FaceDeer

Thanks for the clarification. Wasn't sure how down into the weeds of why Starliner would go boom I should go, but this is clear and I should have been more specific about the "hypergolic" term.

It's actually a lot worse than just thrusters not working any more. At least according to the unofficial "word on the street" about what's going on, the details haven't been officially released yet.

It appears that the cause of the failures was because the thrusters are housed inside compartments that are containing their waste heat. The thrusters were tested individually, but apparently were never tested once installed inside the capsule. The heat is causing teflon valves to fail, which clogs the thruster plumbing and disables them. But the scary thing is that the heat necessary to do that to teflon would also potentially be enough to boil the hypergolic fuel itself inside the fuel lines.

When you heat hypergolic fuel up enough it will spontaneously ignite. It's got its own oxidizer in it, essentially. Which means those thrusters could well be bombs that could go off if they're fired too long.

The way they're talking about moving the unmanned capsule away from ISS, slowly and gently, it sounds like they're concerned Starliner could literally explode next to the station. That would be, to put it mildly, very very bad.

If any of this is true then this is going to be a colossal scandal. This is Starliner's third test flight, it's absolutely incredible that Boeing wouldn't have figured this out by now and that NASA let them get away with such a shoddy program.

No, it's opt-in. If you do nothing you won't have it.

Not much incentive for them to try to satisfy the complainers, then.

Nope, it's disabled by default.

The reverse can also happen, though. Many of the features of Reddit are there because they are good, so if we just strive to be different for the sake of being different that will end up awful too.

If you simply don't want to engage in a discussion with him, then that's fine, you should let him know that you're not interested in talking about it. You don't have to justify your choices to him, if you want to use a particular browser then that's fine and if he spontaneously decides he needs to "talk you out of it" then that's a dick move. Tell him that you don't want to debate the subject and it's no skin off of his nose so he shouldn't try to engage you in one.

But if you're asking "how can I convince him that he's wrong", well that is engaging in the debate. And if you're going to engage in a debate you should try to be as open about it as you'd like your debate opponent to be in turn. Have you considered that perhaps he has some valid points and is not taking that position just to be contrarian?

Personally, I find that it's pretty much impossible to talk someone with a strongly-held position out of that position. The value of Internet debates with people like that is that lots of spectators who don't have such strongly-held positions may be watching, but when it's a one-on-one situation it's likely to be a futile and frustrating effort with no benefit. So I would advise going with the "don't bother engaging" route. But of course, if you feel strongly that you want to engage, I can't change your mind on that and won't try. It's your time to spend.

Some people are so addicted to anger that they'll shoot themselves in the foot just so they'll have something to complain about.

"The gimp" is a character from Pulp Fiction. You're imagining things and refusing to use a powerful tool in response to that imagined slight.

As I understand it the corrosion is provoked by the chip's operation, the patch reduces the voltage load which makes the corrosion less likely to happen or to advance less quickly.

Maybe to make it absolutely clear "I'm getting rid of my grenades, this isn't some trick to suicide-bomb you guys."