Top all-time · #9373
Robert Barron
Personal blog · flyingbarron.medium.comsciencesystems
Robert Barron's personal blog at flyingbarron.medium.com covers science and systems. Since 2021, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “Known Unknowns –Webb Struck by Meteoroid”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for SRE and reliability lessons drawn from early space exploration, including Apollo, the Space Shuttle, the James Webb Space Telescope, and a Mars Rover failure story.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Known Unknowns –Webb Struck by Meteoroid3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-06-14
- The James Webb Space Telescope – Success Through Redundancy3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-23
- The James Webb Space Telescope – making 300 points of failure reliable2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-01-09
What Hacker News says?
Apparently NASA and the Soviet Union used to build duplicates: https://flyingbarron.medium.com/the-james-webb-space-telesco... so it's not such a ridiculous idea after all. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. All you have to do is look at the space shuttle design. It was a seriously flawed concept. I did not understand how that concept could have been pushed forward. So I emailed Homer Hickam about it, wondering…
Comment linking /the-james-webb-space-telescope-making-300-points-of-failure-reliable-db669810a9d8
on “James Webb is fully deployed”Submitted The James Webb Space Telescope – making 300 points of failure reliable as a story · 150 points
HN discussionIt seems that NASA and the Soviet Union used to build duplicates. https://flyingbarron.medium.com/the-james-webb-space-telesco...
Comment linking /the-james-webb-space-telescope-making-300-points-of-failure-reliable-db669810a9d8
on “James Webb is fully deployed”Submitted Day 2 Operations with the James Webb Space Telescope is about to begin as a story · 125 points
HN discussionhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/flyingbarron/ "I'm a solution engineer specializing in AIOps, SRE, & ChatOps. I enjoy helping others solve problems even more than I enjoy solving them myself. Besides my IBM work, I also write about SRE lessons from the early era of space exploration - the race to the Moon and the Space Shutte - at https://flyingbarron.medium.com I'm a published author and I speak for myself and IBM at g…
Comment linking /
on “The James Webb Space Telescope – making 300 points of failure reliable”Submitted Apollo 11 Anniversary List of Lunar Landing Lessons as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://flyingbarron.medium.com/feed
Comment linking /feed
on “The James Webb Space Telescope – making 300 points of failure reliable”Submitted Known Unknowns –Webb Struck by Meteoroid as a story · 3 points
HN discussionFantastic story! One of the fascinating things about this are the parallels to Apollo 12 - Lightning strike / Power surge lead to a total loss of telemetry which raised the specter of losing the entire mission - and a similar resolution when telemetry was restored! I've written a bit about it myself - https://flyingbarron.medium.com/lightning-strikes-92482387ca...
Comment linking /lightning-strikes-92482387cab8
on “My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story”Submitted Gyros and Gimbals, Oh My – The James Webb Space Telescope Reliability Lessons as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is there such a thing as a system that’s too reliable? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Known Unknowns – Webb Struck by Meteoroid as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The James Webb Space Telescope – Success Through Redundancy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Michael Collins – Carrying the Fire as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mightiest Monolith. Shuttle to SRE as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Known Unknowns –Webb Struck by Meteoroid as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The James Webb Space Telescope – Success Through Redundancy as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The James Webb Space Telescope – Success Through Redundancy as a story · 1 points
HN discussion