Author Topic: Do you believe in DIRECT?  (Read 70530 times)

Offline JIS

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #80 on: 01/10/2008 12:11 pm »
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clongton - 10/1/2008  12:32 PM

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JIS - 10/1/2008  5:59 AM

The major finding for myself is the confirmation that many people opposing Direct do not want to take part in the discussion. I can understand that.
JIS;
Not to put too fine a point on this, but how can you know that?
You appear to be basing your statement on the fact that not many people have voiced opposition to DIRECT. It is equally possible that there simply are *not* many people who oppose it as well. You are citing the fact that not many people voted in opposition of DIRECT as *confirmation* that a large number of people do not wish to vote. The fundamental rule of a poll is you don't get to count votes that are not cast, nor are you allowed to draw conclusions from un-cast votes, because fundamentally you have absolutely no idea how many, or even *IF* there are any un-cast votes.

Your "confirmation" is invalid.

I based my statement on 17 votes not 100% happy with Direct and 8 sceptical votes. I tried to explain my position but I can see very little benefit in doing so here. There is just no point doing this so I understand people who don't bother.
Usually, the discussion is about making something to happen or learn something. There is nothing for DIRECT opponents to gain. Is there anything to learn?

'Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill' - Old Greek experience

Offline JIS

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #81 on: 01/10/2008 12:18 pm »
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kraisee - 10/1/2008  1:00 PM

With purely negative motives behind his actions there is zero benefit to us from engaging him any more.   It is time to simply try to ignore him in reference to anything DIRECT-related from this point onwards.

Should he persist, or attempt to pursue a vendetta in the future for being embarrassed by being called-out for his actions, I suggest we rely upon the forums moderators and managers keeping things under control.

Ross.

If my comments are find to be inappropriate by forums moderators I would like to know that.
I think that ignoring DIRECT by myself could be a good solution how to end this matter. I did it for some time and it worked.
'Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill' - Old Greek experience

Offline tankmodeler

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #82 on: 01/10/2008 12:19 pm »
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JIS - 10/1/2008  5:59 AM
The major finding for myself is the confirmation that many people oposing Direct do not want to take part in the discussion. I can understand that.
Excuse me???!!

I'm sorry, but Chuck is absolutely right on this and "concluding" that a lack of votes against Direct is Proof that there are a lot of people who just don't want to vote against it is ludicrous and borders on delusional. Whatever value & conclusions you may be able to make based on this poll _have_ to come from the actual data collected. If you don't collect it, it doesn't exist.

The best you can say is that  with only 131 responses (to this time) and X hundred members on NSF, this issue doesn't appear to greatly interest the majority of members. That's it. It's the last fact you can squeeze out of the poll. There's no way you can infer any leanings of the people who are too disinterested to vote. On the other hand, if  the number of regular members is under about 300, you can actually infer that a) the matter is of reasonably high interest (as polls regularly get less than 20% response) and b) that the results do accurately reflect the beliefs of the members of NSF (because the results are greatly skewed to Direct's favour).

It's been too long since my statistics courses for me to do the math (I'm sure someone here could) but it would be easy to establish the probablilitiy of the results being accurate if we knew how many regular members there were.

Looking at the responses and declaring that the majority of naysayers are declining to respond to a confidential survey just is not supported by your own survey.

Paul
Sr. Mech. Engineer
MDA

Offline JIS

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #83 on: 01/10/2008 12:34 pm »
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tankmodeler - 10/1/2008  1:19 PM

On the other hand, if  the number of regular members is under about 300, you can actually infer that a) the matter is of reasonably high interest (as polls regularly get less than 20% response) and b) that the results do accurately reflect the beliefs of the members of NSF (because the results are greatly skewed to Direct's favour).

I agree. My other point was that those voting against don't want to be more involved. Maybe their reasons are irrational.
'Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill' - Old Greek experience

Offline Jim

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #84 on: 01/10/2008 12:38 pm »
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JIS - 10/1/2008  8:18 AM

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kraisee - 10/1/2008  1:00 PM

With purely negative motives behind his actions there is zero benefit to us from engaging him any more.   It is time to simply try to ignore him in reference to anything DIRECT-related from this point onwards.

Should he persist, or attempt to pursue a vendetta in the future for being embarrassed by being called-out for his actions, I suggest we rely upon the forums moderators and managers keeping things under control.

Ross.

If my comments are find to be inappropriate by forums moderators I would like to know that.
I think that ignoring DIRECT by myself could be a good solution how to end this matter. I did it for some time and it worked.

Also JIS has yet to provide any evidence that he is an expert at anything to make any conclusions

He did a poll to find other people who think like him and when there wasn't that many, he tried to come up with other explanations

Offline Kaputnik

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RE: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #85 on: 01/10/2008 12:43 pm »
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CFE - 10/1/2008  2:21 AM

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clongton - 9/1/2008  2:09 PM

To all those who have either selected or are considering selecting option 3 (If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul), would you mind telling us what the things are that you believe would be so affected? That will provide us with the opportunity to take a look at them and then provide you with a considered response. Perhaps we have overlooked something. If so, we would certainly like to know about that.
Thanks

There are no issues I know of surrounding DIRECT, but there's a general fear on my part that there's something I'm missing.  I think of all the "off the shelf" solutions that have been proposed in the aerospace industry and how much they have changed between initial and final implementations.  I think of all the work that was required to adapt the F-86 Sabre into the carrier-based Fury, or the required work to make the A-7 out of the F-8.  In the end, you're left with a system that's quite different from the one you started with.

This is essentially why I choce option 3. I really like DIRECT, and I think the basic idea of it is inherently better than the Ares designs. However, I think it is naive to suggest that DIRECT would happen without major modifications. Further, I believe that these changes would be the result of as yet unknown issues- primarily political or economical ones, not technical ones. I believe this because I trust that the engineers involved in the proposal are capable of addressing the technical issues, because they are known issues. The other issues will not follow scientific logic and cannot be addressed in advance.

I'd also like that add that as one of the seventeen people who JIS is counting as being 'anti-DIRECT', I am very much, and have always been, very supportive of the proposal- I am simply a little sceptical, too.
"I don't care what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do"- Gene Kranz

Offline clongton

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RE: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #86 on: 01/10/2008 12:48 pm »
IMHO, the only ones JIS can count on as being in his corner are the ones that actually selected option 1. NONE of the other options imply any non-support for DIRECT, only questions of one kind or another.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline JIS

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #87 on: 01/10/2008 01:42 pm »
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Jim - 10/1/2008  1:38 PM

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JIS - 10/1/2008  8:18 AM

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kraisee - 10/1/2008  1:00 PM

With purely negative motives behind his actions there is zero benefit to us from engaging him any more.   It is time to simply try to ignore him in reference to anything DIRECT-related from this point onwards.

Should he persist, or attempt to pursue a vendetta in the future for being embarrassed by being called-out for his actions, I suggest we rely upon the forums moderators and managers keeping things under control.

Ross.

If my comments are find to be inappropriate by forums moderators I would like to know that.
I think that ignoring DIRECT by myself could be a good solution how to end this matter. I did it for some time and it worked.

Also JIS has yet to provide any evidence that he is an expert at anything to make any conclusions

He did a poll to find other people who think like him and when there wasn't that many, he tried to come up with other explanations

Actually, I voted option 1 only to join the club of naysayers - remember? I was given a label naysayer so I joined the club. You can find my opinion described on the first page of this thread.
Otherwise we don't need to play an expert game. You can either say what is true and can prove that or not.
Also you can believe that something is true or not.
'Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill' - Old Greek experience

Offline James Lowe1

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #88 on: 01/10/2008 03:26 pm »
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tankmodeler - 9/1/2008  8:19 AM


The best you can say is that  with only 131 responses (to this time) and X hundred members on NSF, this issue doesn't appear to greatly interest the majority of members. That's it. It's the last fact you can squeeze out of the poll. There's no way you can infer any leanings of the people who are too disinterested to vote. On the other hand, if  the number of regular members is under about 300, you can actually infer that a) the matter is of reasonably high interest (as polls regularly get less than 20% response) and b) that the results do accurately reflect the beliefs of the members of NSF (because the results are greatly skewed to Direct's favour).

Paul

We average a couple of thousand members on the forum on any one day. About four times that in guests and many multiples are on the news site, that don't come through to the forum.

So take an average "on line right now" snapshot of the 300. Only the members can vote and most are here for other topics (look how fast the post tanking test STS-122 thread jumped to 65,000 reads in the matter of a few weeks or so).

Your likely to have a strong feeling for or against Direct to a) look and find this thread, b) vote on it.

So it's actually only a few percent of the forum's readership that have voted.

Regardless, as with the electoral polls, where millions vote, the polls work off about 1000 people, so it still has representative qualities, and from that, most *interested* people appear to be impressed/supportive of Direct.

Offline jml

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #89 on: 01/10/2008 05:06 pm »
I support DIRECT, and voted in this poll for the most sensible choice - Option 4.

But after looking over some of the seemingly anti-JIS comments in this thread and the main Direct thread, I have to say that I'm glad that JIS has contributed to the Direct discussion in the way that he has. It is the critiques of this proposal and the resulting conversation on the Direct thread that have really made it stronger in the past, and that continue to make it stronger now. Anytime someone like JIS comes up with a good, serious  "but what about this issue..." question for the Direct team, we get great discussion and responses here that really show how much stronger this proposal is than the competing ideas.

Chuck, Ross, Stephen, Antonio, and, yes, JIS - please keep up the good work on DIRECT. I hope that JIS keeps participating in the Direct thread, and that the Direct team keeps responding to his and others' constructive criticism.

Offline tankmodeler

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #90 on: 01/10/2008 05:24 pm »
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James Lowe1 - 10/1/2008  11:26 AM
We average a couple of thousand members on the forum on any one day. About four times that in guests and many multiples are on the news site, that don't come through to the forum.

Cool, so I'd say that...
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The best you can say is that  with only 131 responses (to this time) and X hundred members on NSF, this issue doesn't appear to greatly interest the majority of members.

is closest to the mark.

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Your likely to have a strong feeling for or against Direct to a) look and find this thread, b) vote on it.
Agreed.

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Regardless, as with the electoral polls, where millions vote, the polls work off about 1000 people, so it still has representative qualities, and from that, most *interested* people appear to be impressed/supportive of Direct.
Also agreed.

Paul
Sr. Mech. Engineer
MDA

Offline Yegor

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #91 on: 01/10/2008 06:31 pm »
I think that this poll is a good representation.

In my observation lots of people who come to a forum are just not interested in rocket engineering and in deep factors that affect the price of rocket building - the people are just not into it.
There are just few people who are interested in these things and IMHO they took a vote.
Please tell me if somebody does not like DIRECT when he/she saw this poll why he/she would miss an opportunity to say “no”?

That is why I think that this poll is a good representation of what people (who are interested in rocket engineering and in deep factors that affect the price of rocket building) think.


Offline kraisee

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #92 on: 01/11/2008 10:34 pm »
Constructive criticism is, and always will be, welcome regarding DIRECT.

However "constructive criticism" was not what JIS was engaged in.

While months of constant claims of "can't believe you" and "it will never work" are certainly criticism, they couldn't be termed constructive.   The purpose of all JIS' questioning has not been to help identify weaknesses in order to help us to improve the proposal, it has been to find weaknesses to utilize as justification why JIS must be right and we must all be wrong.

We put up with it for months.   Sometimes you just need to bite your tongue and just put up with people like that.   For a while it could even be 'flipped' into a good thing too because from time to time he gave us opportunities to explain bits of DIRECT in more detail - always valuable for new readers.

But his endless negative attitude simply chapped my a$$ the other day, so I called him out on it - publicly.   He clearly didn't like that and I embarrassed him.   He made this poll to try to rally support around him, but it backfired spectacularly.   Paraphrasing Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair in the TV show Bablyon 5: "You should never hand someone a gun unless you're sure where they'll point it".

But let it be known that even given this very clear and unveiled animosity JIS has shown towards the DIRECT Team's efforts, he is still most welcome to bring his questions back to the DIRECT thread any time he likes.

JIS has asked some pretty good things now and again - valuable things which have sometimes made us "check again" to make sure we are indeed covered correctly.   Such things are well worthwhile for us - it keeps us on our toes :)

But I beg him to please check the negative bashing attitude at the door in future.   Questions are very welcome, but that constantly-negative attitude is just not by anyone on the DIRECT Team.

I'm extending an olive branch over this matter - if JIS is willing.

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

Offline CEV Now

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #93 on: 01/12/2008 05:15 am »
I voted "If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul"

Offline tankmodeler

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #94 on: 01/12/2008 02:55 pm »
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CEV Now - 12/1/2008  1:15 AM

I voted "If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul"
Just curious, but do you have a specific thing that you think needs a major re-think or is it more a case of "they _must_ have missed _something_ major, so this is a safer bet". I can understand the latter, certainly. I don't feel that way, but I understand it.

Feel free not to answer if you think the discussion might get contentious, or even PM me. I'm just curious about people's thinking process on these things.

Paul
Sr. Mech. Engineer
MDA

Offline Yegor

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #95 on: 01/12/2008 03:00 pm »
Hmm… All of sudden the number of people voted “If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul” doubled overnight (somewhere from midnight – in a very short time) from 19 to 38.
When “If accepted the DIRECT would require only sensible, peer-studied changes” gain only 10% - 11 more votes at the same time.
IMHO there is something fishy in this.


Offline clongton

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #96 on: 01/12/2008 03:21 pm »
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Yegor - 12/1/2008  11:00 AM

Hmm… All of sudden the number of people voted “If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul” doubled overnight (somewhere from midnight – in a very short time) from 19 to 38.
When “If accepted the DIRECT would require only sensible, peer-studied changes” gain only 10% - 11 more votes at the same time.
IMHO there is something fishy in this.
Why would you say that? It's pretty standard that when it comes to polling, a lot of people don't make up their minds until they see some of the early responses. There is something to be said for listening a LOT before opening their mouths. Listening a while helps to remind us of context and little details we may have forgotten. In actual matter of fact, DIRECT actually got its start that way. There was a WHOLE LOT of listening to people who know what they're talking about before the design even began to gel.

Nothing fishy about it at all. Some folks, while supportive, are either unsure of the magnitude of changes required to implement DIRECT, or have specific concerns that have not yet been adequately addressed to their satisfaction, so they feel safer with this option. That's totally fine. It would just be nice if they would express those concerns so that we get a good chance to address them.

There are a lot of new forum members that are supportive of DIRECT but don't have the history behind them of how we got from there to here. Most of the time their concerns have already been addressed but they don't know where to look. We would appreciate the opportunity to point them in the right direction to find the appropriate discussion, and to take it further if they wish.
Chuck - DIRECT co-founder
I started my career on the Saturn-V F-1A engine

Offline JonSBerndt

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #97 on: 01/12/2008 03:55 pm »
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clongton - 12/1/2008  10:21 AM

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Yegor - 12/1/2008  11:00 AM

Hmm… All of sudden the number of people voted “If accepted the DIRECT would require major overhaul” doubled overnight (somewhere from midnight – in a very short time) from 19 to 38.
When “If accepted the DIRECT would require only sensible, peer-studied changes” gain only 10% - 11 more votes at the same time.
IMHO there is something fishy in this.
Why would you say that? It's pretty standard that when it comes to polling, a lot of people don't make up their minds until they see some of the early responses. There is something to be said for listening a LOT before you open your mouth. In actual matter of fact, DIRECT actually got its start that way. There was a WHOLE LOT of listening to people who know what they're talking about before the design even began to gel.

It does sort of seem strange. Particularly if no other votes were cast for the other items in the same overnight period - especially considering this poll has already been out there for a while.

Jon

Offline kraisee

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #98 on: 01/12/2008 04:20 pm »
I could concur with the 'major overhaul' if the general concensus is trying to say "the DIRECT guys have done a good job so far, but NASA will have to do it all over again anyway so that they have total confidence in their numbers".

While we believe we have found the optimum design, we are under no illusion that NASA will just "take our word for it" WRT numbers.   We have always assumed that NASA will *HAVE* to cover all the same ground we have, for themselves, and may very well select different results from comparisons than we did.

I have been considering that under the 'sensible, peer studied changes' description because it is exactly what we have expected will have to happen from day 1 of the DIRECT proposal.

But it may be that others are possibly considering that factor as under a different category because it ma not be completely clear that we *are* actually expecting that.

It would be nice (for me) to hear if that's actually what is going on with the voting over the last 24 hours?   I ***totally*** understand that reasoning.

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

Offline kraisee

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Re: Do you believe in DIRECT?
« Reply #99 on: 01/12/2008 04:26 pm »
I would be equally interested to know (PM me if you don't want to talk publicly!) if the reasoning *is* something else...

Ross.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth -- the rest of us will go to the stars"
-Robert A. Heinlein

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