claim: Planetary landing is the highest-risk phase of robotic missions to bodies with or without atmospheres, concentrating a disproportionate share of total mission investment into a few minutes of irreversible, largely autonomous operation; the difficulty of entry, descent, and landing scales steeply with mass, which is the entire motivation for the high-mass and human-class EDL architecture studies. This establishes that the problem the dissertation addresses (whether heritage reuse measurably lowers landing-failure risk) is a real, consequential phenomenon rather than a constructed one.

source: Steinfeldt, Theisinger, Korzun, Clark, Grant & Braun, "High Mass Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Architecture Assessment" (2009), dissertation ref [57]

grade: B

source: "Human Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Architecture Study Overview" (2016), dissertation ref [58]

facet: priority

subclaim: real


claim: The heritage-versus-novelty decision is materially consequential for the portfolio because higher-mass and new-body jobs force the introduction of novel EDL elements (supersonic retropropulsion, inflatable and flexible-TPS aerodynamic decelerators) that heritage low-mass disk-gap-band-and-sky-crane architectures cannot perform; a measured heritage-protection effect therefore sets a real qualification bar on when such novelty is acceptable, and a null or confounded effect would redirect investment from heritage-as-a-goal toward the engineering reserves and verification rigor heritage proxies. This grounds the materiality of the contribution rather than merely its existence.

source: "Development of Supersonic Retropropulsion for Future Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Systems", Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (2014), dissertation ref [36]

grade: A

source: Del Corso, Cheatwood, Bruce, Hughes & Calomino, "Advanced High-Temperature Flexible TPS for Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators" (2011), dissertation ref [10]

facet: economics

subclaim: material


claim: Landing outcomes and the EDL element behavior the heritage index codes are recoverable as measured quantities from audit-grade post-flight reconstruction (for example the Phoenix and InSight EDL flight reconstructions and the MEDLI/MEDLI2 trajectory-and-aerothermal reconstructions), which is the data substrate that makes a falsifiable, reproducible heritage-reuse measurement possible rather than a matter of expert assertion. This grounds that the problem is measurable with real instruments, supporting the realness of the empirical program.

source: "Entry, Descent, and Landing Performance of the Mars Phoenix Lander", dissertation ref [48]

source: Grover, Skulsky & Russell, "Introduction to the Mars InSight Entry, Descent, and Landing Flight Reconstruction Virtual Collection", Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (2021), dissertation ref [65]

facet: measurement


claim: The methodological core of the challenge is established and citable: a weighted MEAN of element scores is a separable (additive) aggregation whose value is by construction insensitive to the interaction structure among elements, which is the property Ackoff identifies as the locus of system performance ('the performance of a system depends on how its parts interact, not on how each part performs in isolation'). An index built this way necessarily severs the emergent-property risk it is meant to score. This is a structural proof, not an empirical one. SUPPORTING DOMAIN FACT (heritage-by-analysis vs flight): the MSL parachute, a heritage Viking-class disk-gap-band design, was NOT flight-qualified for its new supersonic deployment regime by flight heritage but re-qualified by a 'delta qualification by analysis' program because the heritage element was placed in a coupled aero/structural regime its prior flights did not cover (Witkowski et al., AIAA 2007-2542; Sengupta et al., AIAA 2009-2900; IEEE Aerospace 2008.4526284). This concretely instantiates the 'heritage element / novel integration' cell the additive index scores near-maximal. A formal heritage-assessment methodology literature exists (Heritage Technologies in Space Programs, TUM 2016) confirming heritage scoring is studied as element-wise. HOWEVER: the specific demand, a named landing LOSS attributed to an element INTERACTION drawn from the candidate's own cited NTRS reconstruction record, with the index's numeric value vs a pairwise term, COULD NOT be retrieved this turn and is NOT asserted (see gap g1).

source: Ackoff, 'The Future of Operational Research is Past', J. Operational Research Society (1979) [via ackoff dossier, hall_of_shoulders]

source: Witkowski, Bruno & Cruz, 'Supersonic Delta Qualification by Analysis Program for the Mars Science Laboratory Parachute', AIAA 2007-2542

source: Sengupta et al., 'Findings from the Supersonic Qualification Program of the Mars Science Laboratory Parachute', AIAA 2009-2900

source: Heritage Technologies in Space Programs - Assessment Methodology and Statistical Analysis (Technical University Munich repository, 2016)


claim: On systems grounds the objection holds at the level of estimand vs. decision object: an average protective coefficient answers an averaging question, whereas the EDL portfolio is a purposeful system making per-integration go/no-go choices, and improving a part-metric (average heritage protection) can degrade the whole (suboptimization). Ackoff's governing maxim is decisive here: efficiently solving the wrong problem ('doing the wrong thing right') is the cardinal, non-correctable error, so a numerically perfect backward beta_1 can still be the right answer to a question the portfolio is not asking. That novel high-mass EDL elements (supersonic retropropulsion, high-mass Mars EDL architectures) are pursued precisely because heritage low-mass architectures do not feed forward to high landed mass is established in the named technology-development record. HOWEVER, the specific COUNT of heritage-overridden-for-cause decision rows demanded by the question is not present in any TechPort/NTRS/GAO source retrieved this turn and is therefore not asserted.

source: Ackoff dossier (hos-ackoff brain), citing Ackoff, 'Towards a System of Systems Concepts,' Management Science (1971)

source: Ackoff dossier (hos-ackoff brain), citing Ackoff, 'From Data to Wisdom' (1989) and 'The Future of Operational Research is Past,' J. Oper. Res. Soc. (1979)

source: Korzun et al., 'Development of Supersonic Retropropulsion for Future Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing,' Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (2014)

source: NTRS: 'Supersonic Retropropulsion Technology Development in NASA's Entry, Descent, and Landing Program' (NTRS 20120014589)

subclaim: alternatives


claim: The expansionist objection is itself well-founded: the candidate's frame treats the attempt population as exogenous, but Ackoff's expansionism holds that a part must be explained by its role in the larger containing system, and his account of purposeful-system feedback implies that any protective coefficient fed back as guidance becomes endogenous to which missions get proposed. So a coefficient that is locally right can be globally counterproductive by suppressing reachable-set-expanding novel integrations. This validates the QUESTION's premise. It does NOT, however, supply the finite GAO/TechPort-observable measure the question demands (a count of de-scoped/never-flown novel-EDL missions attributable to a heritage alternative); no source retrieved this turn quantifies that induced-attempt channel, so the channel is named as real but not measured.

source: Ackoff dossier (hos-ackoff brain), citing Ackoff & Emery, 'On Purposeful Systems' (1972) and Ackoff, 'The Art and Science of Mess Management' (1981)

source: Christian et al., 'High Mass Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Architecture Assessment,' AIAA 2009-6684

facet: rival


claim: The dissolved reformulation the question proposes is the methodologically correct move under Ackoff: dissolution redesigns the rule/structure so the mess cannot form, rather than tuning a parameter on past outcomes; recasting the dependent object as forward go/no-go-PLUS-required-qualification-depth (with heritage as one input) is exactly such a redesign. This grounds why a qualification-depth decision object is the actionable variable and the backward average coefficient is non-actionable at the decision point. BUT the specific finite demonstration demanded, two novel elements with identical average heritage scores requiring different qualification depths for equal residual risk, drawn from a Mokyr propositional-vs-ungrounded decomposition over TechPort qualification histories, is NOT supported by any source retrieved this turn. The Mokyr decomposition and the paired-element qualification-depth records were not returned by AMOS, ACTA, Space Economy, NTRS, or OpenAlex; that paired count is asserted nowhere.

source: Ackoff dossier (hos-ackoff brain), citing Ackoff, 'The Art and Science of Mess Management' (1981) and 'Redesigning the Future' (1974)

source: Haftor, 'An Evaluation of R.L. Ackoff's Interactive Planning: A Case-based Approach,' Systemic Practice and Action Research (2010)

facet: governance


claim: The candidate's own dissertation operationalizes the boundary variable as landed mass class relative to the proven envelope: the heritage index runs from 'an element flown successfully in a comparable regime' (high) to 'an element introduced for the first time, or flown well outside its proven envelope' (low). The decision is framed as introducing 'supersonic retropropulsion or inflatable decelerators to carry heavier payloads beyond the proven mass class' [ref-4]. The candidate concedes ON THE RECORD that zero frame rows cross it: 'Generalization to crewed-class masses is out of scope, because no crewed landing attempts exist in the frame and the architecture studies explicitly warn that crewed masses force novel decelerators that have no flight history to code' [ref-60], and 'the controls interpolate within the observed range and do not extrapolate beyond it. A program contemplating a payload an order of magnitude heavier than anything in the frame cannot use the estimated coefficient.' By the candidate's own admission the in-sample support count in the target regime is zero, so within-frame robustness (Firth, permutation, leave-one-out) is irrelevant to transport validity. The disruption-theoretic frame that makes this a population-mismatch (not a noise) problem is grounded: disruption is a falsifiable claim about value networks and RPV-structures anchored to a foothold trajectory, not a synonym for novelty.

source: JPL_AUTONOMY_EDL_05 dissertation.md (Ch1 scope, Ch2 index definition, Ch1.4 decision framing), citing 'A concept for the entry, descent, and landing of high-mass payloads at Mars' [ref-4] and 'Human Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Architecture Study: Rigid Decelerators' [ref-60]

facet: identification


claim: The non-stationarity mechanism is statable in the candidate's own vocabulary: under the Mokyr-Perez decomposition the dissertation builds, a heritage element's protective effect operates through propositionally grounded (analytically matured) knowledge; a crewed-class novel-decelerator architecture converts sky-crane PRESCRIPTIVE recipes (codified lineage technique) into recipes flown outside their proven regime, which the index rule itself docks to LOW heritage. Christensen's prediction is that the very value network of qualification and codified failure modes that makes heritage protective on the sustaining trajectory is precisely what fails at the discontinuity, because disruption requires a SEPARATE value network incumbents 'cannot simply will themselves into.' The falsifiable transport condition is therefore an interaction: beta_1's sign/magnitude is stable only if the heritage-protection slope does NOT interact with a regime indicator (mass-class-above-envelope x heritage). The required test is a stability-across-regime / structural-break check (heritage index x regime-indicator interaction, or a transportability test), which is categorically distinct from the internal-validity robustness already conceded. RETRIEVAL CONFIRMS THIS TEST WAS NEVER RUN: the dissertation contains zero instances of 'structural break,' 'regime indicator,' or 'transportability,' and explicitly states the controls 'do not extrapolate beyond' the observed range. The candidate has therefore not satisfied the precondition for forward use.

source: Hall of Shoulders dossier christensen_c (RPV / capabilities framework; value-network reconfiguration) + 'Taking advantage of disruptive innovation through changes in value networks: insights from the space industry'

facet: mechanism

subclaim: mechanism


claim: The candidate's own bibliography already names the auxiliary, off-trajectory observation set required to test slope non-stationarity, even though the empirical frame excludes it: the high-mass Mars EDL concept study [ref-4], the supersonic-retropropulsion technology survey (Korzun, Cruz, Braun) [ref-9], the advanced flexible-TPS inflatable-aerodynamic-decelerator development record [ref-10], and the Human Mars EDL Architecture Studies overview [ref-58] and rigid-decelerators volume [ref-60]. These are precisely the funded-but-unflown / partially-matured novel-decelerator and high-mass programs whose TechPort/GAO TRL trajectories could populate a regime indicator. The pre-committable falsification threshold follows directly from the estimand's logic: if, on a heritage-index x regime-indicator interaction estimated against this auxiliary set, the interaction term is statistically distinguishable from zero AND drives the in-regime heritage slope to zero or reverses its sign for the above-envelope class, then beta_1 (fit on the sustaining trajectory) has zero transport validity onto the SRP / inflatable-decelerator / commercial-lander decisions advertised in Sections 1.4 and 6.1, and the forward-decision claim must be retracted. Because the candidate concedes the coefficient cannot be used for 'a payload an order of magnitude heavier than anything in the frame,' the honest resolution of the Section 1.4/6.1 contradiction is to either retract the forward-decision advertising or run the named-source interaction test as a precondition.

source: Acta Astronautica: 'Mars atmospheric entry guidance...' (cites Tanner, supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators for future robotic missions to Mars) and 'Flexible heat shields deployed by centrifugal force' (inflatable atmospheric-entry decelerators), retrieved from ACTA_Papers brain

source: JPL_AUTONOMY_EDL_05 dissertation.md References [ref-9] Korzun/Cruz/Braun 'A Survey of Supersonic Retropropulsion Technology for Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing'; [ref-10] Del Corso et al. 'Advanced High-Temperature Flexible TPS for Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators'; [ref-58] 'Human Mars Entry, Descent and Landing Architecture Study Overview'

facet: empirics


claim: Under Fogel's own counterfactual discipline, beta_1 is only meaningful if the next-best substitute is named and costed as a primary-data object: 'if you cannot name and cost the substitute, your value or indispensability claim is an unmeasured counterfactual.' Fogel built the railroad counterfactual from an explicitly specified next-best alternative (canals, improved waterways, wagons) constructed from primary data, not from a regression shadow. A logistic coefficient fit across non-comparable missions does not instantiate a substitute architecture; it is precisely the railroad error of assuming the alternative network exists on routes where no one ever built it. Grounded retrieval this turn (AMOS, ACTA, Space Economy, NTRS) returns NO named substitute aeroshell/decelerator/terminal-guidance/touchdown architecture at the InSight or Mars 2020 entry/landed masses with a record-estimable failure rate, so the per-row substitute the question demands is not supplied by the candidate's frame and cannot be supplied from the corpus without confabulation. The answer is therefore a method verdict: the counterfactual is asserted by the regression, not specified by the record.

source: Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (1964)

source: NTRS citations search 'high-mass Mars EDL architecture supersonic retropropulsion entry descent landing' (run this turn)

grade: C


claim: Fogel treated economic history as hypothesis-testing science: state the proposition quantitatively, build the counterfactual from primary data, and compute upper/lower BOUNDS rather than a single point estimate. The protective value of heritage is exactly the social-saving-style quantity Fogel insists must be bounded, and the bound is governed by an elasticity to be measured, not assumed infinite (his GPS-outage example: the saving is bounded by how fast substitutes can be stood up). The original railroad result is the cautionary case: the bounded social saving came out at roughly 5 percent or less of US GNP in 1890, which falsified the 'indispensable' consensus. By that standard, a design that yields only a fragile point coefficient on a few-dozen one-shot trials, with no stated minimum detectable effect and no demonstration that the sign of beta_1 survives across the best-case-to-worst-case substitute-maturity range, has not measured heritage's protective value; if the bound straddles zero it is an unfalsified slogan, not an estimate. The candidate must produce the MDE and the sign-stability sweep; the corpus grounds the requirement, not the candidate's missing numbers.

source: Leunig, 'Social Savings' (2010), Journal of Economic Surveys


claim: Fogel's falsifiability lens is explicit and verbatim in the review record: 'What evidence would falsify your indispensability claim? If no observation could do so, you are asserting an axiom, not testing a hypothesis.' Applied here, the heritage effect is only a tested hypothesis (not an axiom) if the candidate names the finite measured value of the propositionally-grounded-novelty coefficient in the Mokyr decomposition that would collapse beta_1 into a knowledge-codification proxy with no independent protective value. The synthesis pattern Fogel imposes across every challenge is identical: replace 'indispensable / existential / engine of growth' with 'social saving relative to a specified, primary-data substitute,' and pin it to a named falsifier. If the candidate cannot state that falsifying coefficient value drawn from the supersonic-retropropulsion / TRN flight-and-ground-test record, the indispensability-of-heritage thesis is an axiom, not a finding. The corpus grounds the falsifiability standard; the specific SRP/TRN coefficient value is the candidate's to supply and is not retrievable from the queried corpora this turn.


claim: The demand is methodologically correct and the design already holds the substrate to meet it, but the answer it asks for is not retrievable and must be produced by the candidate. (1) Fogel's own discipline endorses the move: the railway social-savings literature found that time saved, valued at a defensible shadow price of time, dominates the benefit, reaching roughly 10-14 percent of national income in the Victorian passenger case, far larger than the catastrophe-avoidance framing would capture; the fogel review-lens makes 'did you value time as well as money, and did you use a defensible shadow price of time' a standing question. A binary loss-of-vehicle outcome is therefore the EDL analogue of measuring only the wagons that crashed and ignoring the schedule the railroad bought, and can understate or entirely miss the portfolio-relevant saving. (2) The candidate's design already builds a program-strength index from GAO cost-and-schedule history (dissertation Section 4, Table; line 230, 558), but uses it only as a CONTROL regressor, never as a second dependent variable, so the continuous schedule-and-cost outcome Fogel asks for is constructible in principle from the same named GAO/TechPort substrate but is NOT currently a modeled outcome. (3) The expected SIGN of such a coefficient is plausible from the technology-maturity-cost literature: lower technology readiness / higher novel-technology content is associated with larger development cost growth and schedule slip, so a heritage coefficient on the continuous outcome would be expected to share the protective sign of the binary one. What is NOT supplied by any retrieved source this turn is the candidate's actual heritage coefficient on a continuous time-and-cost outcome for this frame, nor any sign-and-magnitude comparison against the binary coefficient; the corpus grounds the validity of the demand and the plausible sign, not the candidate's missing second estimate. The honest verdict: the second outcome is buildable from the substrate the candidate already names and SHOULD be added, but whether the heritage effect 'relocates' to the continuous outcome is an open empirical result the candidate must estimate, not a claim the record can settle.

source: Leunig, 'Time is Money: A Re-Assessment of the Passenger Social Savings from Victorian British Railways,' Journal of Economic History (2006); surfaced via fogel Hall-of-Shoulders dossier reference list

source: Mankins, 'Technology readiness assessments: A retrospective,' Acta Astronautica (2009)


claim: The demand is correct in principle and the candidate already asserts a partial bias-direction, but the specific deliverable Fogel asks for cannot be assembled from retrieval this turn and is therefore a genuine gap, not a settled answer. (1) Fogel's market-access reassessment is the right warrant: a partial-equilibrium social saving omits induced reallocation and selection, and modern cliometrics reintroduces those channels through a reduced-form market-access term whose bias direction is estimable rather than waved off (Donaldson & Hornbeck). The fogel dossier states this verbatim as a standing demand: ask both 'what is the static social saving?' and 'what general-equilibrium / induced channel did the partial frame omit, and which way does omitting it bias the estimate?' (2) The candidate is NOT silent on selection: the design already names two selection threats and even signs one. Reverse causation in element selection (novelty introduced because heritage was inadequate, so novelty correlates with mission difficulty) is argued to ATTENUATE beta_1 toward zero, making any rejection of H0 conservative (dissertation line ~700); target-difficulty selection is addressed by the physical controls and the lunar stress-stratum (Section 7.3.2). So the candidate offers a within-attempted-mission attenuation-direction claim. (3) But that is NOT the censored-population deliverable Fogel demands. Fogel asks for an AUXILIARY census of cancelled/deferred novel-EDL concepts that never reached a landing attempt, a selection probability of reaching an attempt as a function of the heritage index, and a signed upper-or-lower-bound correction to beta_1 from that censoring. Retrieval this turn does not supply that census: an NTRS citation search for cancelled/deferred Mars EDL architecture concepts returned ZERO results, and the queried space corpora (AMOS, ACTA, Space Economy) returned nothing that enumerates unflown novel-EDL concepts with heritage indices. The auxiliary population, the selection-probability model, and the signed censoring correction are therefore the candidate's to construct from the raw GAO/TechPort/concept-study record and cannot be asserted from the corpus without confabulation. The honest verdict: the candidate has signed the WITHIN-frame selection bias (toward zero) but has NOT modeled the BETWEEN-frame censoring of unflown concepts, and Fogel's specific bound-direction-from-the-censored-census remains unestimated.

source: Donaldson & Hornbeck, 'Railroads and American Economic Growth: A Market Access Approach' (NBER w19213); surfaced via fogel dossier

source: NTRS citations search (run this turn), zero results


claim: The standard is correct and the candidate has accepted the spirit of it, but the ex-ante NUMBER Fogel demands is precisely what the candidate declines to state and what no retrieval can supply, so the answer is a method verdict plus a gap. (1) Fogel's bound discipline is the right frame: state the proposition quantitatively and compute upper/lower bounds rather than a point, and the value of the railroad result was that the bounded social saving came out at roughly 5 percent or less of US GNP in 1890, narrow enough to falsify the indispensability consensus (Leunig, Social Savings). An estimate whose interval contains both zero and a decisive effect is, by this standard, a non-result. (2) The candidate has internalized the standard as a posture: Section 5.6.1 commits to computing the minimum detectable effect by simulation under the realized frame and to reporting a null only with its MDE so that 'the frame cannot resolve the question' is distinguished from 'no effect.' Crucially, the candidate EXPLICITLY DECLINES to state the width ex ante: 'the realized minimum detectable effect is unknown until the frame is frozen, so the design commits to the computation and to reporting whatever it yields, including the possibility that the study is underpowered for a portfolio-material effect.' That is in direct tension with Fogel's demand for an ANTICIPATED interval width. (3) The qualitative expectation can be grounded even though the number cannot: the candidate concedes a low events-per-variable ratio, sparse failure events within strata, and the live risk of quasi-complete separation on a few-dozen-row frame with five regressors, which is exactly the regime in which Firth penalization is needed and in which permutation intervals are wide. So the PROBABLE realized output is a wide interval, and Fogel's framing that 'the width of the bound, not its sign, is the contribution' is the most likely honest deliverable. What NO retrieved source supplies this turn is the specific permutation-interval width or MDE for this frame; that requires executing the candidate's seeded simulation on the frozen frame, which is an analysis step, not a retrieval. The honest verdict: Fogel's standard is met in commitment and the design is self-aware that power is the binding constraint, but the candidate must either (a) run the simulation now on the assembled covariate structure to give an ex-ante MDE, or (b) own ex ante that the pre-registered deliverable is likely a bound too wide to choose between heavy and light heritage weight, with the width itself as the reported result. The specific number remains unestimated.

source: Leunig, 'Social Savings' (2010), Journal of Economic Surveys; surfaced via fogel dossier

source: fogel dossier (Hall of Shoulders), method item 'Bound the estimate; let the data falsify the hypothesis'; Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth (1964)


claim: PARTIAL. The candidate supplies a genuine operational rule that holds the two constructs distinct on the same row: the heritage index scores an element on FOUR documented inputs read from named sources, not inferred from reputation, namely (i) element identity/lineage, (ii) the REGIME in which it was proven, (iii) the DEPTH of its reconstruction, and (iv) the program behind it. Lineage and proven-regime status carry the heritage construct; reconstruction-depth weighting carries the Mokyr propositional construct. The candidate also exhibits the divergent-sign CONSTRUCT explicitly: a heritage element flown OUTSIDE its proven envelope is coded high on lineage yet its proven (propositional) status is 'illusory' and it is 'in the dimensions that matter, novel' - so on that row documented lineage and codified-understanding diverge in sign. The Perez-Mokyr second-reuse prediction (second reuse is MORE protective than first because the codified base is deeper, even though hardware is equally old) is the design's own test that separates depth from repetition. HOWEVER the question demands a divergent-sign DATA ROW in the executed NTRS/TechPort-coded frame, and the dissertation states results are 'not yet executed on the full dataset' (design-stage plan). The distinguishing rule and the divergent construct exist; an exhibited coded row does not yet. So H1 and the sub-hypothesis are separately testable IN PRINCIPLE via the regime-aware coding, but not yet demonstrated against data.

source: Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton, 2002), via Hall-of-Shoulders mokyr dossier


claim: The dissertation's scoring rule is explicitly regime-aware, not a flew-before indicator: an element scores high only if flown successfully in a comparable regime on a prior mission and low if flown well outside its proven envelope (Sec 4.4.2, 2.4). The candidate names Mars 2020, which reused the MSL sky-crane lineage but added terrain-relative navigation, as the canonical incremental-novelty case the index 'must score in the upper-middle... neither at the InSight ceiling nor near the novel floor' (Sec 4.7). So new software against an unflown terrain is by construction denied a HIGH score; the rule is built to penalize out-of-regime reuse rather than reward prior flight.

source: MEDLI2 Trajectory/Aerodynamics/Atmosphere Reconstruction (Karlgaard, Schoenenberger, Dutta, Way), J. Spacecraft & Rockets 2022 - documents Mars 2020 TRN as the bounded software addition over MSL heritage

source: JPL_AUTONOMY_EDL_05 dissertation Sec 4.4.2/4.7 + Mars 2020 EDL System Overview (Way et al.)


claim: The coding RULE resolves the case against inherited heritage credit. The Mokyr frame is operationalized so that propositional knowledge is treated as regime-bounded: 'a flew-before-but-outside-regime element has prescriptive precedent without applicable propositional knowledge, which is the configuration the theory predicts should be most dangerous' (Sec 2.4). Reused autonomy software verified against a new terrain is precisely a new analytical domain, so under the regime-aware rule it is scored low (ungrounded for this environment) rather than credited for the algorithm's prior flight. The lunar record the candidate cites supports that this is where loss concentrates: Vikram is the coded novel-architecture failure and SLIM is a novel vision-based terminal-guidance system that succeeded on precision but suffered an anomalous touchdown, demonstrating that outcome does not track hardware heritage.

source: Ito et al., Development and Flight Results of GN&C for the SLIM Pinpoint Moon Landing, Aerospace Technology Japan 2025

source: Perez, Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms, Cambridge J. Economics - corpus anchor for codification-earned (not demonstration-conferred) reliability underpinning the regime-bounded propositional rule

source: Interpreted Investigation Report: Loss of Vikram Lander During Lunar Landing Phase


claim: The stage-resolution Parasuraman demands is well-founded as a construct: automation applies to four distinct stages of human information processing (1) information acquisition, (2) information analysis, (3) decision/action selection, (4) action implementation, so 'flight-proven hardware' and 'flight-proven autonomy' are categorically different heritage objects that a single index element cannot separate without stage coding. This is the verified framework the index would have to satisfy. However, retrieval this turn returned ZERO hits for the candidate's named EDL loss documents (Vikram loss report, MSL/Mars 2020 reconstruction, SLIM result) across AMOS, ACTA, Space Economy, the parasuraman brain, and NTRS, so no specific loss can be exhibited as hardware-HIGH / stage-different and shown to be mis-scored HIGH. The construct-validity concern is supported; the document-grounded counterexample the question requires is NOT retrievable, so the specific charge is neither confirmed nor refuted from sources.

source: Parasuraman, Sheridan & Wickens, 'A model for types and levels of human interaction with automation,' IEEE Trans. SMC-A (2000)

source: 'Fatal Software Failures in Spaceflight,' Encyclopedia (MDPI), 2024


claim: PARTIAL ANSWER WITH CONCEDED GAP. The dissertation supplies the design feature the panelist asks for: the within-stratum (within-target-body, within-mass, within-program-strength) heritage-versus-novelty contrast, anchored on the Mars near-replication chain (Phoenix reused by InSight almost without change; MSL sky-crane reused by Mars 2020) clustered by program lineage (Sec 2.1, 2.2, 5.3, 5.4 sixth robustness member). It correctly frames beta_1 as the discrete-outcome analogue of Fogel's social-saving counterfactual identified off that contrast, not as a raw correlation (Sec 2.2, 5.3). It also pre-commits to the with-and-without-program-strength bounding as the diagnostic for confounding and explicitly names heritage/program-strength collinearity 'severe enough that the two cannot be separately identified' as a self-declared FALSIFICATION condition (Sec 5.5.4). What the dissertation does NOT contain anywhere is (a) a reported count of matched within-lineage discordant pairs, or (b) any fitted beta_1: Chapter 6 is explicitly a non-empirical analysis plan and Table 6.1 (Sec 6.4) is a specified-but-unpopulated result template. Therefore the design-stage coefficient is an estimand, not yet a causal estimate; whether it is identified independently of program strength is, by the candidate's own contract, an open empirical question contingent on a discordant-pair count that the document does not report. Grounding the methodological frame (design-over-adjustment, counterfactual identification) is well-sourced; the specific number the panelist demands is genuinely absent from the corpus.

source: Shadish, Cook & Campbell, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference (2002), design rules out rival causes; statistical adjustment cannot substitute for design when off-support comparisons are absent (thinker dossier)

source: Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (1964), counterfactual social-saving identified only against an explicitly specified next-best substitute (dissertation ref [121])

source: Leunissen & van der Wal (eds.), 'Social Savings', Journal of Economic Surveys 24(5), survey establishing the social-saving as a repeatable partial-counterfactual estimator (dissertation ref [133])


claim: PARTIAL ANSWER WITH CONCEDED GAP. The dissertation anticipates the discriminant-validity demand in the abstract (its own dossier-style instruction is to give a second operationalization that converges if the construct is real and diverges if it is a proxy), and it pre-registers ONE relevant safeguard: the low-documentation exclusion robustness member, which flags every low-documentation (largely non-US/non-European) row and refits with those rows dropped, reporting a coefficient that survives only with uncertain rows as 'documentation-dependent' (Sec 5.4 second member, Sec 5.5.3). It also offers the documentation-weighting a THEORETICAL defense via the Mokyr propositional-knowledge mechanism: reconstruction depth is argued to be the construct (codified understanding), not merely a richness proxy (Sec 2.4, 5.3, ref [139] Perez). However, the dissertation provides NEITHER of the two specific deliverables the panelist demands: (1) a second, INDEPENDENT operationalization of heritage that is not itself documentation-weighted (e.g. an unweighted element-by-regime count, or a TechPort TRL-at-flight score uncoupled from NTRS reconstruction depth) against which discriminant convergence/divergence could be tested; and (2) any pre-registered numeric threshold on the heritage-score vs documentation-density-per-row correlation that would falsify the architectural-lineage reading. The low-documentation drop is a robustness check on coding uncertainty, not a discriminant-validity test that isolates instrumentation/era drift from lineage. So the methodological apparatus to run such a test is named, but the discriminant operationalization and the falsifying correlation value are absent from the document.

source: Shadish, Cook & Campbell (2002), construct validity requires a second independent operationalization that converges if the construct is real and diverges under a correlated-proxy rival; instrumentation as a named Campbellian internal-validity threat (thinker dossier)

source: Perez, 'Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms', Cambridge Journal of Economics, reliability earned through codification/maturation, the theoretical basis for documentation-depth weighting (dissertation ref [139])


claim: PARTIAL ANSWER WITH CONCEDED GAP. The dissertation explicitly concedes exactly this selection-into-the-frame threat as a boundary of the contribution, carried verbatim from the Fogel qualifier: 'the availability of heritage changes which missions are attempted at all', unattempted/cancelled missions 'leave no row in the frame', and beta_1 conditions away only the measurable (target/mass/program-strength) part of selection, not the induced-attempt channel (Sec 2.2 Qualifier, Sec 5.3 backing). It is candid that the within-sample regression cannot reach this channel. The dissertation also already names TechPort as one of its four data sources, including TechPort EDL-technology TRL/readiness records (Sec 4.1.3) and GAO program-history data (program-strength index, Appendix D), so the auxiliary population the panelist points to is within the candidate's declared source set. CRUCIAL GAP: the dissertation asserts the OTHER selection mechanism (reverse causation in element selection, novelty forced onto harder missions) attenuates beta_1 toward zero and so makes rejection conservative (Sec 5.3, 5.5.1), but it does NOT make that conservative-direction claim for the left-censoring-of-cancelled-novel-attempts channel; for that channel it states the direction is uncaptured, not that it is conservative. So the panelist's charge that a conservative direction is asserted is true of the reverse-causation threat but NOT of the selection-into-attempt threat, which the candidate leaves signed as unknown. The dissertation reports NO selection-into-attempt rate comparison (novel vs heritage) on the GAO/TechPort funded-but-never-flown record that would establish the sign. That measurable comparison is named-able from the declared sources but is absent from the document.

source: Shadish, Cook & Campbell (2002), attrition/selection threats from units that never enter the frame are not reachable by within-sample adjustment; require an auxiliary observation of the censored population (thinker dossier)

source: Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth (1964), partial-counterfactual omits induced/general-equilibrium effects: availability of the innovation changes what is attempted (dissertation ref [121] qualifier)

source: 'Social Savings', Journal of Economic Surveys 24(5), the unspecified-substitute / induced-attempt error and its bearing on marginal-value estimates (dissertation ref [133])


claim: The instrumentation threat is real and the named corpus does not hold reconstruction depth fixed independently of heritage. SCC's own catalogue names instrumentation as a drifting measuring instrument that confounds before-after comparison (the catalogue/sensor floor changes what is counted). The candidate's documentary record exhibits exactly the asymmetry charged: the high-heritage US/European Mars line carries purpose-built reconstruction instrumentation (MEDLI on MSL, MEDLI2 on Mars 2020) that yields deep documented cause chains, whereas a comparably consequential non-US attempt such as Huygens at Titan was reconstructed only from trajectory/engineering-parameter techniques, a structurally shallower instrument. Because instrumentation depth is collinear with heritage in the frame, a within-stratum decoupling cannot be built from the named corpus, so the partial concession SCC require is: hold the instrument approximately fixed by restricting to MEDLI/MEDLI2-class instrumented rows, and report whether beta_1 attenuates. The falsifying residual the candidate must name: if, within the constant-instrument (instrumented) stratum, the heritage coefficient collapses while across the full mixed-instrument frame it is large, that divergence proves the outcome instrument (documented-failure-and-cause yield), not the architecture, is producing the association. The candidate cannot presently exhibit that stratum's coefficient, so this is conceded as an unrefuted instrumentation rival, mitigated only by restricting to instrumented rows.

source: shadish_cook_campbell dossier (Hall of Shoulders brain) citing Shadish, Cook & Campbell 2002, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference

source: Kazeminejad & Atkinson et al., Huygens probe entry and descent trajectory analysis and reconstruction techniques, Planetary and Space Science (2005)

source: NASA NTRS: MSL Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI) Complete Project (id 20140016393) and Mars 2020 EDL Instrumentation MEDLI2 (id 20150023564)

source: NASA NTRS: MEDLI2 MISP Inferred Aerothermal Environment and Flow Transition Assessment (id 20210025726)


claim: A partial within-frame control series is buildable, but it does not fully difference out history, so a named secular rival is left alive. SCC rank the one-group before-after design lowest and prescribe an interrupted/comparison series that differences out the shared secular trend; the canonical implementation (Bernal/Cummins/Gasparrini) uses a control series to remove history and instrument drift. The candidate's frame does contain one architecturally independent lineage reaching the success outcome class by a separate heritage path: Tianwen-1 achieved Mars EDL on a first national attempt with no US/European flight-heritage chain, which is precisely an off-trend control point. But a single independent lineage (one Tianwen-1 row, plus a single Huygens Titan row) is a comparison point, not a comparison series, so it cannot estimate and difference out the secular era trend; an era-stratified comparison is the most the several-dozen-row frame supports. Therefore the candidate must name the surviving rival explicitly: secular history operating through the maturation of the global EDL knowledge base and tracking/guidance baseline over the decades the frame spans, which co-varies with cumulative heritage and could produce the heritage-outcome association with no architecture effect. The observable that would make this rival the true cause: if, within a single era stratum (calendar window), the heritage coefficient vanishes while it appears only across pooled eras, the association is the era trend, not architecture. The candidate cannot produce a differenced beta_1 from a true control series in this frame and so leaves secular history standing as an unrefuted rival.

source: Bernal, Cummins & Gasparrini, Interrupted time series regression for the evaluation of public health interventions, International Journal of Epidemiology (2017), retrieved via shadish_cook_campbell brain

source: shadish_cook_campbell dossier (Hall of Shoulders brain) citing Cook & Campbell 1979, Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings

source: Entry, Descent, and Landing of China's Tianwen-1 Mars Mission, Space: Science & Technology (2022)


claim: SCC's external-validity grammar can specify the warrant the candidate must meet and the falsifier the candidate must run, but the named corpus does not supply a warrant strong enough to license a single pooled beta_1 across the two regimes. SCC hold that generalization is not a free gift from a representative sample; it is a reasoned argument over units-treatments-observations-settings built from surface similarity, ruling out irrelevancies, making discriminations, interpolation/extrapolation, and causal explanation. Applied here, a single pooled heritage coefficient across an airless powered-descent body (Moon) and a thick-atmosphere aerothermal body (Mars) requires a stated causal-explanation warrant that heritage acts through a mechanism common to both regimes (e.g., reuse of verified GNC/software/avionics elements) rather than through regime-specific physics; surface similarity fails because the two regimes are physically distinct, so the warrant must rest on ruling-out-irrelevancies and a shared mechanism, not on resemblance. The candidate's own descriptions establish the regimes are distinct (powered-descent terminal guidance for the Moon vs aerothermal entry for Mars; lunar powered-descent guidance is a separate literature), which is exactly the discrimination SCC require the analyst to make rather than suppress. The falsifiable element-level test from the candidate's TechPort decomposition: estimate the heritage coefficient separately on the Mars-element subset and the lunar-element subset; if the element-level heritage-to-outcome slope diverges between the two subsets beyond sampling error, the pooled beta_1 is masking two regime-specific effects and the bounded external claim across Moon and Mars is falsified. Titan adds no within-target replication (a single Huygens row, reconstructed only by trajectory techniques), so it cannot earn generalization to the Titan regime under SCC's own standard. The candidate cannot, from the named corpus, exhibit a common-mechanism warrant nor a non-divergent element-level slope, so the pooled coefficient is conceded as unwarranted pending the regime-split test.

source: shadish_cook_campbell dossier (Hall of Shoulders brain) citing Shadish, Cook & Campbell 2002

source: Pontani, Celani & Carletta, Lunar descent and landing via two-phase explicit guidance and pulse-modulated reduced-attitude control, Acta Astronautica (2023)

source: Kazeminejad et al., Huygens probe entry and descent trajectory analysis and reconstruction techniques, Planetary and Space Science (2005)

source: Review of Shadish, Cook & Campbell (2002), Evaluation and Program Planning (2004), retrieved via shadish_cook_campbell brain

facet: external


claim: The destructive test cannot be run against a result because the candidate reports none: the dissertation is explicitly design-stage, stating 'no fitted result, plotted estimate, or executed visualization is presented' (line 127) and 'No coefficient is fitted on the full population. Every number below is a reporting-format illustration ... not an estimate from data' (line 900). The leave-one-out estimator, standardized influence statistics, and the report of the range of beta_1 across deletions are SPECIFIED as a planned 'influence-and-clustering' robustness member (Sec 5.4, line 686), not executed. taleb's premise that the candidate 'reports a Firth-penalized point estimate and a permutation interval as if they carried information' is therefore unmet: there is no headline beta_1 to jackknife. The methodological warrant taleb invokes is nonetheless correct and on record: on a few-dozen-row frame a single high-leverage row (the candidate names 'the single Titan attempt or one anomalously-coded lunar lander') can move beta_1 enough to flip a conclusion (line 686); case-deletion influence is the canonical diagnostic for exactly this (Cook & Weisberg 1984); and below adequate events-per-variable, logistic coefficients are unstable and CIs are not trustworthy (van Smeden et al. 2018). Taleb's own engine supplies the deeper reason: in Extremistan the historical record undersamples the tail and sample means/point forecasts understate true exposure, so a coefficient and interval drawn from a handful of catastrophes carry false precision by construction.

source: Cook RD, Weisberg S. 'Residuals and Influence in Regression' (Technometrics review)

source: van Smeden M et al., 'Sample size for binary logistic prediction models: Beyond events per variable criteria,' Stat Methods Med Res 2018


claim: The calibrated-null Monte Carlo taleb demands is the correct test and is NOT performed in the candidate's document, so the false-positive rate of the penalized estimator at the realized design is unmeasured. The dissertation pre-commits to Firth precisely because the frame is expected to separate (Sec 6.2.3, line 856: 'Under separation, ordinary maximum-likelihood logistic estimates diverge and Wald intervals are meaningless') and to permutation/exact inference instead of asymptotics (line 716), but it never reports a parametric-bootstrap-under-H0 calibration of how often the penalty manufactures a significant beta_1 from noise. The literature confirms taleb's mechanism: Firth's penalty removes first-order bias and guarantees finite estimates under separation (Kosmidis brglm2; Wang 2014 for rare-variant tests; Gelman et al. 2008 weakly-informative prior), but a penalty imposed on a near-degenerate likelihood at very low events-per-variable does not restore the information the data lack, and coefficient magnitude/significance can be an artifact of the sparse-tail design rather than a stable effect (van Smeden et al. 2018; Mansournia et al. 2017 on separation causes/consequences/control). Until the candidate runs the H0 simulation at its own n, failure rate, and separation structure, a fitted beta_1 of the illustrative magnitude is not shown to be distinguishable from a null draw.

source: Mansournia MA et al., 'Separation in Logistic Regression: Causes, Consequences, and Control,' Am J Epidemiol 2017

source: Wang X, 'Firth logistic regression for rare variant association tests,' Front Genet 2014

source: Gelman A et al., 'A weakly informative default prior distribution for logistic and other regression models,' Ann Appl Stat 2008

source: van Smeden M et al. 2018 (events-per-variable / small-sample logistic instability)


claim: The hindsight-contamination charge identifies a real, named threat that the candidate addresses only by PLAN, not by a produced inter-coder log or a pre-flight-only re-score, so taleb's specific demand is presently ungrounded in any executed evidence. The dissertation states the exact coding rule taleb attacks ('Coding an element low when it is flown well outside its proven envelope, rather than high merely because it flew before,' line 710) and names coding endogeneity as the third internal threat ('an analyst who knows a mission failed might unconsciously code its architecture as more novel,' line 702). Its mitigations are blind sequencing (architecture coded blind to outcome, outcome joined only after both fixed) and a planned inter-coder reliability check on a random subsample (line 702, line 854) - but line 854 is explicit that this is 'The plan,' that confidence is 'moderate at the design stage,' and 'conditioned on the realized agreement statistic,' i.e. no log and no realized kappa exist yet. The candidate has NOT produced the strictly-before-outcome coding log nor a re-score frozen from pre-flight qualification documents, which is precisely the artifact that would settle whether beta_1 measures heritage or hindsight. The independent literature validates taleb's mechanism and the proposed remedy: outcome knowledge systematically distorts retrospective judgment ('Hindsight != foresight', Qual Saf Health Care 2003), and blinded, pre-specified assessment is the standard control for outcome-driven coding bias (Cochrane RoB-2). The threat is acknowledged but unresolved; the burden taleb places on the candidate is unmet.

source: Hugh TB, Dekker SWA (lineage), 'Hindsight != foresight: the effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty,' Qual Saf Health Care 2003

source: Higgins JPT et al., RoB 2: revised Cochrane tool for assessing risk of bias (blinded outcome assessment as bias control), BMJ 2019


claim: The named frame settles WHY the mean is the wrong object: the distinction is between repeated risks a system can survive and absorbing risks that end the game; under ruin (an absorbing barrier) the ensemble/expected value (the logistic mean failure probability) decouples from the time-average of any single trajectory, so a coefficient that lowers the mean is silent on fleet survival. The correct decision object is to bound EXPOSURE to crossing the barrier near zero, not to optimize an expected value: 'not what maximizes expected industry value but what constraint bounds the probability of crossing the absorbing barrier to acceptably near zero.' This is the ergodicity problem: time-average growth/survival is the relevant quantity for an individual trajectory, not the ensemble expectation. The property that makes the mean wrong is non-ergodicity under an absorbing barrier; a survival-weighted portfolio loss (barbell/optionality: cap the downside, preserve upside) is the right object's shape. Whether the candidate's contribution AS WRITTEN supplies that ruin-weighted loss is NOT established by any retrieved source.

source: Peters, Nature Physics (2019), 'The ergodicity problem in economics'

source: Taleb, Antifragile (review in Quantitative Finance, 2013)


claim: The named frame establishes WHY a per-attempt-independent index is structurally blind to heritage-induced correlation and WHAT class of observation would falsify the protective reading: the via-negativa / transfer-of-fragility test asks to whom an intervention transfers fragility and warns that lowering an operator's marginal risk can raise systemic (correlated, common-lineage) tail risk; and the fragility-hiding error is treating absence of catastrophe / a high recent success rate as evidence of safety when the record systematically undersamples extreme events. A single correlated-heritage-mode loss (one latent defect in a shared lineage element taking down multiple inheriting vehicles at once) is exactly the finite observation that converts a lower mean into a fatter, more correlated tail and falsifies the protective coefficient. Whether the candidate's FOUR named sources can actually measure that cross-attempt correlation is NOT established by any retrieved source.

source: taleb dossier (hos-taleb), discussion citing Safety-I/II antifragility debate


claim: The named frame settles the skin-in-the-game / agency principle the governance question turns on: where decision authority is insulated from downside consequences (crew loss, debris liability, commons degradation), assurances are cheap and fragility migrates to those who bear them; therefore decision authority must be aligned with downside exposure and a Taleb review demands the catastrophic tail be the planning quantity. It follows as a matter of the frame that a beta_1 pooled over tail-exposed and tail-insulated actors cannot, without a population separation, govern a crewed-class qualification bar, because the pooled coefficient averages away the very asymmetry the bar must price. Whether the candidate's DATASET can separate tail-exposed (crewed-program) from tail-insulated heritage decisions is NOT established by any retrieved source.

source: Taleb, Norman, Read, Bar-Yam, 'The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)'