communications from Star Fleet, but I expect we'd be detecting one of their radio transmissions before a FTL starship enters earth orbit.

You are much too certain. They know the characteristics of designs that have been tried with the techniques and approaches previously tried. To go from this claim to the blanket claim that you are making is far overstepping both the evidence and what any reasonable expert would say. (Not to claim that there aren't unreasonable experts. Some will claim that things will work, but more will claim that they won't. Often they will turn out to be right, but not always. And very few of even the unreasonable experts would make as broad a claim as you did.)

OTOH, it *is* clear that many designs of what I was proposing would not work.