Sequence of Events During Columbia Mission 298
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."
What's new? (Score:4, Funny)
"... managers just ignored them."
The story of an engineer's life.
steve
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sarcasm? (Score:2)
I have to ask, is that sarcasm or serious post?
Bush *is* responsible for just those things to a large degree. He is the one with the final authority over what USA does regarding those things. He may not do most decision details, and he may have his hands tied in some issues, but in the end he has to give the final approval and therefore bear the final responsibility, doesn't he?
Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
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
Re:What's new? Ref: Mr. Feynman (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Funny)
you have to love the irony of someone saying exactly the opposite of what they mean when criticizing someone else's communication skills.
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Funny)
For instance, "launching now would kill the crew", becomes, "the current orbital insertion paradigm may cause a negative value proposition for this and all future missions".
See how much more understandable the second quote is? The best part about it is that it doesn't mention death, which is better for shareholder value.
Re:Linda Ham (Score:2, Interesting)
Click. [space.com]
Re:Linda Ham (Score:3, Funny)
Her husband is an astronaut? Hmm... "Ham"... that name rings a bell. Was he perhaps one of the earliest Mercury astronauts? (See picture [apolloexplorer.co.uk].)
What's new? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's new? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)
No. The ISS is in a completely different orbit than the Shuttle was. The ISS was unreachable.
Re:What's new? (Score:3, Interesting)
Could we have rushed up an
Goodbye (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that's worth it.
Re:What's new? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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)
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)
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'
Re:What's new? (Score:2)
Agreed, and I have indeed encountered "good" managers. They make life a million times easier (and I mean that as only mild hyperbole) for those under them - Breaking projects into decent sized chunks, giving those chunks to the right people, filtering the upper-management corporatespeak from the tech people (and the techspeak fro
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
The only good news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tim
Re:The only good news... (Score:4, Informative)
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".
Re:The only good news... (Score:2)
Manslaughter (Score:2)
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.
Re:The only good news... (Score:2)
"Reassignment" doesn't mean much. Firing them in a public manner would have been more appropriate.
It's nearly impossible to fire a government employee. One substitute is known as 'Reassignment'. For example, being 'Reassigned' to be in charge of watering the lawn with no budget (not even to requisition a garden hose) and an 'office' next to the clanky boiler in the basement with no air conditioning and only a bare 30 Watt bulb. The idea is to drive them to resign.
I don't know if that's the sort of r
Re:The only good news... (Score:2)
morons (Score:2, Funny)
Re:morons (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: charges (Score:2)
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)
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
Re: charges (Score:2)
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: charges (Score:2)
Which could have resulted in the same situation as the first one... If they had known about the extent of the tile damage, and thought it bad enough to risk a balls-to-the-wall processing of the next available shuttle (Atlantis), it would have been a horribly bad idea to blindly launch another shuttle without knowing what had happened to the previous one or taking steps to prevent it.
These decisions w
Re: charges (Score:2)
Two slight differences: (a) the crew on the rescue mission would have been volunteers who knew exactly what additional ris
Re: charges (Score:2)
If the general public thinks spaceflight is routine and without risk, they are more niave than I thought.
Re: charges (Score:2)
OK. Damn, you're good.
It appears most of the other replies were of the, "If they'd know they could have pulled a repair kit and EVA proceedure out of their ass" variety.
Re: charges (Score:2)
Making the attempt, *ANY* attempt, is better than sitting around with your thumb up your ass hoping the problem goes away. Bubble-gum, baling wire, and balls has solved more problems than PHB wishful thinking. It sure as hell beats dying.
Re:morons (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
>>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
Re:morons (Score:2)
I think that, at the least, recklessness is an element [socialaw.com] of manslaughter.
Sounds like job (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, DUH??? (Score:4, Funny)
BBC story (Score:4, Informative)
For those like me who do not wish to register with NYT
Re:BBC story (Score:2)
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)
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)
"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.
Re:Technical vs Business (Score:3, Insightful)
"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
Re:Technical vs Business (Score:2)
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.
Re:Technical vs Business (Score:4, Informative)
Of course congress also ignored (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
I do blame the managers and I do b
Rescue Mission (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
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)
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Maybe Engineers.. (Score:2)
Re:Whistleblowing (Score:2)
Anonymous whistleblowing could lead to a witch hunt that would affect not only you but your co-workers and friends as well. If you whistleblow with your name you risk losing your job
Yes, let's kill 7 astronauts so that you can keep your job.
Re:Whistleblowing (Score:2)
Engineers and communication skills (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Good Communication != Politics (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Engineers and communication skills (Score:2)
Re:Engineers and communication skills (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Engineers and communication skills (Score:2)
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)
This was in one of the reports from the investigation board.
Re:Not entirely ignored (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:What a bunch of crap (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:What a bunch of crap (Score:2)
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)
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.
That's no suprise: (Score:2)
Rodney Rocha is a Hero (Score:2)
Then he wrote the e-mail
It comes down to management being business oriente (Score:3, Informative)
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-expe
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)
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
Re:Which perspective is 'right'? (Score:2)
Perspective is Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which perspective is 'right'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Check this paragraph from the story:
That's not a good decision. That's a horrible decision,
no matter (Score:2)
Re:no matter (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Not nearly as serious, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
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
THE COW HAS ESCAPED FROM THE BARN!!! (Score:2)
How often are problems like this encountered? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Managers retired? (Score:2)
Calvin Schomburg and Linda Ham (Score:4, Informative)
60+% of science results successfully returned (Score:4, Informative)
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.
You expect more from a Government agency??? (Score:2)
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
What if the managers knew... (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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)
Re:More than managers (Score:2)
Re:That is the way it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Absoltuly false. I am in a management profession, and I can tell you from experience that people that do this are only successful to a point.
What you said is the recipe to make it into middle managment (Director or VP level), but you will never get beyond that. Company Sr. Executives and Officers are expected to be frank and honest. Those that aren't generally don't fare well (yes, you can point out exceptions, but as a general rule, liars don't make it to the top).
Unfortunatly, honest senior managers often have kiss-ass middle managers working for them. Those middle-managers lie, cheat, steal, etc, and senior management is left holding the bag for their mistakes (which is the job of management, to take the fall when your subordinates screw up, in case any managers reading this have forgotten... ignorance is not\ excuse).
I made it into senior management very quickly in my career by having a policy of never breaking the law, never lying to my boss and never sucking up to anyone. Say what you want, but those simple ethics, combined with extremely hard work, are what put me on the fast track. Managers who will screw people to get ahead will find their careers never make it to where they could (but probably does go past where they should).
Top Down (Score:2)
That sounds harsh, and incorrect, but if you look at it more carefully it's true.
You at the top may be a good director, but you're not doing your job well if you don't have immediate subordinates that are doing their job right/well.
How do you know if they are? You watch, and you get out in the trenches once in a while to get a true view for yourself of what's going on.
It is no excuse for an executive to say "I didn't realize that such and such was going
Re:That is the way it is (Score:2)
The key, IMHO, is to make sure that mutiny is always an option. I'm not kidding. As long as there is enough fluidity within a company for employees to move between bosses and projects, the jerks will be left with no one to manage. Prob
Moron Moderators? (Score:2)
Parent post is currently listed as Flamebait. It's not flamebait in the least.
Re:How shameful (Score:2)
Pretty hard, actually. Don't take this for granted.
>Or point a telescope at the shuttle?
There really aren't many telescopes that can offer the necessary resolution. I wonder why the shuttle doesn't deploy cameras covering every conceivable angle the whole time it's in orbit.
>A picture is a thousand words? The people who >stoped that from happening should be SHOT!!!
Some individual is responsible for denying the request. The request was denied on
Re:What if there was a picture.... (Score:2, Insightful)
They say it didn't have enough fuel, but that was as loaded. I don't presume to know much about the shuttle, but surely they could jettison some equipment to reduce the mass. Experiments don't look very important when you know the shuttle is going to disintegrate upon re-entry; they're already gone!
Does anyone know if one of the Soyuz capsules could dock with the shu
Re:What if there was a picture.... (Score:4, Informative)
a. Tell the crew the situation, and let the crew decide whether to take a chance.
b. Breaking every single shuttle launch safety rule, try to launch another shuttle with 1-2 crew, and a bunch of space suits, before Columbia ran out of consumables.
Neither choice would look good to me.
Luckily your question is answered by the CAIB report. First, an ad-hoc wing repair using a combination of water (frozen in space), titanium tools on board the shuttle, and miscellanous junk might have held in place long enough to allow the shuttle to reenter without being destroyed. Second, by working around the clock in shifts, the next shuttle launch could have been moved up in time to rescue the Columbia with about 5 days to spare, without skipping any safety checks.
The CAIB report rejected the possibility of tranferring to the ISS (too much delta-V for the fuel left on board), and flying a different reentry pattern that would take load off of the damaged wing (too dangerous). Of course those were just the first four suggestions for approaches that might have been tried had they known that there was something wrong; no doubt there would have been dozens of other ideas floated if the engineers had had the need to do something.
Re:Modern Apollo 13 (Score:2, Insightful)