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Space Science

Sequence of Events During Columbia Mission 298

Posted by michael from the hindsight-is-20-20 dept.
applemasker writes "Today's NYT is reporting that NASA managers actively resisted requests from vehicle engineers for on-orbit imagery. This should answer Administrator O'Keefe's question of why no engineers 'spoke up' during the flight. Seems they did; managers just ignored them."
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Sequence of Events During Columbia Mission More

Sequence of Events During Columbia Mission

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  • What's new? (Score:4, Funny)

    by NerveGas ( 168686 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:53PM (#7067096)

    "... managers just ignored them."

    The story of an engineer's life.

    steve

    • Re:What's new? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zurab ( 188064 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:12PM (#7067271)
      "... managers just ignored them."


      The story of an engineer's life.


      Let me tell you, there's a big difference between ignorance and what the article claims:

      The new information makes it clear that the failure to follow up on the request for outside imagery, the first step in discovering the damage and perhaps mounting a rescue effort, did not simply fall through bureaucratic cracks but was actively, even hotly resisted by mission managers.

      You get ignored once, twice, maybe even three times, but when you contact management at least half a dozen times about the same issue it gets acknowledged. In this case, article claims, not only did it get acknowledged but it was acted upon - actively, even hotly resisted by mission managers. Confidence is good, as long as it does not spill over into stupidity.

    • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What's sad, is that this is NASA's second mistake of that sort. Anyone remember why Challenger went KABOOM!?

      Engineer: "Uh boss, we really should look into the issue of attempting a launch in cold weather... The rubber seals will probably crack and send explosive fuel out the sides of the rockets - its supposed to NOT do this."

      NASA management jerk: "What, do I look like a manager?! We don't need to worry about no freakin rubber seals, this is rocket science, not blender repair!!"

      (time passes)

      *KABOOOM*

    • Re:What's new? Ref: Mr. Feynman (Score:4, Insightful)

      by farrellj ( 563 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:45PM (#7068177) Homepage Journal
      I've just been reading "What do you care what other people think" by Richard Feynman, and it covers some of his life during the Challenger investigation. And it was the same then as it is now...The field techs and engineers saying "This is really dangerous" and the Suits in management saying "But it worked before, why is it not safe now?!?!". It is a sad story about our Western Civilization that communication between the top and bottom of companies is so bad it is non-existant. If people in Management went and read the Toffler's Future Shock, and the books that come after it, they would understand why it is so important esp. in today's ultra-fast communication age that the heirarchy between the top and bottom of companies be flattened.

      Of course, if it was just money, it might not be that important...but PEOPLE DIED because managment didn't listen...and every day PEOPLE DIE because management continues to be def to the information comming from below.

      ttyl
      Farrell ...who happily works for a company where the management *are* engineers and still to engineering work, and thus will listen to their workers.

      • Re:What's new? Ref: Mr. Feynman (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Uggy ( 99326 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:05PM (#7068340) Homepage
        Why is this so hard to understand? Engineers are failure oriented. We look for ways to break stuff, and then plan to mitigate its breakage. We always look at the worst case scenario. I am an engineer, and I know the words, "Yeah, it won't break" have never passed my lips unless accompanied with several volumes of caveats.

        Face it folks, engineers are sky-is-falling-folks. We could stand to filter ourselves a little bit to gain some credibility.

        "Yeah, the engineers say something bad is going to happen, but they say that every day. Shall we launch, then? Okay, good to go."

        I mean, if you say every single day, the world is going to end, and then one day it actually does, did you, in fact, predict it?

  • What's new? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Brahmastra ( 685988 )
    Engineers make recommendations. Managers disregard them. Things like impressing VPs, etc are way more important to get ahead in an organisation unfortunately.

    • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ChristTrekker ( 91442 )

      I'm sure the VPs were very impressed by the fireball over Texas.

      Not that there's much that could have been done to fix the problem (is launching another shuttle on a rescue mission an option?), but it makes it more tragic nonetheless. When will the VPs learn to listen to the "little guys" who aren't jockeying for position?

      • Re:What's new? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Squareball ( 523165 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:04PM (#7067199)
        There are things that could have been done. It might not have been easy to rescue them but yes I believe they could have been saved. I mean what would they have done said "Well we know they will probably die, but we can't rescue them so let's just cross our fingers". I'm sure that wouldn't have flown as an option.. they would have had to come up with a solution and if you put enough brilliant people on the problem a solution will come i'm sure. If it came down to it, would they have tried sending the columbia towards the space station and then each astronaut space walking out of the shuttle to the ISS or something? Is it even possible? I dunno... it sounds crazy but hell it might have been worth a shot had they known that if they were to re-enter they would die.

        • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)

          by kcornia ( 152859 )
          The BBC article says that if they'd known by day seven, another shuttle could have been hastily sent up to rescue them. RTFA

        • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Yunzil ( 181064 )
          f it came down to it, would they have tried sending the columbia towards the space station and then each astronaut space walking out of the shuttle to the ISS or something? Is it even possible?

          No. The ISS is in a completely different orbit than the Shuttle was. The ISS was unreachable.

      • Goodbye (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Salamander ( 56587 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:09PM (#7067250)
        How about giving them an opportunity to say goodbye to their friends and family?

        I'd say that's worth it.

      • Re:What's new? (Score:5, Informative)

        by laertes ( 4218 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:44PM (#7067521) Homepage
        Am I the only person in the whole world who actually read the report published by the CAIB? It's incredibly painless to find, download and read (ever hear of PDF)?

        Ok, I know I'm not the only person, but still.... Anyway, the report talks about what if... in section 6.4. It's the most interesting (aside from the board's version of the stuff in this article) section of the report. In this section, the options Columbia would have had had the managers (Ms. Ham, specifically) agreed to image the orbiter while on-orbit are discussed. There were two options for saving the crew, not zero.

        1. Patch the hole. They considered an emergency spacewalk to "McGuyver" the wing's leading edge. The patch, as such, would require the astronaut to throw all of the titanium wrenches, wristwatches, science experiments, etc, into the hole. Interestingly, the engineers at NASA didn't think this was absurd, just that we lack data to determine if it is viable. So, it was kind of considered a "last-resort" option.
        2. Send Atlantis on a rescue mission. I know a lot of people on this website are of the opinion that "There wasn't anything we could have sent Atlantis on a rescue mission, unless we wanted to throw away two orbiters." However, the board found that the consumables (oxygen, CO2 scrubbers, etc) on Columbia would have been sufficient to sustain the crew until Feb. 15. Atlantis was being processed for launch Mar. 1 (41 days later), and the board found that, working 24 hours a day, Atlantis could be readied for launch Feb. 10, with no testing skipped. Once Atlantis had rendezvoused with Columbia, the crew could be transfered with ropes. Assuming the crew were safely across, the shuttle could be ditched in the ocean, or boosted to a higher orbit for later salvage.

        Really, check out the CAIB report [www.caib.us]. It's an interesting read, and while it's long and occasionally dry and technical, you can skip around, and only read the parts that interest you. If you're an American citizen, our government paid $300,000,000 to recover debris and study the accident, so you owe it to yourself (you tax-payer, you) to read the report.

        Especially read about the "safty-culture" in NASA. This article does a good job of getting the general idea across, but the CAIB report goes into much more detail. The astronauts could have, should have, and were almost saved.

        PS: It wasn't in the article but it's in the CAIB report that an employee at NASA actually called the DOD and got them working on a request for imagery, only to have Ms. Ham call and rescind the order 90 minutes later.

    • Re:What's new? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:09PM (#7067242) Journal
      Engineers make recommendations. Managers disregard them. Things like impressing VPs, etc are way more important to get ahead in an organisation unfortunately.

      In a "normal" work environment, the corporate food chain annoys those of us with a clue (ie, non-management). Just one of the hassles they pay us to put up with. "Why did this project fail?" "Because you killed the single most important subproject associated with it" "Well, get to work on that, and don't let this happen again!" (mimes masturbating while walking away, disgusted).

      In the case of NASA, however, they have a bit more on the line than the bottom line, good hair, and kissing VP ass - They have real, live humans risking their lives every time they climb up into the cockpit.

      Sorry, but "the way we do things" doesn't cut it in this situation. I'd personally like to see some people go to prison over this one. They overruled the warnings of people with a clue, and as a result, people died. Totally unacceptible.

      • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The guilty managers will get promoted, their budgets will be increased, the bothersome engineers will get shuffled off into a dark and dusty corner where they can't make any more noise.

        He who identifies the problem will be assigned the blaim and will be punished. If he actually fixes the problem, he will be fired for insubordination.

        NASA gets rewarded for failure and punished for success. Success must be prohibited at all costs. The only thing that matters is pretty pictures and pretentious words.

        That'

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:40PM (#7067466)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The only good news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimTheFoolMan ( 656432 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:54PM (#7067106) Homepage Journal
    ...is that all of the managers on the mission, including Ms. Ham, have apparently been reassigned or they've retired. The behavior quoted in the article (assuming it's accurate), is inexcusable.

    Tim

    • Re:The only good news... (Score:4, Informative)

      by twiddlingbits ( 707452 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:26PM (#7067393)
      Eleven of the 14 mangers in that (in)decision making loop have been reassigned or have left NASA. No one at NASA seems to know or is allowed to say where these ex-managers have been reassigned to! Mark Dittimore who was the Manager for the Shuttle Program retired and left, but he had planned to leave[no one will say they now employ him!] and had filed for it before Columbia launched. The only other one I have heard about was Roy Bridges the head of KSC during the launch and he has been asked to head the new NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) over at Langley,VA.
      Interested observers are invited to try http://nasawatch.com [good inside info, but not an offical NASA site].The NASA Safety motto that is expressed at the part of NASA I support is: "If it isn't safe, Say So....and then clean out your desk".
    • I'd be careful with quotes in the New York Times, if I were you...
    • If the article is accurate, the managers should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. Again, if the article has the facts right which, for the Times, has become iffy.

      OTOH, if the Times is right and the managers do go to jail, it might serve to rectify the problem that Feynman first fingered back when the Challenger blew up. That will be something shuffling the NASA management won't achieve.

  • morons (Score:2, Funny)

    by jszep ( 220212 )
    Can those managers be charged with manslaughter now?

    • Re:morons (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Lane.exe ( 672783 )
      No, but the US Penal Code provides that they can be charged with murder in the third degree, negligent homicide. After knowing that there were significant structural problems, and then disregarding them, they were criminally negligent. It'd be moderately difficult to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, which is why I'm guessing charges haven't been brought forth.

      • Actually, I kind of side with the managers.

        What's the point of knowing there's damage on the underside of the shuttle, when it's already up there with no ability to perform a repair or be rescued?

        I'm pretty sure a lot of people will find fault with that reasoning, but the only argument that could convince me to change my mind is one that involves a plausible repair senario.

        • Re: charges (Score:3, Insightful)

          by chrisv ( 12054 )

          ...but the only argument that could convince me to change my mind is one that involves a plausible repair senario.

          Except that without knowing what the extent of the damage is in the first place, it's impossible to determine if it can be repaired in the first place. So perhaps there might have been a plausible repair scenario (or at least the opportunity to do something that didn't involve the death of a shuttle crew), but since no investigation was done while the opportunity was avaliable. NASA might

        • I'm pretty sure a lot of people will find fault with that reasoning, but the only argument that could convince me to change my mind is one that involves a plausible repair senario.

          First option: power down everything that can be and ride it out until a rescue shuttle can be launched. They had just about enough time to pull that off had the photos been obtained promptly.

          Retarget Russian Progress supply mission to instead take supplies to shuttle so that they could hold out longer for rescue. There was a

    • Re:morons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bladernr ( 683269 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:06PM (#7067226)
      Can those managers be charged with manslaughter now?

      Probably not. If you could prove their behavoir was malicious, instead of merely stupid or calous, then maybe. People performing in their legal line of work are generally protected.

      The main problem, I would guess, is that the managers didn't fully understand the job being done by the people that reported to them. I doubt a single manager said "Hey, let's kill some astronaunts."

      Most likely, they performed their job to the best of their ability. Also most likely, is that their ability did not measure up to what the job required of them.

      Even more as the problem, NASA is being run like a business. I'm a business guy at heart, but NASA is not a business. Its primary function, in my opinion, should be exploration. It doesn't have P&L, it has discoveries of intangible but emmense value. We should allocate tax money to NASA not because of ROI, but because of all of America's desire to explore and adventure.

      If this is the way we looked at NASA, then the NASA managers would also be adventuring engineers, and perhaps would have made different decisions. All of the outsourcing and other business decisions at NASA have resulted in people looking at the bottom line instead of the people and the mission.

      • Re:morons (Score:3, Informative)

        by mchappee ( 22897 ) *

        >>Can those managers be charged with manslaughter now?

        >Probably not. If you could prove their behavoir was malicious,
        >instead of merely stupid or calous, then maybe. People performing in
        >their legal line of work are generally protected.

        Manslaughter is not malicous. It's killing people without meaning to. If you run over someone crossing the street and it's your fault for not properly yielding you get charged with manslaughter. You didn't mean to kill them, it just worked out that way. I

  • Sounds like job (Score:4, Insightful)

    by darkstar949 ( 697933 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:56PM (#7067123)
    This sounds like what happens with any career where the management doesn't know as much as the subordinates. As such this should send the message out that when someone tells you that something is a bad idea then you might want to consider why they say its a bad idea. After all how many of us have had our boss(es) tell us to do something that is either technically not possible (for any reason), or is dangerous?

  • Well, DUH??? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig.hogger@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:57PM (#7067128) Journal
    Now what's next? Managers should be expected to listen to engineers???

  • BBC story (Score:4, Informative)

    by MoonFog ( 586818 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:58PM (#7067137)
    Here's [bbc.co.uk] a BBC story on the same subject.

    For those like me who do not wish to register with NYT
    • For those like me who do not wish to register with NYT

      Here's the NYT story itself (I think), for those who don't want to register and don't mind hacking around a bit. Fight the Man!

      Googly Link [nytimes.com]

    • Re:BBC story (Score:3, Informative)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
      Also, some kind of printed emails can be found in pdf format at this page [nasa.gov] at NASA. They say something to the effect like:

      Engineer: Hey should we, err, take a picture with a DOD satellite or something? That debris looked a little nasty on the takeoff.

      PHB: Nah, its OK.

      This report was released one month ago today, so its kinda old news. I was floored the 1st time I read it. Look around page 150 or so of the whole document.

  • Technical vs Business (Score:5, Insightful)

    by liam193 ( 571414 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:58PM (#7067140)
    This is just another example of one of my favorite statements:

    "A bad technical decision is never a good business decision!"

    Regardless of the circumstances, a bad technical decision is never good from a business perspective. It never cost less in the long run. A mediocre decision may be a good one because of cost, but a bad one will fail, cost you more, and failure is never good for business. Unfortunately too often managers don't understand this until it's too late.

    • "A bad technical decision is never a good business decision!"

      While I agree with this, geeks should keep in mind that their definition of "bad" may not always be correct.

      Unfortunately too often managers don't understand this until it's too late.

      Equally unfortunately, technical people often don't understand until too late that "good enough, now" is usually better than "great, later". I know that I've screwed more than one business opportunity by being too focused on doing the Right Thing, technically

      • Better include a disclaimer here: I'm talking about business.

        In the case of the Columbia, where lives were on the line, and where the cost of the appropriate technical action was so small, the actions of managers who apparently let trivial PR issues override basic prudence are criminal.

  • Of course congress also ignored (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @04:59PM (#7067153) Homepage Journal
    The panel findings that NASA was starved for funds by congress and the White House. One congress man actually said that "The problems at NASA would still exists even if we gave them a blank check."
    No they wouldn't.
    The managers are told that they have to fly x number of missions on x number of dollars. If they fly less they get even less money.
    Don't blame the managers blame congress and the last couple of Admins. Yes Billy Boy during a time of budget surplus never gave NASA a buget increase.

    • Not quite (Score:3, Interesting)

      by enkidu ( 13673 )
      Actually NASA told the U.S. that they could fly n missions with x dollars. It turned out that they could barely fly n/50 missions with x*3 dollars. Why? Because the people doing the initial calculations were so intent on looking good that they ignored engineering realities. Caught in the lies they themselves had created in order to justify funding for the Space Shuttle to begin with, NASA started pushing safety limits issuing waivers to keep the launch schedule going.

      I do blame the managers and I do b

  • Let's not forget that some contingencies should be drawn up in case stuff like this does happen again -- while safty concerns getting "up" to the top of the chain is important, proper assessment and response is critical.

    Do you launch another shuttle mission, have both dock at the space station? Do you set up a moon base? Do you develop a new low-orbit rescue vehicle? Does everyone moonwalk from one shuttle to another? Do we redesign the shuttle to have a safty escape module that can blast loose of the mot

    • Re:Rescue Mission (Score:3, Insightful)

      by proj_2501 ( 78149 )
      Who need more astronauts? Just grab a couple oil drillers!

      If a shuttle cannot reenter safely, what's the point of keeping it around?

      Let me make a list, I like lists.
      - keep the shuttle in orbit and send the others up to keep the RMS and OMS boosters topped up every so often
      - use it to manipulate satellites with the quickness
      - more space in the ISS!
      - what happens when it breaks? simple, don't keep too many people up there at once

      gimme a break, the coffee machine is out of order

  • article text incase of /.ing (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:04PM (#7067203)
    Welcome to The New York Times on the Web!

    For full access to our site, please complete this simple registration form.
    As a member, you'll enjoy:
    In-depth coverage and analysis of news events from The New York Times FREE
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  • ..should send anonymous information to the press when managers ignore there advice under these kind of circumstances.

  • Engineers and communication skills (Score:5, Insightful)

    by madro ( 221107 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:08PM (#7067238)
    When I was taking the required Technical Communication course in college to finish my engineering degree, a major theme of the class was incidents such as Three Mile Island and the Challenger disaster. The professor said that while the public perception was that management had f***ed up, the engineers had to bear some responsibility because they were unable to adequately communicate the necessary conclusions in a manner that decision makers could understand. And we would look at copies of the memos, and think that, yeah, if the engineers had written more effectively, things may have been different.

    In some ways, even though I don't enjoy writing specs and design documents for software (I don't work on mission-critical or life-critical systems), I try to write well, because I figure, "I'm an engineer, and I have a responsibility to do my job as a professional."

    And then I read this article, and I think that maybe, after all, it doesn't matter what a competent, professional engineer says or does. I'm just saddened that NASA, an institution I loved growing up, did not change at all after Challenger. I wish I knew the answer.
    • I've also noticed during my time as an engineer that other engineers are critical of "politics." Since trying to see things from other points of view and compromise are necessary parts of communications and therefore "politics," engineers who do communicate well or are interested in other points of view are looked down upon.

      This results in a culture where we promote a weakness (no communication skills) as a virtue (disdain for politics). The only way to change this, I think, is to emphasize writing and

    • The problem is, admitting that you might be wrong is the sign of a good engineer; engineers always qualify their statements. Apparently admitting that you might be wrong is the kiss of death for a manager. That's why they avoid making decisions at all costs, and if they do make a bad decision, they blame it on someone else.
    • So in reference to the Challanger incident, exactly how do you write 'If you launch the shuttle in cold weather, the booster rocket will explode' more effectively? The problem was that the managers didn't want to believe them and viewed them as pessimistic. After all, no matter how well that Nigerian email gets rewritten I'm not about to do it.

      As for Three Mile Island, I've never seen it described as an engineer vs. management. I've only seen it as a) workers left water valves closed that shouldn't ha

    • Re:Engineers and communication skills (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:48PM (#7067566)
      And then I read this article, and I think that maybe, after all, it doesn't matter what a competent, professional engineer says or does. I'm just saddened that NASA, an institution I loved growing up, did not change at all after Challenger. I wish I knew the answer.

      Yes, it does matter what a professional engineer says or does. Accidents are called that for a reason. Otherwise, there would be some big lawsuit at hand.

      Everytime in my life a major accident kind of thing happened, I can go back and trace many, many things that could have "prevented" the accident. One example that was fairly recent was an AC going out in my machine room. I knew the AC sounded funny, so I had a work order in place to look at it. The kind of maintence we had on the AC was not "critical", so it would take up to 30 days to look at it. Also, when the AC did finally fail, the power blinked off right before. This caused some alarms/false alarms with the AC monitoring ppl, and they did not notice that the AC had failed. Any one thing, putting the maintence level to critical or the power not blinking off, would have been sufficient to prevent the failure.

      This was a pretty simple example, you can imagine the steps involved in something more complicated like a mission to outer space.

      NASA still has PR problems, because what they did for 20 years was pretty much old hat (in the public's eye). Keep in mind that _most_ of NASA's budget is for the 1st A, meaning aeronautics and not the S.

      Also keep in mind, that NASA's budget is not that big. Compared to the military at over 100B a year, NASA has only 20B, which is about the same as the DEA. I see the DEA as a more unsuccessful government agency than NASA anyday.

      What we really need is a real president to guide this country. Somebody like Kennedy who was able to get the whole country behind the space race. Or maybe we need a new enemy to be in a race with. I dunno. The war on terrorism is not a good one for moral. At least when we hated the commies, we felt better about ourselves because we were "free". "Winning" the war on terrorism only means maintaining status quo, and that is not the best at this time.

    • And we would look at copies of the memos, and think that, yeah, if the engineers had written more effectively, things may have been different.

      Keep in mind that many of those memos had to pass through several layers of management. What you read was what an engineer wrote after already being told 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, IT'LL BLOW UP LIKE AN ATOMIC BOMB' is not going to be an acceptable report. The only thing left to do is to write it so management THINKS it supports the decision that they have a

  • Not entirely ignored (Score:4, Interesting)

    by terrymr ( 316118 ) <terrymr@@@gmail...com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:09PM (#7067239)
    Actually the military / CIA mislead the manager of the shuttle program about the capabilities of the satellites because he didn't have the required security clearance. He therefore determined that the images wouldn't be of sufficient quality to find a possible problem.

    This was in one of the reports from the investigation board.

    • Re:Not entirely ignored (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hughk ( 248126 )

      Actually the military / CIA mislead the manager of the shuttle program about the capabilities of the satellites because he didn't have the required security clearance.

      Um, where does it say this. The manager was not informed at all by the CIA and was making an uninformed decision on the basis of bad assumptions. Most engineers would be aware of the resolution of Hubble and be awae that the USAF/NRO used similar technology looking downwardsas well as having some ground based technology for examining unfr

  • What a bunch of crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mal Reynolds ( 676267 ) <Michael_stev80@h ... .com minus punct> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:10PM (#7067253)
    If NASA managers listened to every issue brought forward by each of their thousands of engineers, spaceships would never leave the earth.
    It's in each of these engineers best interest to list every problem that could possible occur in the systems they design and maintain. That way if the problem happens in one of their systems, they can cover their ass with paperwork. Just because they issued a low-level memorandum doesn't mean these engineers actually had any level of confidence that the problem would occur. It just meant they were covering their ass.
    NASA has an escalation process, if these engineers *really* felt there was a problem, all they had to do was push that button. But to push the button is to put your clout on the line. Push it too often by mistake and you will rightly be taken out of the process. No company or organization can afford an employee that continually cries wolf.
    So if anyone is to blame for this, it's not the managers. It's the engineers that wrote memo's about it to cover their ass but didn't think the problem was important enough to push the escalation button.
    The managers are so inundated with engineers thinking up possible error scenarios they can't possible take them all seriously. Of course, when a shuttle goes down, those same engineers drag out the paper trail covering their butt and program managers are left to swing.
    Congress should be ashamed of this inquiry and so should most of America. Space travel is dangerous. Live with the danger or get out of the business.
    • This is exactly how I imagine things working. Does anyone have any corroboration that this is the way NASA works?


      Just because a post reflects my preconceptions doesn't mean I should mod it up, right? ;)

    • Re:What a bunch of crap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:49PM (#7067584)
      "The managers are so inundated with engineers thinking up possible error scenarios they can't possible take them all seriously."

      You are correct, in general. But this case is different. The engineers *DID* push the escalation button, and the people responsible for the escalation path pushed *BACK*. With no backchannel to the original reporters.

      The concerns were NOT ignored. Requests to investigate these concerns were DENIED.

      In my opinion, a court martial for the person who decided not to take the goddamned picture when they got the request to do so, is fully in order.

      That individual should be given a court martial, he is a murderer, and he knows it.

    • NASA has an escalation process, if these engineers *really* felt there was a problem, all they had to do was push that button.

      Did you, or did you not actually read the article?

      The reason I ask is because it's clear from the article that the engineers did attempt to escalate things and their efforts were squashed. And let's be clear about something: NASA has a very limited supply of shuttle orbiters and an even more limited supply of public support (and Congressional funding) if they lose any more of t

    • do you work for NASA? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizard&ecis,com> on Saturday September 27, 2003 @04:57AM (#7070867) Homepage
      As one of the PHMs who ought to be replaced, I mean. Do you hate Dilbert because the comic strip says things about PHMs that you feel compelled to take personally? Good, you're exactly the kind of person Scott Adams had in mind.

      Engineers in the real world try to make things work. The biggest problem with this is managers who share your beliefs who believe that problems can be wished away by managerial fiat.

      The escalation you whine about was blocked by the action of a bureaucrat at the wrong place and the wrong time, and people died.

      This isn't an engineering problem, it's a business process problem and in general, the solution is finding management like you and terminating it and putting procedures in place which will make future managers of the type you support disappear. This is just as important as increasing the budget, because it makes sure that the new money goes into solving the real problems, not into management perks or bureaucratic empire building. The purpose of an organization is to get things done. To fulfill this purpose in a new technology organization which means making new things, the engineers must be supported by management. The engineers are the people who have to solve the problems. The proper place of management is to give them the tools and to fight for budget and priorities with upper management. Any other managerial function in an technology R&D organization that isn't concerned with sales and marketing is secondary at best and parasitic at worst.

      Once upon a time, there was a political system whose management believed the country's problems could be solved by bureaucratic edict instead of with people finding out what the problems really were at an empirical level and solving them. The Soviet Union failed its reality check, just like NASA has repeatedly. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Perhaps it's time for NASA to follow it.

      Space travel is dangerous. Live with the danger or get out of the business.

      Ships were once dangerous. Automobile travel was once dangerous. Airplanes were once dangerous. Living in the America was once dangerous. Every new human domain has been paid for in blood. The problems were solved and now, kids can play outside in California suburbs without fear of being eaten by predators, they can fly in airliners without fear of following the trail of the Challenger astronauts.

      The shuttle is not an example of how to deal with the dangers of space travel. Since it was designed, there have been 30 years of aerospace research and development. Can a new earth to LEO vehicle be designed with safety comparable to the DC-3? I think it's time to find out. Perhaps it can't be done, but we can't find out unless it's tried.

      The DC-3 was a lot safer than anything that came before it. The modern jet airliner of today is a hell of a lot safer than the DC-3. It's called engineering progress, and that progress happens because engineers figure out what the problems are and their managers support them in getting the resources to implement the solutions. Not because PHMs attack them because they're saying things they don't want to hear.

      Space travel is dangerous because Congress won't appropriate the funds to do what needs to be done to make it safe. This is largely because NASA management has not been able to make a case for it that Congress can understand. Even at the level of "if we don't, our astronauts will keep raining down on your constituents in barbecued chunks". Where is the engineering incompetence in this?

      Where are the program directors with the integrity to say "We need this amount of money to put humans safely into space. If you won't give it to us, then you'll have to find other people willing to kill astronauts in order to give you guys good PR."

      Either Congress should come up with the funds to develop a vehicle whose design takes into account what has been learned in the last 30 years or admit that America can't afford a real space program and leave the field to the private sector, the Indians, and the Chinese.

  • Scott Adams [dilbert.com] has been pointing out that managers never listen to engineers for years...
  • I encourage you to read the entire story, which is four pages long. Mr. Rocha appears to have acted in an exemplary manner. He worked with Columbia from the time it was being built and felt very close to that particular shuttle. He witnessed and has reported the "launch fever" on the part of managers, and as soon as he heard about the foam strike, he spent the weekend (does that sound familiar to anyone here?) reviewing the video. He took an actual INTEREST in his work, get it?

    Then he wrote the e-mail

  • It comes down to management being business oriente (Score:3, Informative)

    by Locutus ( 9039 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:23PM (#7067364)
    It's the same thing in the computer/IT sector. More and more the management has no technical skills, just business skills. But these people are the ones who decide what technology is best. Why the NASA management wouldn't point a telescope at the Shuttle when engineers felt there was need for more information is beyond me. Most likely it was purely a financial decision.

    15 years ago, it was very common for technical people to fill management positions up through middle management with the Chief Engineer over seeing all the technical departments and reporting directly to the top level management. Today, we're luck to get technical expertise beyond the department/group managment level.

    This isn't a NASA-only problem. It's an industry wide problem. For example, the CSX RailRoad had it's signaling system go down because the computers running all those signals runs Microsoft Windows and got a virus. Who but a non-technical managager would insist Windows be used in a mission critical task like this? This might not be a good example because I have no proof it was a management decision while it very well be a technical moron made the choice and dumb PHB's followed the advice. The choice should not have been followed if a technically savy management existed.

    There's also been a dumbing down of the technical sector with all these I-can-click-an-icon-therefore-I'm-a-computer-exper t people running around the industry now. But that has nothing to do with the Shuttle and NASA. Those engineers were/are capable of the tasks at hand.

    Does anybody else think that management making technical decisions no longer make them with much regard to input from the engineers anymore?

    LoB

  • Which perspective is 'right'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tomster ( 5075 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:24PM (#7067372) Homepage Journal
    What's most interesting to me about this story is that both the engineers and the managers were making the best decision based on their perspectives. The engineer's perspective is based on hard facts, information, and analysis. The manager's perspective is based on people issues: money, resource management, risk management, project deadlines, etc.

    It's easy in retrospect to criticize managers who didn't want to be a "Chicken Little" or who, upon getting feedback from upper management, called it a "dead issue". But if they had gone ahead with the imaging, and the photos showed no damage and the shuttle had landed safely with no (or insignificant) damage to the wing, their reputation would have suffered. They would have been faulted for allocating valuable resources on something that turned out not to be an issue.

    Part of a manager's job includes risk management and resource allocation. This means properly assessing the likelihood and impact of a risk. In this case, I would suggest that management considered the 'cost' of pursuing further investigation to be higher than the 'likelihood * impact' factor of doing nothing. They have probably made the same decision many times before, successfully, which would encourage them to make the same decision again. Only this time, they were wrong -- the statistics caught up with them.

    -Thomas
    • Part of a manager's job includes risk management and resource allocation. This means properly assessing the likelihood and impact of a risk. In this case, I would suggest that management considered the 'cost' of pursuing further investigation to be higher than the 'likelihood * impact' factor of doing nothing. They have probably made the same decision many times before, successfully, which would encourage them to make the same decision again. Only this time, they were wrong -- the statistics caught up with

    • Perspective is Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

      by enkidu ( 13673 )
      It's not a matter of perspective. This isn't a "Feel the elephant and guess what it is" problem. A perspective that steel doesn't ever melt is not a "perpective", it is a "incorrect view of the world". This is an engineering problem and the only valid perspective is one supported by analysis based on known facts and uncertainties. A chunk of foam fell off during the SS launch. What are the risks imposed by this? How can we improve our analysis of the risks involved. Do a hard-nosed analysis. What is
    • What's most interesting to me about this story is that both the engineers and the managers were making the best decision based on their perspectives.

      Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Check this paragraph from the story:

      Mr. Schomburg insisted that because smaller pieces of foam had broken off and struck shuttles on previous flights without dire consequences, the latest strike would require nothing more than a refurbishment after the Columbia landed.

      That's not a good decision. That's a horrible decision,

  • No matter how many time I read about this accident, it still sickens me.

    • Re:no matter (Score:2, Insightful)

      by snooo53 ( 663796 )
      No matter how many time I read about this accident, it still sickens me

      Yes, I agree. It sickens me that it has been almost 40 years since people landed on the moon, and the human component of space exploration is barely out of the atmosphere, and only done by a poorly funded govt. organization. It sickens me to read about Software patents in Europe, the USPTO here, the way John Ashcroft wants to police america, and all the wars and conflict in the world that we have the resources to resolve, but don't.

  • When the MsBlast worm hit our place in August and I saw the Slashdot story, I saw a spike in our call volume about two minutes before. I immediately notified my manager and told her that something needed to be done. She said, "huh, what's slashdot?" called her manager and said an employee got a message off some unauthorized site. Then she promptly did nothing.

    We are still taking calls about that virus, and the bass ackwards crap they did to remedy the fallout. Managers are paid to make a team go in
  • We'd better RUN to the hardware store for a padlock to lock the barn door!!!! Seriously though, you'd have thought they would have learned a few things from the Challenger tragedy...like LISTEN TO YOUR ENGINEERS' CONCERNS!!! What's that saying: "Those who do not learn from their mistakes are destined to repeat them". What's even more whacked is they transferred or retired the people who screwed up, when you'd think they'd be the ones you'd WANT to remain. Why? Because you can be DANM SURE they'd never scr

  • How often are problems like this encountered? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:34PM (#7067436)

    So an engineer saw a problem and was concerned. My question is how often does this happen. If after every launch there are 100 engineers who noticed a potential problem, then I'd have ignored this too (along with the 99 other potential problems that didn't kill columbia) If enginneers almost never see a potential problem then this should have been taken seriously.

    Others have pointed out that there is an esclation process for problems belived to be serious, and that wasn't followed. In hind site it should have been, but they didn't have hind site to work with then, so we have to be realistic i our expectations.

  • Organizational Fragility (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:43PM (#7067504) Homepage
    Part of the problem is the damage caused to NASA by years of budget cuts. I saw this first hand. Due to a lack of funds, NASA adopted an attitude that sustaining engineering and operations costs could be substantially reduced by avoiding change whenever possible. Just keep the current system running with as little maintenance as possible. If nothing changes, you can get rid of most of the people who used to design, test, document and maintain the systems. If there is a problem with a system, you don't find the root cause and fix it, you develop a work-around. If new technology offers a better way to do something, you ignore it because the old system is "good enough" and you no longer have the money, infrastructure and people needed for major design changes and new systems development. The organization gets reduced to a caretaker for the engineering accomplishments of previous generations. It has just enough money and people to maintain the status quo.
  • They should be sent to jail!

  • Calvin Schomburg and Linda Ham (Score:4, Informative)

    by Teahouse ( 267087 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:45PM (#7067534)
    I read the entire Columbia report, and this article. Although I don't think we should always look for a person to blame after an accident, this was such a case of gross mismanagement that I really hope both Ham and Schomberg get at least a few months in "Club Fed" for their actions. Ham had future launch dates taking priority over her current mission. She quashed three requests for imaging personally, primarily because it would be the admittance of a problem that would throw the next mission off schedule. Schomberg on the other hand was just a poor engineer. He spouted off all week that he was the "EXPERT". Without doing a single calculation or having a shred of evidence, he just knew the Shuttle was safe regardless of what others said because he was the "expert". Sounds more like a petulant child to me.

  • 60+% of science results successfully returned (Score:4, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:48PM (#7067564)
    Columbia was mostly a science experiment mission. I heard a talk a month ago from the Principal Investigators of two experiments. Because these both had cameras and telemetry, they each returned 90% of their results. They were hoping to retrieve the apparatus for final analysis, but the pieces recovered after the accident weren't too useful. However, one of the experiment had got 5% additional results when a disk platter was forensically read after the accident.

    Both investigators said the astronauts were crucial to the success of their experiments. Although they were supposed to be mostly automatic, Murphy's law intervened, and the astronauts had to help. One astronaut even devoted several hours of her recreation time to fixing a busted valve (The ground crew had stayed up 96 hours straight working on a solution). All of the ground material was impounded for two months after the accident to rule our experimental causes of the accident.

    One result is of immediate use to NASA. It was a study of extinguishing fires with a new kind of water mist that could only be studied in microgravity. Since the prediction was successful, this means that water-based extinguishers could replace chemical extinguishers in space and on earth in more situations.

    Overall 60% of the results on the entire missionwere successfully returned. Slightly more may be retrieved through forensics. I was surprised to hear this high a success.

    It was not decided yet whether there would be a collective publication of their successful results as a memorial to the mission. They will of course publish in their respective journals.
  • Get real.

    Government employees and Government Unioned Employees are rarely touchable and THEY KNOW IT. It is a seniority based system that does not support any contrary opinion from within or from without. It is rarely accountable, and actively hostile to such attempts. It takes a huge flaming unignorable disaster before something does happen (no offense intended). Even then you usually end up with the very same people in nearly identical, if not just renamed positions causing the very same situations to
  • Something I've been thinking about for some time...

    It's hard to believe that the NASA managers ALL were indifferent to or ignorant of the potential damage to the shuttle. If you're an engineer, you can run through the numbers in your head in about 5 seconds flat: mass x velocity x surface area= pressure per square inch.

    If you know anything about the shuttle, you know that the tiles are fragile and subject to fracture on impact (in fact a major worry always has been what happens if the Shuttle hit a piece

  • Hindsight is 20-20 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:00PM (#7067714)
    The issue is not "did NASA engineers raise concerns" but did they raise concerns above the level that usually triggers a more serious review. I am sure that on every single shuttle mission there were engineers that raised concerns about every single glitch, out-of-tolerance reading, or unusual occurence, etc. This is a good thing. It is also a good thing that other engineers and managers make informed cost-benefit decisions to either pursue, study, or ignore any raised concerns.

    Hindsight is 20-20. Nobody remembers all the prior events in which engineers raised concerns that were ignored and nothing happened. Don't forget this was not the first time that insulation had fallen off the external tank. As an engineer myself, I know I can come up with all manner of "potential concerns." As an older engineer, I know that many of those concerns can easily fail a cost-benefit analysis or prove to be groundless on further study.

    Tuning the process of raising and dispatching concerns is very hard -- being overly cautious is as damaging as being overly risky. It is especially hard with the extremely low sample sizes and highly complex systems that NASA faces when managing the shuttle. Personally, I am surprised that the shuttle is as reliable as it is.

    I hope that NASA can keep flying because it is the only way that humanity can get the experience needed for truly reliable space flight in the future.

  • The Real Sequence of Events (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @11:32PM (#7069738) Homepage Journal
    1. Commies do space spectacular.
    2. US responds with its own commie space program.
    3. Progress in space stops.

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