I certainly make arithmetic mistakes myself.
Anyone who works with numbers has made an arithmetic error, and engineers sometimes make arithmetic errors that result in values being off by orders of magnitude. It's the nature of the trade, which is why a universal notation is important -- and hence why there is one. If we all agree to notate quantities and formulas conventionally, it's easier to spot errors because more eyes will be on them and they will have a familiar appearance.
As you work in various fields and problem spaces, you get used to the magnitudes involved. If someone quotes me an orbital speed in meters per second, expressed in common notation, I have an intuition for whether that's the right number. Ditto miles per hour (because I'm American), or km/s or whatever. The units and rough magnitudes are appropriate. Change that notation and I'd be more apt not to notice an error.
...embarrassed at his errors on this point and reinvestigate his claims about heat of re-entry.
Most conspiracy theorists of this species are so deeply in denial (cf. Dunning and Kruger) that they feel no embarrassment. I'm sure Wogoga fully believes he is absolutely correct and that anyone who seems to have refuted him is
ipso facto wrong. That's sort of how this breed operates.
[He] should slink away ... But I predict that won't happen
He'll flounce, but then go to someplace like Cluesforum or ATS where they'll feed his ego.
Given his utter ball'sd up mess in this regard, I see no impetus to believe he can prove NASA fudged re-entry thermodynamics.
Well he simply doesn't understand how the design works. I see this all the time from non-engineers trying to second-guess engineering. Wonky notation aside, the claimant usually dredges up some basic concepts and models the problem accordingly. Then, again relying on basic concepts, tries to show that existing or purported solutions would be insufficient to address the model.
The pitfall is that the claimant's model is usually correct but not optimal. Which is to say, there is almost always an easier way to address the problem. And we pay engineers to think creatively to find those ways. The claimant's reliance on basic principles and his ability to show that his model follows from them blinds him to more sophisticated approaches. Or in some cases less sophisticated.
For an example that's not re-entry, spacecraft guidance
could be implemented as a pure Newtonian dynamics model that kept track of the mass of the spacecraft and derived acceleration from modeled rocket thrust divided by mass, then integrated for velocity and position. Such a model would be correct. But you would be right to criticize it for undue complexity. We just measure acceleration directly, and that way we don't care about actual spacecraft mass or actual thrust. Just burn the engine until you've accumulated enough
measured acceleration. But you can see how someone who concludes naively that the purely synthetic model is the only way you can implement spacecraft guidance would contend that there's no way it could be practically achieved.
I run afoul sometimes of the moderators here because I raise issues of a claimant's expertise and knowledge. But here it matters. Wogoga's failure is exactly his ignorance of how spacecraft are actually designed, built, and operated. He expects that any errors would have to be in his derivations, and he's sure there aren't any. He doesn't expect that his error lies in his inability to model the problem of re-entry optimally, specifically in terms of physical behavior he's unaware of, but which were actually applied by talented engineers who
are aware of them.
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