you’re much more likely to get dragged into a meeting or a review than witness a rocket engine test.

This was much more true during the Apollo era than today. Probably should have researched that quip before writing it.

it took a minor miracle for engineers designing the Orion spacecraft to get a small window on the vehicle through the rigorous safety review process.

Ok. Explain why that’s a problem. Because robust design is the basic expectation from everyone involved, and having a slapdash design and review process is how two 737 MAX nosed into the ground killing hundreds of people.

Flying a phalanx of such missions the old way would have cost billions of dollars.

Terrible news. The new moon program has already spent billions and nobody’s even in transit yet.

so your lander had better have a smart navigation system on board.

Alternatively, you map the surface with increased resolution and plan your landing meticulously. Then use radar or lidar on the lander to make final adjustments. “Smart” devices is what has caused several mission failures.

Beyond the technical challenges, a bigger issue was finances.

No shit. $97M to build a lander and pay an existing contractor to do the expensive launch part, and it’s surprising they can’t make the numbers work? Seems like the kind of thing that could have been realized in a single one of those dreaded meetings. Good thing three companies pretended they could do it.

Peregrine sustained a serious blow when one of its propulsion tanks ruptured.

Why did it rupture? What was the engineering review process like? What safety factor was there in this design? All things any mature engineering team could discuss before the destruction of a mission. So we learned that we have engineering review and robust designs for a reason, and it only cost us $180+ million? Why does this guy still work there?

That’s a big problem because the company’s next mission entails flying the significantly larger and more complex Griffin lander.

Why the HELL would they move on to the next phase before completing the previous phase? WTF is even going on here?? You haven’t taken the driving license test, but tomorrow you’re going to drive across the US. Does that make ANY sense?

This whole piece is an author not understanding extremely basic concepts, and thinking that blowing up launch pads is “doing science”. It isn’t. Especially when the science was already done decades ago. It’s tiring seeing people with such unsophisticated views writing articles warning of the dangers of engineering reviews, design discussions, and heaven forbid… meetings. Much better to lawn dart a $90M mission into the atmosphere and check a box so we can light more fireworks and see bigger things go bang in space.

What’s with the arstechnica NASA hit pieces lately?