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Excellence, then, is not an act, but a\nhabit .\u201d -- Historian Will Durant, simplifying part of Aristotle\u2019s\nphilosophy. As I write these words, the crew of Artemis II has returned safely and\nsuccessfully to Earth, after being the first humans to have reached the\nvicinity of the Moon in over 50 years. It is also the 56th anniversary of the launch\nof Apollo 13, a mission known not only for the catastrophic events on the way\nto the Moon, but even more so for the Herculean efforts made to eventually return the\nastronauts successfully back home. (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKOa9PerxZFu-t1izfmfRF7IBNaY7ud7cRyNZJJHp9Zw1tkxpbA1EWgKSZNqCbIY0FTF7uZ1nHJ5WK8AZEe5BWalHZ1dlYgINKdrSIWSXYyPGKEvAqzG5g8X92Eg-nYgRT0f5PVnw51Vez37gIgcSe_K9I5RMmkCW2WwDgkxprFpyhjzurQhSAmGltDJx/s2048/55199856318_7fa27daf40_k.jpg) Artemis II landing, April 11th 2026 (NASA) NASA\u2019s foray to the Moon in the 60s and early 70s is the story of a long\njourney made step-by-step. The simple one-man Mercury spacecraft paved the way\nto the two-man Gemini craft which was a stepping stone to the twin Apollo space\ncapsule and Moon lander.Between May of 1961 and April of 1970, NASA launched twenty five manned missions,\na cadence with an average of around 4-5 months between missions, peaking in 1965-66\nwith only 1-2 months between missions. NASA astronauts, engineers, and managers were part of a well-oiled\nmachine which not only achieved President Kennedy\u2019s goal of landing a man (and\nreturning him safely to Earth) on schedule but did it successfully five more\ntimes. The machine had been tested under stress in practice and was therefore\nable to save the ill-fated Apollo 13, snatching a heroic story of the triumph of\nachievement out of what could well have been a tragedy. Many of today\u2019s concepts of software development and resilience are\nbuilt around the same idea that the more you practice a process, the better you\ncan become with it. That\u2019s why DevOps continuous delivery pipelines automate repeatable\ndeployment tasks so that delivering a new feature to clients is just business\nas usual on a normal day instead of a nail-biting experience, fraught with surprises.\nThis is also why Infrastructure-as-code is such a compelling concept, because\nit enables both repetition and flexibility. Even when things are going perfectly, we know that we need to practice dealing\nwith problems through Chaos Engineering, Disaster Recovery exercises, Game Days\nfor high severity incidents and more. A muscle that isn\u2019t exercised is a muscle\nwhich atrophies and cannot deal with an emergency when the time comes. Clients\nI\u2019ve worked with have almost always found that something flips in the wrong\ndirection during a DR test (yes, it\u2019s most likely to be the DNS, but it\u2019s also\nbeen hard coded connection strings, missing credentials, or shared storage that\nwasn\u2019t quite as shared as everyone thought) \u2013 unless the test is done often\nenough for issues to be ironed out faster than new ones occur. Each and every one of NASA\u2019s flights, even the most successful, had many\ntroublesome issues. Some remained \u201cmere\u201d anomalies \u2013 unexpected occurrences\nwhich needed to be investigated, while others were actual problems which needed\nsolutions in real time to resolve. It\u2019s a testament to the decades of retained institutional learning,\nsimulations, and test infrastructure, of the last half century that NASA was\nable to replicate so much of the first half of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo programs\nwith only two flights of Artemis, the unmanned Artemis I in 2022 and the\nround-the-Moon Artemis II in 2026. While the Artemis II mission was a resounding success, two small issues\nstood out for me as direct lessons which can be taken for traditional software\nresilience and reliability. In the final hour of the countdown, (https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/04/01/live-artemis-ii-launch-day-updates/) Engineers\ninvestigated a sensor on the launch abort system\u2019s attitude control motor\ncontroller battery that showed a higher temperature than would be expected . It was deemed to be an\ninstrumentation issue (i.e. the battery's temperature was fine and only the measurement\nincorrect) and did not affect the launch. This is a lesson that we need to\ninstrument as much as possible, but still understand the context of every\nmessage, cross referencing with other signals to understand what is the haystack and\nwhat is the needle in the mountains of information we receive from our observability\nsystems. The other\nissue was, of course, the failure of the space toilet (somehow, sanitation and\nhygiene have always grabbed the public\u2019s attention in space flight stories).\nHere the lesson is that of making sure to limit single-points-of-failure in our\nsystems and be ready with other solutions if repairing the primary system\nfails. In the case of Artemis II, the astronauts, together with ground-based\nengineers, performed the necessary troubleshooting, planning and repair of the\ntoilet. This meant that the astronauts could use the state-of-the-art solution\nand not the\u2026 less savory backup bag-based solution. In the same\nway, here on Earth, when we have a system failure, we might activate a temporary\nbackup solution which would mean our clients have a gracefully degraded\nexperience (perhaps a bit slower, perhaps specific features are unavailable),\nbut in general can continue using the systems we deliver to them. Degraded does\nnot mean broken \u2013 it means we\u2019ve snatched some measure of success out of a\nfailure. (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn1r-06qjlsGQQ85pBA9UvF9ht7xdCDULqwO8JByw0dRtK4EpMQiz7PEhOQ73TIKPKPg20jZDlJBp2YKPdrASNJhKX1goWL-9Mtsb4qGGZATAEflhxWnC2kkjbbYIB-p4hKO2pZnFrsSO8iim9nKD5eMUXIyfsN-KGO2PTr4UftRoL2G8qjLPZaw4rqTC1/s1920/NHQ20260201_admin_0006~large.jpg) Artemis 2, during pre-flight testing (NASA) And like\nNASA, the more we repeat and practice our problem solving, the faster we\u2019ll\nsolve real problems when they inevitably show up. \u201cWe are\nwhat we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a\nhabit .\u201d In closing,\nbe like NASA on the way back to the Moon.The story\nof Apollo, Artemis, and every successful system in between is not one of\nperfection, but of continuous preparation. Progress happens not through\nflawless execution, but through repetition, simulation, and the humility to know\nthat something will go wrong. Whether you\u2019re flying humans around the Moon or\nrunning software for millions of users (or any number), the lesson is the same:\nresilience is built long before it\u2019s needed. Excellence\nis not what we do when everything works. It is what remains when it doesn\u2019t,\nbecause we\u2019ve practiced for exactly that moment. If you\u2019d\nlike to learn more about how I help my clients achieve all this, please feel\nfree to reach out. The coming\nweek is the anniversary week of Apollo 13 and the next\nfew articles will go over the Apollo mission and discuss the lessons from that\nflight which are all too relevant even today. (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Apollo) Apollo (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Artemis) Artemis (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/lessons) lessons (Get link) Get link (Share to Facebook) Facebook (Share to X) X (Share to Pinterest) Pinterest (Email) Email (Share to other apps) Other Apps Comments Post a Comment (https://www.blogger.com/comment/frame/3245253431735312082?po=3012956231674532753&hl=en&saa=85391&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flyingbarron.com&skin=contempo&blogspotRpcToken=7194357) Popular posts from this blog (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) Back to Flight - (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) (permanent link) (2026-04-11T13:32:00+03:00) April 11, 2026 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) (Image) Earthset from Artemis II, 2026 (NASA) \u00a0 I\u2019ve been neglecting my online writing for quite some time now. The reasons have been personal, professional, even political, but I think it\u2019s time to be inspired by humanity\u2019s return to the Moon on Artemis II and return to writing. But I want my writing to be a bit more varied than it\u2019s been and I think I want a bit more flexibility than my previous blog had. Starting fresh with my own domain gives me space to explore a broader mix of interests and to do so on my own terms. So here we are, at the threshold between the spectacularly successful Artemis II mission and the anniversary of the legendary Apollo 13. One represents ambitious progress; the other, hard\u2011earned lessons under pressure. There\u2019s a lot to learn from both. Going forward I want to keep up a cadence of writing. I think the easiest way to do that is to harvest and refresh my existing material from flyingbarron.medium.com while interspersing new material. Until now, I\u2019ve mostly s... (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) (Back to Flight) Read more (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) Black Kites on parade in an olive grove. - (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) (permanent link) (2026-04-10T09:00:00+03:00) April 10, 2026 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) (Image) I've been posting weekly pictures of birds for a few years now, but this is the first one I'm posting to my site. (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) (Black Kites on parade in an olive grove.) Read more (https://www.blogger.com) Powered by Blogger Copyright Robert Barron (2026) Archive (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/) 2026 3 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/) April 2026 3 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/excellence-is-habit.html) Excellence Is a Habit (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/back-to-flight_11.html) Back to Flight (https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/blog-post_10.html) Black Kites on parade in an olive grove. Labels (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Apollo) Apollo1 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Artemis) Artemis1 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Birding) Birding1 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/lessons) lessons1 (https://www.flyingbarron.com/search/label/Photography) Photography1 Get notified when a new post is published. (Email) (reCAPTCHA) (1) Subscribe Loading... (true) Thank you! You have successfully joined my subscriber list. 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Excellence, then, is not an act, but a\nhabit.\u201d \n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0-- Historian Will Durant, simplifying part of Aristotle\u2019s\nphilosophy.\n\nAs I write these words, the crew of Artemis II has returned safely and\nsuccessfully to Earth, after being the first humans to have reached the\nvicinity of the Moon in over 50 years. It is also the 56th anniversary of the launch\nof Apollo 13, a mission known not only for the catastrophic events on the way\nto the Moon, but even more so for the Herculean efforts made to eventually return the\nastronauts successfully back home.\u00a0Artemis II landing, April 11th 2026 (NASA)\n\nNASA\u2019s foray to the Moon in the 60s and early 70s is the story of a long\njourney made step-by-step. The simple one-man Mercury spacecraft paved the way\nto the two-man Gemini craft which was a stepping stone to the twin Apollo space\ncapsule and Moon lander.\nBetween May of 1961 and April of 1970, NASA launched twenty five manned missions,\na cadence with an average of around 4-5 months between missions, peaking in 1965-66\nwith only 1-2 months between missions. \n\nNASA astronauts, engineers, and managers were part of a well-oiled\nmachine which not only achieved President Kennedy\u2019s goal of landing a man (and\nreturning him safely to Earth) on schedule but did it successfully five more\ntimes. The machine had been tested under stress in practice and was therefore\nable to save the ill-fated Apollo 13, snatching a heroic story of the triumph of\nachievement out of what could well have been a tragedy. \n\nMany of today\u2019s concepts of software development and resilience are\nbuilt around the same idea that the more you practice a process, the better you\ncan become with it. That\u2019s why DevOps continuous delivery pipelines automate repeatable\ndeployment tasks so that delivering a new feature to clients is just business\nas usual on a normal day instead of a nail-biting experience, fraught with surprises.\nThis is also why Infrastructure-as-code is such a compelling concept, because\nit enables both repetition and flexibility.\n\nEven when things are going perfectly, we know that we need to practice dealing\nwith problems through Chaos Engineering, Disaster Recovery exercises, Game Days\nfor high severity incidents and more. A muscle that isn\u2019t exercised is a muscle\nwhich atrophies and cannot deal with an emergency when the time comes. Clients\nI\u2019ve worked with have almost always found that something flips in the wrong\ndirection during a DR test (yes, it\u2019s most likely to be the DNS, but it\u2019s also\nbeen hard coded connection strings, missing credentials, or shared storage that\nwasn\u2019t quite as shared as everyone thought) \u2013 unless the test is done often\nenough for issues to be ironed out faster than new ones occur. \n\nEach and every one of NASA\u2019s flights, even the most successful, had many\ntroublesome issues. Some remained \u201cmere\u201d anomalies \u2013 unexpected occurrences\nwhich needed to be investigated, while others were actual problems which needed\nsolutions in real time to resolve.\n\nIt\u2019s a testament to the decades of retained institutional learning,\nsimulations, and test infrastructure, of the last half century that NASA was\nable to replicate so much of the first half of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo programs\nwith only two flights of Artemis, the unmanned Artemis I in 2022 and the\nround-the-Moon Artemis II in 2026. \n\nWhile the Artemis II mission was a resounding success, two small issues\nstood out for me as direct lessons which can be taken for traditional software\nresilience and reliability.\n\nIn the final hour of the countdown, Engineers\ninvestigated a sensor on the launch abort system\u2019s attitude control motor\ncontroller battery that showed a higher temperature than would be expected. It was deemed to be an\ninstrumentation issue (i.e. the battery's temperature was fine and only the measurement\nincorrect) and did not affect the launch. This is a lesson that we need to\ninstrument as much as possible, but still understand the context of every\nmessage, cross referencing with other signals to understand what is the haystack and\nwhat is the needle in the mountains of information we receive from our observability\nsystems.\n\nThe other\nissue was, of course, the failure of the space toilet (somehow, sanitation and\nhygiene have always grabbed the public\u2019s attention in space flight stories).\nHere the lesson is that of making sure to limit single-points-of-failure in our\nsystems and be ready with other solutions if repairing the primary system\nfails. In the case of Artemis II, the astronauts, together with ground-based\nengineers, performed the necessary troubleshooting, planning and repair of the\ntoilet. This meant that the astronauts could use the state-of-the-art solution\nand not the\u2026 less savory backup bag-based solution.\n\nIn the same\nway, here on Earth, when we have a system failure, we might activate a temporary\nbackup solution which would mean our clients have a gracefully degraded\nexperience (perhaps a bit slower, perhaps specific features are unavailable),\nbut in general can continue using the systems we deliver to them. Degraded does\nnot mean broken \u2013 it means we\u2019ve snatched some measure of success out of a\nfailure.Artemis 2, during pre-flight testing (NASA)\n\nAnd like\nNASA, the more we repeat and practice our problem solving, the faster we\u2019ll\nsolve real problems when they inevitably show up.\n\n\u201cWe are\nwhat we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a\nhabit.\u201d\n\nIn closing,\nbe like NASA on the way back to the Moon.The story\nof Apollo, Artemis, and every successful system in between is not one of\nperfection, but of continuous preparation. Progress happens not through\nflawless execution, but through repetition, simulation, and the humility to know\nthat something will go wrong. Whether you\u2019re flying humans around the Moon or\nrunning software for millions of users (or any number), the lesson is the same:\nresilience is built long before it\u2019s needed. \n\nExcellence\nis not what we do when everything works. It is what remains when it doesn\u2019t,\nbecause we\u2019ve practiced for exactly that moment.\n\nIf you\u2019d\nlike to learn more about how I help my clients achieve all this, please feel\nfree to reach out. \n\nThe coming\nweek is the anniversary week of Apollo 13 and the next\nfew articles will go over the Apollo mission and discuss the lessons from that\nflight which are all too relevant even today." ], "output": "readability/", "pwd": "/data/archive/1775974656.705398", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-04-12T06:18:08.851532+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "/usr/bin/curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--proxy", "socks5://tor-socks-proxy:9150", "--max-time", "60", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)", "https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/excellence-is-habit.html?m=1" ], "cmd_version": "8.10.1", "end_ts": "2026-04-12T06:18:07.810681+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Excellence Is a Habit", "pwd": "/data/archive/1775974656.705398", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-04-12T06:18:07.735219+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260412061852/https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/excellence-is-habit.html?m=1", "dom": "output.html", "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": "media/", "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Excellence Is a Habit", "warc": null, "wget": null }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1775974656.705398", "newest_archive_date": "2026-04-12T06:18:35.683672+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 9, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-04-12T06:17:41.042499+00:00", "path": "/2026/04/excellence-is-habit.html", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_abid": "snp_01KP05DAR7F507168101SGGFT0", "snapshot_id": "dfc31c28-5ca3-4649-808d-0378b3083f40", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1775974655-import.txt" ], "tags": null, "tags_str": "", "timestamp": "1775974656.705398", "title": "Excellence Is a Habit", "url": "https://www.flyingbarron.com/2026/04/excellence-is-habit.html?m=1" }