It turns out NASA’s Mars helicopter was much more revolutionary than we knew

Before they began, the group codified a set of organizing principles, dubbed the “Pirate Paradigm,” that would dictate how they worked together:

• Don’t wait to be told to do something; figure it out for yourself


• Challenge everything, and steel yourself for the inevitable cynicism, opposition, rumors, false reporting, innuendos, and slander


• Break the ru

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One is simply the sheer difficulty of building a modern commercial aircraft, which is probably one of the five or six most complex technical achievements of modern civilization (along with jet engines, leading-edge semiconductor fabrication, and nuclear submarines). Commercial aircraft must couple a high level of performance in some of the most adv... See more

On average, it takes roughly twelve minutes for a signal from Mars to reach Earth traveling at the speed of light.7 If something is wrong, and a scientist on Earth spots and responds to the problem in a split second, another twelve minutes will pass for that command to reach Mars. That’s twenty-four minutes round trip, but it takes about six minute

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SpaceX’s mission is, in and of itself, inspiring. If SpaceX is successful, humans will be a multi-planetary species and our risk of extinction will be greatly reduced. And in achieving that, SpaceX will likely be considered the most important company in history. But even if, for some reason, they fail, the company has accomplished so much already. ... See more