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Reflections on Challenger
Adam Attarian writes "CNN's Miles O'Brien (no relation to the dude on Star Trek) has an excellent column on NASA's reflection of the Challenger explosion 15 years ago, and how they are guarding against "go-fever" as much as possible. The article also talks about how detailed and precise NASA engineers are now, and how mathmatical statistics mean hardly anything anymore. This is an excellent read. Hopefully Dubya won't cut NASA's budget more than it all ready has. Those guys are all ready pretty much running on fumes."
I mean, if we could make it to the moon in 1969 with the equivalent power of three Commodore 64s, just think how easy it will be today. And don't give me that "we no longer have the tech to reach the moon". That's bullshit. I don't know where people come off with that one.
As an ex-employee of a prominant subcontractor at NASA for 4 years, I find the statement "how detailed and precise NASA engineers are now" humorous. During the Apollo program, and design stages of the shuttle program, the average employee at NASA was intelligent, concerned, committed to the cause. After continuing budget cuts, NASA's ability to pay thier engineers market value became impossible. Thus there was a mass exodus from KSC during the early 80's. I experienced this by watching my friends move away. The past brilliance of NASA amazed me. The current space program was thought out and documented extremely well. Today the average engineer, simply reads a document and follows instructions. No real knowledge of the system. Just basically a monkey. There are a few, less than 5%, of the workforce that knows, truly knows, the system. When something really goes wrong and there is not specific steps documenting what to do, that is when these men save the day. The only reason we haven't blown up more birds is because of strict adhereance to the current 20 year old documentation, and nothing else. Until NASA has the ability to pay market value they will continue to loose engineers like me to the private sector companies willing to pay much much more.
I post for content not karma...
GHEBotWIfSRaD
NASA's budget should be increased. Hell, it could be increased tenfold if Congress would stop building the military aircraft carriers that the Pentagon doesn't even want. What's that, you say? The company that builds them happens to be located in Majority Leader Trent Lott's home state? Well, isn't that something?
Give the money to NASA and keep it out of the hands of Lott and his group of Republican white-collar crooks. They make Richard Nixon look like a choirboy in comparison.
Guess what? Climbing on top of a 50 story high fuel-air bomb and lighting the fuse is *risky*. Gee, who'd a thunk it? What I find amazing is that so *few* fatalities have occurred in the American space program- what, ten deaths in fifty years? Compare that to explorations of the past- one of Columbus' three ships didn't make it back, and a vast majority of the people who sailed with Magellan didn't make it back (including Magellan!).
NASA is being set up to fail. If everything goes right then we cut their budget because no one cares anymore. If things go wrong and people die (or even if missions fail) then we cut their budget because it's too risky. End result: we cut their budget.
Why? Because NASA's defenders are, to put it bluntly, politically naive. They're engineers and scientists, and how you win an argument with an engineer or scientist is you get your facts and logic right. When presented with the facts and logic, the scientist or engineer goes "Oh- you're right."
Well, we're not dealing with scientists or engineers here, we're dealing with politicians. And I'm not sure how many people may have noticed, but neither facts nor logic have much weight in political debate. What counts is money and votes.
The first time a congress criter looses his seat in whole or in part because he voted against funding for NASA, and thus the pro-NASA forces contributed large amounts of money to and voted for his opponent- then, and ONLY then, will NASA get the budget it deserves.
Yes, what *is* that comment doing up there??? Has he *ever* suggested cutting NASA? It strikes me as the type of thing he's likely to support . . .
When Challenger was launched, the temperature was not only well below the temperature range for which it had been designed. It had exceeded its design specs, true, and been tested at colder temperatures--bot not as cold as the launch day temperature.
Launching under those terms was criminally neglicent, and should have been prosecuted as either mansalughter or (insert local name for "criminally negligent homicide" here).
It wasn't a technical failure, any more than it's a design problem that kills you when you slam your car into a brick wall at 100mph.
>Star Wars again?! Man, I mean didn't they learn anything the first time around?
Uhh, that you can spend the other super power out of existence like that?
The USSR didn't just fall down; it was pushed. It would have happened
in another 30-50 years anyway, but responding to the Reagan buildup
finished them offf. Gorbachev wouldn't have had to gamble (and lose)
with glasnost and perestroika (sp?) without the pressure that trying
to keep up placed on their system.
>To me, a missile defense system like star wars suffers many of
>the same problems as pr0n filters. Sure, they can catch titties, but
>they also catch baby's butts, or a picture of somone's tattoo, or a
>tan sofa...
I'm not *to* worried about shooting down sofas lobbed into ballistic
trajectories . . .
>These missile detectors don't know the difference between
>a missile and a weather balloon.
The velocity is a *wee* bit different.
>Much less a missile and an identical
>decoy missile coming from the same vacinity.e
This misunderstands the nature of the defense. The system (and this
applies specifically to the old USSR, but also to others) doesn't
need to be 100%, but rather enough to interfere with the attack.
Aside from Russia, there's noone who could launch enough decoys
anyway.
hawk
Every employee of NASA does not work on how to send rockets into space. Based on 4 years of interning at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) in Cleveland, I would say that there, only about 20% of the staff was working directly on technology for space-bound missions. The rest were doing the 'A' thing , aeronautics. I was particularly involved with materials research where they were trying to make materials with better stress handling. If we could do that, not only would it help design lighter and better planes, but could easily filter down into more commonplace vehicles. It may not be a direct link, but the possibility is there.
And don't underestimate the value of extra-terrestial research. We as mankind seriously need to think about getting off the rock known as Earth within the next 200 to 500 years, not only for expected population growth but to avoid having all of our eggs in one basket should there be a cosmic-scale disaster. Maybe we should be pushing NASA to work more with other worldwide space programs to create joint ventures to do this, but it's got to happen.
And finally, remember that the millions of dollars that NASA might get in a year is about the same cost for ONE of our best stealth planes. Which, after all is said and done, is going to be of the most value to the general populace? I'd think it would be NASA research which can have a beneficial effect on society.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
NASA also runs a major aviation safty reporting program.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
we're all a bit put off at the realization that the whole deal about going to the moon and exploring space was actually a pissing contest between the USSR and USA. Everything after that has been just "humoring the academics" at the least possible cost.
Or, possibly, that we got too cocky, too soon. We can shoot a few people up into the sky on a big pile of explosives, but do we really have what it takes to go into space? deep into space - where truly interesting things can be done, like colonization, expansion? Hell no - and I think that despite the HUGE wave of ratty antiscientific science fiction propaganda that has been squeezed out of hollywood, we're finally starting to realize that we're probably hundreds of years away from having the technology to do anything really useful with space (unless the global political climate shifts, (ABM) and we're forced into another pissing contest (with PRC)).
Yes, it's sad, and back in the 1970's and 1980's, it really looked like we were rollin'. But look at NASA's advanced propulsion physics page. We're talking hundreds, if not thousands of years.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I was 19, just starting college. Still a virgin, but ever eager.
I was certain, when I was told, that it was a joke. My "gang" was all pretty used to sick humor, no holes barred. We were pretty desensitized. Someone would say just about anything to "get" someone else. So it was, in my mind, not outside the realm of possibility that Chuck was making a sick joke. But it was outside the realm of taste, in my mind. I made a comment, and we went down to the library to watch. Not a joke.
Deep inside, I was kind of relieved. Kind of happy. I had been thinking that I was majorly dissatisfied with the progress of the US Space program. We should have had daily launches by then. We should have had hundreds of shuttles. 2000 was approaching, where was my flying car?
I thought - damn, NOW people will start taking this space stuff seriously. NOW NASA will get some decent funding to make sure things get done right. This was just akin to Henry Ford losing his best friend in an accident during testing of the Model T prototype. We'll buckle down, we'll redouble our efforts, improve our design, set our commitment, and dammit, we'll make space our bitch.
I mean, tradgedy, in one sense. True. 7 people died. In the time it took for me to type this message, a lot more than 7 people in this world have died, starvation, war, disease, car accidents, Pokemon episodes. Death happens. See what I mean about being desensitiezed? Space is a dangerous thing. Life is a dangerous thing. You sit on a thousand tons of liquid hydrogen, you better damn well understand that you could die. Hell, I could have a brain hemmorage and die this instant, before I even get to hit the submit button. Wasting all this effort to type - so I can contribute to the lameness that is Slashdot. Those astronauts were attempting something noble. Maybe not on par with the Apollo or Mercury astronauts - but they weren't sitting on their asses like I'm doing now. But they knew the risks. Their families knew the risks. The managers knew the risks. Congress knew the risks. And you and I, when we send off our tax returns to the IRS to fund these things, know the risks. Let's get over the crybaby shit, and start sending more of these motherfuckers up there already!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
hey man, I didn't try to figure out my mom and dad, and learn how to live with them in peace. I got the hell out and got my own apartment.
You get out into the REAL world, and THEN you grow up.
Do you want to be thought of as "the race who lives in their parents' basement" for the rest of cosmic eternity?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
we'll make great pets.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I propose that slashdot add the following features:
For stories that are recurring topics, a page with links to all the previous stories on this topic. (reposts too), and links provided by commentators containing relevant information.
I know that the last time this came up, somebody linked a great article on how some guy was going to write a book about deceased russian astronaut rumors, and he worked on it for 10 years, gathering information, researching, and found out that the guy had been drummed-out for insubordination or something like that, and sent back to his fighter squadron in Siberia, and the Soviet government covered it up - and the cover up was what made people think that the guy died in the line of duty.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The individual child will think "The only way to get ice-cream is to do my homework right. Therefor I
must shut off the tv and concentrate on homework."
Obviously, you have zero parenting experience. because this is how it works:
"man, mom and dad are lame, fuck ice cream, fuck them, fuck homework - that'll show them. When i'm 18, I'll get all the ice cream I fucking want."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Do you have ANY proof that the Navy does not want the aircraft cariers currently being built?
For example: There's a big push from the top to do QRA (Quantitative Reliability Analysis). HELLO! Why weren't they doing that already?! The answer is that they were doing it before the days of the Challenger and then stopped because they didn't like the numbers they were getting. So they started playing voodoo statistics to estimate their reliabilities. (I remember Feynman saying that their supposed reliability would mean something like a launch a day for a millenium without serious failure.)
Another example: I heard of a project in which millions of $$ were spent to estimate the unreliability of a system. Then someone else did it for a hundredth the price and exposed errors in the original project's analysis. Instead of getting a pat on the back, and fixing the problem, then NASA culture would rather hush-hush the situation because it would show that the original project wasted millions of dollars. Sigh.
Don't get me wrong. There are groups within NASA that are top notch. (The shuttle control software development team comes to mind.) However, NASA is a huge organization with huge bureaucracy, huge politics, and huge inefficiencies.- ----------------------
--------------------------------
You don't honestly think that if NASA's budget were cut, the money saved would be used to feed starving people, do you?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I think Kimble has it right (at least that's the same answer I got, for whatever that's worth). It's just worded confusingly because there are two kinds of "failure" here: single-wire failures, which are scary but harmless individually because of the backups, and system failures, which make the ship explode. Each line gives the chances of that wire failure not causing a system failure.
Say you're going to select four wires to cut randomly and want to compute the chances of any two of them being from the same pair, i.e., being each other's backup, i.e., ruining everyone's day. This is all assuming that four is the number of wires that will have deteriorated, which I guess is based on the observation that that is how many had deteriorated in the other ship under whatever conditions caused it. You could also do this for more values and take a weighted sum based on a pretty safe assumption of the distribution of that number (the Laws of Large Numbers kick in way before 6000) and get a pretty similar result. Anyway:
There are 6056 out of 6056 ways to choose the first wire safely, because it's the first one, so its backup must still be okay.
There are 6054 out of 6055 ways to choose the second wire safely, because there are 6055 left and one of them has no backup.
There are 6052 out of 6054 ways to choose the third wire safely, because, assuming you get this far, there are 6054 left and two have no backup.
There are 6050 out of 6053 ways to choose the fourth wire safely, because, assuming you get this far, there are 6053 left and three have no backup.
Multiplying these all together gives the chances of making it through all four without hitting both of any pair. Cancelling the 6056es and 6054s, I get 36614600/36650915 =~ 0.99901. (Ironically enough, I also used my Pilot, proving that it wasn't the writer's Pilot that failed him, just his math skills) Anyway, one minus that makes about one chance in a thousand of bad news, which is still pretty good, but not as good as some others have said, and probably not as good as you would hope for.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I used to laugh at my parents, when they said they could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. I don't anymore. Exactly. I'll never forget the look on Doug Yount's face when he said, "Fellas, you're gonna hear about this later anyway, but the Challenger shuttle blew up." I felt my heart sort of thud in my chest.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
...I doubt Dubya would advocate cutting NASA budget even more. Even though the stupid missile defense system he wants to put in place will probably be done by defense contractors like TRW, there will probably be some spillover into NASA.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
I was working on Wall Street when the Shuttle blew up. We were putting together a big IMS DB/DC and CICS system. OVer a hundred people on the project. A few folks who babysat conversion runs overnight had TV sets and more or less left them on all the time. After all a shuttle launch is a big deal especially that one with all the Christa McAuliffe hype. A contractor came into my cube and said the shuttle blew up. He had to repeat himself 3 or 4 times before I really understood what he was talking about. So a bunch of us just congregated around a TV running the story. We stood there pretty much speechless for long while. I can't remember anything else that happened that day.
If you are really concerned that NASA doesn't have a large enough budget then how about donating some money to them? or working as a programmer for free for a few months? or if you are more the business type helping them form a fund raising group that solicits private donations? There is a lot you can do to help out NASA without being dependent on Dubya.
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
Give it a rest, media-brainwashed libertarians.
NASA's budget is $14G. The military budget (even the overt part) is over $500G. With the annual $1.8 *trillion* dollar budget, NASA is less than 1%.
NOT building a couple of $2G B-1 bombers, that the Pentagon didn't want, or a couple of $3G-$4G Trident subs, that the Navy didn't want, and you'd do a lot more...esp. since it's a know fact that the same amount of money that creates one military -related job results in 22 jobs in the civilian sector (or did, 20 years ago...I don't want to *think* how many it would create now!).
What NASA needs, if anything, is a flattening of their structure - get rid of the risk-avoiding, bureaucratic job holding middle management, and get the people who *do* the work more, and get more *of* them. This, btw, is not just blowing hot air - I have a close friend who *works* *at* the Cape, and tells me that they've just gotten their first raises in 6 years, and that there were non-salaried secretaries who were taking work home, unpaid, so they could finish it...because they believe in the Space Program.
Stupid twit slashdotter kids. Way too many of you seem to confuse making real things with the content of video games.
Oh, and as for the person who said that their dream of being an astronaut died with the Challanger...there's a *hell* of a lot of us who said, back then, and still do, that if they'd set up another Shuttle, give us a suit, and show us the gantry, we'd fight to get on.
mark
"Tons" of radioactive material? Cassini carries 3 RTGs (total of 33 kg of plutonium dioxide) and several smaller radioisotope heater units (33.6 CI of fuel and 1.4 oz total weight PER unit). Ref: RTGs and heaters. So there's approximately 72 pounds (for the metric-challenged) of PU-238 onboard. A "metric ton" is 2200 pounds. Methinks you are off by a factor of at least 30. (60 if you really meant "tons")
The RTGs are *DESIGNED* to prevent releasing the fuel into the environment. You can question the adequacy of the design and invent scenarios where it fails but you CANNOT state that the engineers at JPL, NASA, and various contractors are not taking the risk seriously.
Next, we DO NOT know our solar system. The discovery of active vulcanism on Io, potenital for water ice and liquid water on Europa, and questions about the atmosphere on Titan are relatively recent and the result of sending space probes to Jupiter and Saturn. Data on *ALL* the planets remain sketchy. This same information helps us develop an understanding of planetrary geology and meterology that applies to understanding Earth's environment as well (a good theory should accomodate observations on more than just one planet).
Heck, we don't understand the planet we live on that well. Ever hear of Earth Observation System (EOS)? Where do you think data on global climate changes, upper atmosphere properties (ozone depletion at the poles), or some of the observations of the Pacific and Atlantic thermal osciliations come from? NASA operates ALL those programs.
The *only* mission categories that are economically viable today are communications satellites, earth observation, maybe remote imaging (commercial "spy sats"), maybe weather. Government (DoD, NASA, NOAA in the US) has to fund everything else and did much of the work to make the rest possible. As much as we'd like it, private industry has not raised the capital necessary to do it on its own (for many reasons, political, economic, and technical).
Finally, we don't know WHEN humanity will NEED a real space capability. We CAN afford the research now. It's foolish on several levels to not do it.
The traditional argument over the NASA budget has been about the manned spaceflight program. Which has been a political beast since its inception.
And while I am not employed as a "rocket scientist" today, I studied to be one (aero astro engineering major) and can tell you EXACTLY where I was for most of the Mercury and Gemini launches, the Apollo flights, Shuttle 1st flight, and yes, Challenger.
I still can't watch the replay of the explosion. It still tears at me every time I see the start of it. I have to leave the room or change the channel on the TV.
I know what you mean, dude. It still chills me just to hear the radio call "Roger, GO at throttle-up". You can still hear that call every mission, and it just makes my heart catch in my throat. And when those boosters separate at around T+2:00, around here we say "good riddance".
About the explosion: technically, there was none. The vehical was torn apart by dynamic forces due to massive structural failure of the ET. The large fireball you see in those old films is not an explosion, it's just the remaining fuel burning up following the destruction of the ET. That's what we were told at NASA training shortly after I started work here at USA.
--Jim
Somewhere I picked up the idea that the shuttle was primarily designed to make sure a whole lot of money got spread around to a lot of aerospace contractors in lots of states, to ensure widespread support in Congress. Politically, getting stuff to space is just a pleasant side-effect.
Uh...the AUTHOR couldn't figure it out. I'm sure NASA could. You are so smart.... you can't tell where quotes begin and end.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
The thing is, in this case, there was no reason (aside from the much discussed pressures to get Krista into space) that it couldn't have been caught. Engineers knew about it. They tried (albeit with less than effective diagrams and notes) to tell NASA no go, but NASA wasn't listening, and the case they made was not presented in it's strongest possible form (read one of Edward Tufte's books about how the case could have been made much stronger; I suspect it was "Visual Display of Quantitative Information" but don't have it here to check).
If the engineers had been more effective (not that they don't deserve credit for trying), if NASA had not been hell-bent for leather, it could easily have been prevented.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I was in college working a co-op job at Fermi National Accellerator lab, outside Chicago. The lab had closed circuit TV's stationed all around, usually monitoring the beamline and what was going on for the latest experiments (or preperations). But they'd occasionally run special programming, and this shuttle launch was one of them. Someone was watching when it blew up and we all went running to see what was going on, and spent the rest of the day in a daze after we realized what had happened.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Please, look at realities befoer you form opinions. How many children could we feed? maybe 10 more than we do now. 95% of all money spent to feed starving children,people,etc.. goes to the chairman of the company distributing it, the company operations, fees, transport costs, greasing politicians, payoffs, and then almost 75% of what arrives at that country is stolen by the local government officials for their own use/ sale. if you send 1 loaf of bread to a child in uganda, they will get the crust of one slice after the bread was ripped apart by the "gimmie gimmies" that run this world.
If you increase the amount of money spent the greedy people will start taking larger shares of the "goldmine" you just created.
you want to cure world starvation? either send these people birth control and force them to use it (what kind of person has a child when they cant even feed themseles?) or blow the hell out of the countries government and make it a new territory of the united states.
None will ever solve world hunger. In the USA we have TONS of free food programs that are easy to get to, yet we have starving children here... Why? because the parents are worthless to begin with. In rural areas there are more food programs than in the cities, and if you live 40 miles from the nearest neighbor in the mountians where cars cant get to, then you choose to live with that hardship.
I say we need to give NASA a budget in 2001/2002 and on that is comparable to what they had during apollo but adjusted for now. The more money we spend on NASA the less the govt can spend on their own "pet projects" that only help some millionares in their state/area/
Give NASA 20% of the national budget.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I hear many here bitching about how NASA cant do snot, spend billions to throw a silly robot up ther eto take pictures, bla bla bla, whine whine... etc...
I ask then 2 things. If you think NASA sucks, can you do any better? and on that same note, how about opening up the stranglehold NASA has on launchings? Let's commercalize the space program. Instead of sending a probe to that iron asteroid, let's go and mine the hell out of it.
Open it up. Let private groups and companies launch. Instead of making us drive out to the desert and abandon our launch platform and ground control equipment so we can be be miles away after launch so we dont get thrown in prison for scientific research. (Amateur rocketeers have made it really close, but we can't lay claim to anything that we try for fear of imprisionment.)
The space program could be the pinnacle of humanity. Only if we persue it un-hindered.
(BTW: where the hell is that moon base we were promised in the 60's?)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The 1st aircraft of this type was the YF-12, a USAF supersonic interceptor, its only weapon being the D-21 drone missile it carried piggyback.
Some of them were jointly funded/developed with the CIA as recon aircraft, called the A-12 Oxcart. These airframes were actually the fastest, setting many records. All the pilots of these aircraft were active duty USAF, sometimes "on loan" to the CIA.
The SR-71 was an improvement in the design, including some of the first hi-res digital cameras and synthetic aperture radar. These were all flown by the USAF until the mid 90s.
Interestingly, this is the 1st aircraft the AF willingly retired in recent times. They fought to keep all previous aircraft, until their budget forced them to move on. Why? We can't be sure, but the AF uses satellites for a lot of their recon now, they still have a tactical recon aircraft in the U-2, RPVs are starting to be used more, and the $80k/hr cost to fly them was pretty expensive.
A few SR-71s were transferred to NASA _then_ for high altitude/speed research. A couple years later, 3 SR-71s were returned to AF service for about a year by congress, against AF wishes.
Titanium research has nothing to do with NASA or the space program. The metallurgy of titanium was developed almost exclusively in the design of the SR-71 Blackbird (& variations known as the YF-12 & A-12 Oxcart). For more information, check out "Kelly: More Than My Share of It All," by Clarence L. 'Kelly' Johnson or "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed," by Ben R. Rich.
Sidenote: it was meant to be called the RS-71, but Nixon reversed the letters when it was revealed to the public, so they stuck with SR-71.
They look sort of similar.
However, until recently the shuttle didn't have
anywhere to go, except in circles.
Your math is correct, but misleading. The chance of 1 in a thousand for one wire to fail is irrelevant. A single-wire failure doesn't matter at all, because the others take over. It's the chance of multiple wires failing simultaneously that we care about.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
1. The reason Challenger blew up was the fact that it was so cold outside that the O ring on the booster engine cracked and with that little hole in the engine it ignited the fuel tank. Thats what caused the explosion.
Remind me, which organization was it that decided to actually launch the thing in that cold weather? And knew the possible consequences? Hmm, sounds like NASA...
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Well, I'm just thinking back with my friend John Bull who was in the Apollo series as an astronaut and still works for NASA and was active in the shuttle missions in 1986. For him there was no generational change.
16 years is not a generation.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Very good point. I think of Apollo 13 more of a disaster than Challenger, just on the sole basis that Challenger was due to negligence. Just my own perception, but the Challenger was a great tragedy and was one of the major reasons why I'm a programmer now instead of an astrophysicist.. bloody unqualified managers.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Didn't you watch Apollo 13? Or are you saying it's a different generation?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
You're kidding right? In the next four and a half billion years we'll be able to figure out how to negate that little problem, too. Or we just go extinct. Why do you care if the human species becomes extinct?
Gee and in the past 10,000 years we've gone from not even having pet dogs to genetically engineering and cloning said pet dogs. I think in the next 100,000 years we might be able to do something about a stupid little asteroid. Er, actually, we could probably do something about an asteroid today if we had to. So rather than spend a few thousand years researching how to migrate 8 billion people into space when that asteroid hits why not spend the next few thousand years avoiding the cataclysmic event in the first place?
I believe it was Roger Boisjoly, which we always pronounced the same as the french wine (I was a Morton-Thiokol employee at the time).
He's a difficult person, and he didn't get "blackballed and will never again work as an engineer" although he reputedly likes to tell people that.
He was in the process of being dicked over by the Morton assholes when Challenger blew, but his punishment kind of got derailed by the fact that he was right all along and everybody at Thiokol (as distinct from Morton-Thiokol) knew it. Now he is famous in rocketry circles for sticking to his guns... I don't think he'd have any trouble getting an engineering job outside of Utah.
Incidentally, he wasn't the only whistleblower.
--Charlie
PS: A popular quote around the Elkton Plant from when Morton spun off Thiokol: "Well, the salt guys took our best managers, our diversified holdings, and our reputation. But at least they're gone now."
Actually, from a purely mathematical standpoint, the probability of failure is much greater than that. (Not a statistician per se, but I could've had a BS/Math if I'd filled out the paperwork.)
:^)
There are 6056 out of 6056 safe choices for the 1st wire to fail.
There are 6054 out of 6055 safe choices for the 2nd wire to fail.
There are 6052 out of 6054 safe choices for the 3rd wire to fail.
There are 6050 out of 6053 safe choices for the 4th wire to fail.
Multiply them up, and that's your probability of a safe launch (it was a launch, wasn't it? I read the article yesterday, and haven't reread it). Subtract that from 1, and you get the probability of a failure.
Doing the arithmetic, the probability of failure is 1 in 1,009.25. Almost exactly the same as winning a Pick-3 lotto game, of course.
--
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
Sorry if a shuttle chief who doesnt know basic statistics doesn't inspire confidence in NASA.
He didn't say he couldn't figure it out. He said it wasn't relevant.
There's a huge difference between those two statements.
--
Well, for one thing, throwing tons of radioactive material into space isn't exactly a safe way to protect mankind, is it?
For one thing, it's not literally tons of radioactive material. Cassini, for instance, which was the latest big bugaboo for the anti-nuclear forces, contained a mere 33 kilograms of nuclear material.
Second, the radioactive material is very heavily protected and encased in materials that make it very likely to survive orbital reentry fully intact. (Recently, a Russian rocket did fail during liftoff and exploded; the probe it was carrying, a RTG-powered device, fell deep into the ocean. Later surveys found the RTG completely intact and not leaking radiation.)
Third, if you want to imagine Cassini blew up in the atmosphere _and_ the radioactive material was incinerated and distributed around the globe, then the average exposure for any given human being by the radioactive material is LESS than the exposure you get each year simply be the radioactivity emitted by the sun.
(If you want references, you'll have to look in Robert Zubrin's latest book, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. He discusses it, with math to prove his case.)
In summary, the hype of global cancer plagues caused by radioactive sources is just that: hype. You'll get exposed to more radiation by standing outside than you would by breathing in the distributed remains of something like Cassini.
--
Somebody enlighten me about any real benefits of the space program.
(all shamelessly swiped from the 'net; do a google search on "benefits NASA"):
Computer Technology - NASA Spinoffs
GROUND PROCESSING SCHEDULING SYSTEM - Computer-based scheduling system that uses artificial intelligence to manage thousands of overlapping activities involved in launch preparations of NASA's Space Shuttles. The NASA technology was licensed to a new company which developed commercial applications that provide real-time planning and optimization of manufacturing operations, integrated supply chains, and customer orders.uu
SEMICONDUCTOR CUBING - NASA initiative led to the Memory Short StackÅ, a three-dimensional semiconductor package in which dozens of integrated circuits are stacked one atop another to form a cube, offering faster computer processing speeds, higher levels of integration, lower power requirements than conventional chip sets, and dramatic reduction in the size and weight of memory-intensive systems, such as medical imaging devices.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS - This NASA program, originally created for spacecraft design, has been employed in a broad array of non-aerospace applications, such as the automobile industry, manufacture of machine tools, and hardware designs.
WINDOWS VISUAL NEWS READER (Win Vn) - Software program developed to support payload technical documentation at Kennedy Space Center, allowing the exchange of technical information among a large group of users. WinVn is an enabling technology product that provides countless people with Internet access otherwise beyond their grasp, and it was optimized for organizations that have direct Internet access.
AIR QUALITY MONITOR - Utilizing a NASA-developed, advanced analytical technique software package, an air quality monitor system was created, capable of separating the various gases in bulk smokestack exhaust streams and determining the amount of individual gases present within the stream for compliance with smokestack emission standards.
VIRTUAL REALITY - NASA-developed research allows a user, with assistance from advanced technology devices, to figuratively project oneself into a computer-generated environment, matching the user's head motion, and, when coupled with a stereo viewing device and appropriate software, creates a telepresence experience.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Advanced keyboards, Customer Service Software, Database Management System, Laser Surveying, Aircraft controls, Lightweight Compact Disc, Expert System Software, Microcomputers, and Design Graphics.
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Consumer/Home/Recreation - NASA Spinoffs
ENRICHED BABY FOOD - A microalgae-based, vegetable-like oil called Formulaid developed from NASA-sponsored research on long duration space travel, contains two essential fatty acids found in human milk but not in most baby formulas, believed to be important for infants' mental and visual development.
WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEM - NASA-developed municipal-size water treatment system for developing nations, called the Regenerable Biocide Delivery Unit, uses iodine rather than chlorine to kill bacteria.
SCRATCH-RESISTANT LENSES - A modified version of a dual ion beam bonding process developed by NASA involves coating the lenses with a film of diamond-like carbon that not only provides scratch resistance, but also decreases surface friction, reducing water spots.
POOL PURIFICATION - Space technology designed to sterilize water on long-duration spacecraft applied to swimming pool purification led to a system that uses two silver-copper alloy electrodes that generate silver and copper ions when an electric current passes through them to kill bacteria and algae without chemicals.
RIBBED SWIMSUIT - NASA-developed riblets applied to competition swimsuits resulted in flume testing of 10 to 15 percent faster speeds than any other world class swim-suit due to the small, barely visible grooves that reduce friction and aerodynamic drag by modifying the turbulent airflow next to the skin.
GOLF BALL AERODYNAMICS - A recently designed golf ball, which has 500 dimples arranged in a pattern of 60 spherical triangles, employs NASA aerodynamics technology to create a more symmetrical ball surface, sustaining initial velocity longer and producing a more stable ball flight for better accuracy and distance.
PORTABLE COOLERS/WARMERS - Based on a NASA-inspired space cooling system employing thermoelectric technology, the portable cooler/warmer plugs into the cigarette lighters of autos, recreational vehicles, boats, or motel outlets. Utilizes one or two miniaturized modules delivering the cooling power of a 10-pound block of ice and the heating power of up to 125 degrees Fahrenheit.
SPORTS TRAINING - Space-developed cardio-muscular conditioner helps athletes increase muscular strength and cardiovascular fitness through kinetic exercise.
ATHLETIC SHOES - Moon Boot material encapsulated in running shoe midsoles improve shock absorption and provides superior stability and motion control.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment.
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Environmental and Resource Management - NASA Spinoffs
MICROSPHERES - The first commercial products manufactured in orbit are tiny microspheres whose precise dimensions permit their use as reference standards for extremely accurate calibration of instruments in research and industrial laboratories. They are sold for applications in environmental control, medical research, and manufacturing.
SOLAR ENERGY - NASA-pioneered photovoltaic power system for spacecraft applications was applied to programs to expand terrestrial applications as a viable alternative energy source in areas where no conventional power source exists.
WEATHER FORECASTING AID - Space Shuttle environmental control technology led to the development of the Barorator which continuously measures the atmospheric pressure and calculates the instantaneous rate of change.
FOREST MANAGEMENT - A NASA-initiated satellite scanning system monitors and maps forestation by detecting radiation reflected and emitted from trees.
SENSORS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL - NASA development of an instrument for use in space life support research led to commercial development of a system to monitor an industrial process stream to assure that the effluent water's pH level is in compliance with environmental regulations.
WIND MONITOR - Development of Jimsphere wind measurement balloon for space launches allows for making high resolution measurements of the wind profile for meteorological studies and predictions.
TELEMETRY SYSTEMS - A spinoff company formed to commercialize NASA high-data-rate telemetry technology, manufactures a high-speed processing system for commercial communications applications.
PLANT RESEARCH - NASA research on future moon and Mars bases is investigating using plants for food, oxygen, and water to reduce the need for outside supplies. This research utilizes Hydroponics (liquid nutrient solutions) instead of soil to support plant growth and finds applications for vegetable production on Earth.
FIRE RESISTANT MATERIAL - Materials include chemically-treated fabric for sheets, uniforms for hazardous material handlers, crew's clothing, furniture, interior walls of submersibles and auto racer and refueler suits.
RADIATION INSULATION - Aluminized polymer film is highly effective radiation barrier for both manned and unmanned spacecraft. Variations of this space-devised material are also used as an energy conservation technique for homes and offices. The materials are placed between wall studs and exterior facing before siding or between roof support and roof sheathing. The radiant barrier blocks 95% of radiant energy. Successful retrofit installations include schools and shrink wrap ovens.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Whale identification method, environmental analysis, noise abatement, pollution measuring devices, pollution control devices, smokestack monitor, radioactive leak detector, earthquake prediction system, sewage treatment, energy saving air conditioning, and air purification.
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Health and Medicine - NASA Spinoffs
DIGITAL IMAGING BREAST BIOPSY SYSTEM - The LORAD Stereo Guide Breast Biopsy system incorporates advanced Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) as part of a digital camera system. The resulting device images breast tissue more clearly and efficiently. Known as stereotactic large-core needle biopsy, this nonsurgical system developed with Space Telescope Technology is less traumatic and greatly reduces the pain, scarring, radiation exposure, time, and money associated with surgical biopsies.
BREAST CANCER DETECTION - A solar cell sensor is positioned directly beneath x-ray film, and determines exactly when film has received sufficient radiation and has been exposed to optimum density. Associated electronic equipment then sends a signal to cut off the x-ray source. Reduction of mammography x-ray exposure reduces radiation hazard and doubles the number of patient exams per machine.
LASER ANGIOPLASTY - Laser angioplasty with a "cool" type of laser, caller an excimer laser, does not damage blood vessel walls and offers precise non-surgical cleanings of clogged arteries with extraordinary precision and fewer complications than in balloon angioplasty.
ULTRASOUND SKIN DAMAGE ASSESSMENT - Advanced instrument using NASA ultrasound technology enables immediate assessment of burn damage depth, improving patient treatment, and may save lives in serious burn cases.
HUMAN TISSUE STIMULATOR - Employing NASA satellite technology, the device is implanted in the body to help patient control chronic pain and involuntary motion disorders through electrical stimulation of targeted nerve centers or particular areas of the brain.
COOL SUIT - Custom-made suit derived from space suits circulates coolant through tubes to lower patient's body/ temperature, producing dramatic improvement of symptoms of multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other conditions.
PROGRAMMABLE PACEMAKER - Incorporating multiple NASA technologies, the system consists of the implant and a physician's computer console containing the programming and a data printer. Communicates through wireless telemetry signals.
OCULAR SCREENING - NASA image processing techniques are used to detect eye problems in very young children. An electronic flash from a 35-millimeter camera sends light into the child's eyes, and a photorefractor analyzes the retinal reflexes, producing an image of each eye.
AUTOMATED URINALYSIS - NASA fluid dynamics studies helped development of system that automatically extracts and transfers sediment from urine sample to an analyzer microscope, replacing the manual centrifuge method.
MEDICAL GAS ANALYZER - Astronaut-monitoring technology used to develop system to monitor operating rooms for analysis of anesthetic gasses and measurement of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen concentrations to assure proper breathing environment for surgery patients.
VOICE-CONTROLLED WHEELCHAIR - NASA teleoperator and robot technology used to develop chair and manipulator that respond to 35 one-word voice commands utilizing a minicomputer to help patient perform daily tasks, like picking up packages, opening doors, and turning on appliances.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Arteriosclerosis detection, ultrasound scanners, automatic insulin pump, portable x-ray device, invisible braces, dental arch wire, palate surgery technology, clean room apparel, implantable heart aid, MRI, bone analyzer, and cataract surgery tools.
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Industrial Productivity/Manufacturing Technology - NASA Spinoffs
MAGNETIC LIQUIDS - Based on the NASA-developed ferrofluid concept involving synthetic fluids that can be positioned and controlled by magnetic force, the ferrofluidic seal was initially applied in a zero-leakage, nonwearing seal for the rotating shaft of a system used to make semiconductor chips, solving a persistent problemãcontamination due to leaking seals.
WELDING SENSOR SYSTEM - Laser-based automated welder for industrial use incorporates a laser sensor system originally designed for Space Shuttle External Tank to track the seam where two pieces of metal are to be joined, measures gaps and minute misfits, and automatically corrects the welding torch distance and height.
MICROLASERS - Based on a concept for optical communications over interplanetary distances, microlasers were developed for the commercial market to transmit communication signals and to drill, cut, or melt materials.
MAGNETIC BEARING SYSTEM - Bearings developed from Space Shuttle designs support moving machinery without physical contact, permitting motion without friction or wear, and are now used in electric power generation, petroleum refining, machine tool operation, and natural gas pipelines.
ENGINE LUBRICANT - A NASA-developed plasma-sprayed coating is used to coat valves in a new, ten-inch-long, four-cylinder rotary engine, eliminating the need for lubricating the rotorcam, which has no crankshaft, flywheel, distributor, or water pump.
INTERACTIVE COMPUTER TRAINING - Known as Interactive Multimedia Training (IMT), originally developed to train astronauts and space operations personnel, now utilized by the commercial sector to train new employees and upgrade worker skills, using a computer system that engages all the senses, including text, video, animation, voice, sounds, and music.
HIGH-PRESSURE WATERSTRIPPING - Technology developed for preparing Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters first evolved into the U.S. Air Force's Large Aircraft Robotic Paint Stripping (LARPS) system, and now used in the commercial airline industry, where the waterjet processing reduces coating removal time by 90 percent, using only water at ultra-high pressures up to 55,000 psi.
ADVANCED WELDING TORCH - Based on the Variable Polarity Plasma Arc welding technology, a handheld torch originally developed for joining light alloys used in NASA's External Tank, is now used by major appliance manufacturers for sheet metal welding.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Gasoline vapor recovery, self-locking fasteners, machine tool software, laser wire stripper, lubricant coating process, wireless communications, engine coatings, and engine design.
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Public Safety - NASA Spinoffs
RADIATION HAZARD DETECTOR - NASA technology has made commercially available new, inexpensive, conveniently carried device for protection of people exposed to potentially dangerous levels of microwave radiation. Weighing only 4 ounces and about the size of a cigarette pack, it can be carried in a shirt pocket or clipped to a belt. Unit sounds an audible alarm when microwave radiation reaches a preset level.
EMERGENCY RESPONSE ROBOT - Remotely-operated robot reduces human injury levels by performing hazardous tasks that would otherwise be handled by humans.
PERSONAL ALARM SYSTEM - Pen-sized ultrasonic transmitter used by prison guards, teachers, the elderly, and disabled to call for help is based on space telemetry technology. Pen transmits a silent signal to receiver that will display the exact location of the emergency.
EMERGENCY RESCUE CUTTERS - Lightweight cutters for freeing accident victims from wreckage developed using NASA pyrotechnic technology.
FIREMAN'S AIR TANKS - Lighter-weight firefighter's air tanks have been developed. New back-pack system weighs only 20 lbs. for 30 minute air supply, 13 lbs. less than conventional firefighting tanks. They are pressurized at 4,500 psia (twice current tanks). A warning device tells the fireman when he or she is running out of air.
PERSONAL STORM WARNING SYSTEM - Lightning detector gives 30-minute warning to golfers, boaters, homeowners, business owners, and private pilots.
SELF-RIGHTING LIFE RAFT - Developed for the Apollo program, fully inflates in 12 seconds and protects lives during extremely adverse weather conditions with self-righting and gravity compensation features.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Storm warning services (Doppler radar), firefighters' radios, lead poison detection, fire detector, flame detector, corrosion protection coating, protective clothing, and robotic hands.
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Transportation - NASA Spinoffs
STUDLESS WINTER TIRES - Viking Lander parachute shroud material is adapted and used to manufacture radial tires, increasing the tire material's chainlike molecular structure to five times the strength of steel should increase tread life by 10,000 miles.
BETTER BRAKES - New, high-temperature composite space materials provide for better brake linings. Applications includes trucks, industrial equipment and passenger cars.
TOLLBOOTH PURIFICATION - A laminar airflow technique used in NASA clean rooms for contamination-free assembly of space equipment is used at tollbooths on bridges and turnpikes to decrease the toll collector's inhalation of exhaust fumes.
WEIGHT SAVING TECHNOLOGY - NASA research on composite materials is used to achieve a 30-percent weight reduction in a twin-turbine helicopter, resulting in a substantial increase in aircraft performance.
IMPROVED AIRCRAFT ENGINE - Multiple NASA developed technological advancements resulted in a cleaner, quieter, more economical commercial aircraft engine known as the high bypass turbofan, featuring a 10-percent reduction in fuel consumption, lower noise levels, and emission reductions of oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons.
ADVANCED LUBRICANTS - An environmental-friendly lubricant designed to support the Space Shuttle Mobile Launcher Platform led to the development of three commercial lubricants for railroad track maintenance, for electric power company corrosion prevention, and as a hydraulic fluid with an oxidation life of 10,000 hours.
ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM - The Flywheel Energy Storage system, derived from two NASA-sponsored energy storage studies, is a chemical-free, mechanical battery that harnesses the energy of a rapidly spinning wheel and stores it as electricity with 50 times the capacity of a lead-acid battery, very useful for electric vehicles.
NEW WING DESIGN FOR CORPORATE JETS - NASA-developed computer programs resulted in an advanced, lighter, more aerodynamically-efficient new wing for Gulfstream business aircraft.
AIDS TO SCHOOL BUS DESIGN - Manufacturer uses three separate NASA-developed technologies originally developed for aviation and space use in their design and testing of a new school bus chassis. These technologies are a structural analysis computer program infrared stress measurement system, and a ride quality meter system.
Other spinoffs in this area include: Safer bridges, emission testing, airline wheelchairs, electric car, auto design, methane-powered vehicles, windshear prediction, and aircraft design analysis.
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Personal cabin pressure altitude monitor to contribute to public aviation safety
Shuttle Technology to Benefit Patients on Earth
New, Wide-ranging Applications of Satelite Pictures
Neurolab Team To Discuss Results, Benefits
Nasa Research Helps Mold Better Products
Nasa Space Suit Gives Boy His First Day in the Sun
Flight Experiment Smoothes Flow Over Supersonic Wing
NASA Technology To Help Pilots Taxi More Efficiently
Fire Imaging Device for Firefighters
Benefits Derived from Manned Space Missions
Nasa's Innovative Device to Aid Knee Injury
Robotic Helicopter for Public Safety
European Satellite Telecommunications Improve Maritime Safety
Nasa Sensors Provide Safe Platform for Volcano Studies
Non-Polluting Methanol Fuel Cell for Zero-Emission Vehicles
Nasa Research in Space May Redesign Household Windows
Nasa Technology Creates Market for Recycled Milk Bottles
--
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission set out to generate the most accurate topographical map of the Earth. The data recorded will enable engineers and scientists to develop safer navigation techniques and better communication systems.
Two girls who can not tolerate exposure to either the sun's strong ultraviolet light or even bright indoor lighting, each received a special UV protection suit that was developed from space-based technology.
A miniaturized ventricular-assist pump has been successfully implanted into several people. Initially called the NASA/DeBakey heart pump, it is based in part on technology used in space shuttle fuel pumps.
Winging their way into toy stores are Hasbro Aero Nerf Gliders, benefiting from NASA wind tunnel and aerodynamic expertise.
Properties of metal alloys studied for the space station program have sparked a new line of golf clubs. Shape memory metal gives the most seasoned golfer new control and feel.
BSR created blanket insulation kits based on NASA Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System materials and had the first products bear a seal from the U.S. Space Foundation indicating their space origin.
Based on award-winning NASA telerobotics software, VEVI4 is a powerful tool used to represent complex devices graphically in a 3-D environment. Depicted here is the Dante II vehicle during its descent into Mount Spurr, Alaska.
Building the Boeing 777 brought about the use of NASA innovations, from lightweight composite materials to the modern glass cockpit and aircraft control systems.
--
The AE's and EE's on Georgia Tech's campus were walking around like zombies, their dreams of space shattered like so many ceramic tiles. Fifteen years, and the pic on that CNN arty still gives me the creeps. Still brings the tears, too. I don't think we cried that day, though. Too much shock... and later, anger, when we found out Mr. Feynman had told them so.
Fifteen years, and NASA is a timid shadow of its former self. So is America, for that matter. There are stupid risks, and there are ones you have to take to get anywhere. But in the P-C era, it's not PC to take risks. Except the ones you never think about, like driving on the freeway... and so we kill thousands on thousands every year by doing stupid things with our automobiles, and no human being has cleared earth orbit since Nixon was in office.
*sigh*
But they're right, I don't remember where I was when Lennon was shot, nor Regan, nor when Elvis died... or even when Mt. St. Helen's blew. But I sure as hell remember what happened the day the space program died.
--
From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon.
And it's not a miracle, we just decided to go.
-- Jim Lovell
History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.
-- Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin
"We have to make a management decision."
-- Jerry Mason, General Manager, Morton Thiokol, January 27, 1986.
Sometimes, management stupidity has consequences far beyond simply annoyances.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"I remember where I was when Challenger exploded. I was in bed, sleeping."
I'm dating myself here, but I was still in public grade school at the time. I remember being herded into another class room, where my whole grade (it was a small town) was assembled to watch the event on TV. After all, this was New Hampshire, and it was our very own Christa McAuliffe that was going up! Some people at the school had actually met her. We were pretty excited.
Until 73 seconds after liftoff.
I still remember, quite vividly, the picture on the TV as the Challenger disappeared in a giant ball of smoke and steam. I remember watching what was left of the solid rock boosters twist and veer away wildly. And I knew, almost instinctively, that those seven people were dead. There was no way someone could survive a ship disintegrating like that.
I can still hears the words of the news announcer in my ears: "At this time, we do not know what has happened, but obviously the Challenger has suffered a major malfunction."
A major malfunction.
And seven people dead.
All because some manager somewhere didn't want to disappoint everyone by holding the launch. People have asked me how I can use the term "manager" as a curse word. This is why.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I was in school, waiting to take the New York State English Regents exam. In the "free essay" portion of the exam, you were asked to pick one of a handful of topics to write on, and one of them was "A Time for Tears." I know several classmates who basically poured out their reaction to the breaking news into this essay. Weird coincidence that such a topic was there.... The teachers were concerned that we'd be too shaken up to take the test, and some TV's were quickly turned off in classrooms, but I imagine that there was some inspired writing on that test, moreso than the usual test blather.
Like many of you, I clearly remember seeing it happen on TV, and it's probably the most "where were you when it happened" moment in my life. The other traumatic events in the running were the shootings of Reagan and Lennon. Here's hoping there won't be many more bad moments like that to remember...
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= John Reinert Nash -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
No. The question is NOT whether you would bet your own life. The question is whether you would bet the astronauts' lives on it. Considering the current political climate, and NASA's stature in the international space community, you're also betting the future of manned space flight.
If the decision was my call, I'd have zero tolerance for detectable defects too, particularly with a system that has failed over to backup before with similar launch conditions.
Yes, there is a romantic notion about risking one's life for exploration, but the political dimension makes such risks suicidal for NASA's mission.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
titanium
NASA developed an element? Wow, and all this time I thought it was naturally occuring...
With any luck they are trying to develope Scrith...
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
If you want to blame someone for NASA's tiny budget, blame Dan Goldin (NASA Administrator). It's about time Goldin took some responsibility for forcing NASA to operate on an ever-shrinking budget; whenever Congress started talking about budget cuts, Goldin always was happy to oblige them, sometimes even offering bigger cuts than they wanted. Plus he hates the "worm" logo and has tried to eradicate it.
I think this is when my childhood dream of being an astronaut died.
Glad to know I'm not the only one.
I still can't watch the replay of the explosion. It still tears at me every time I see the start of it. I have to leave the room or change the channel on the TV. My heart goes out to those poor kids who saw their teacher die on TV. What a piece of baggage to carry for life.
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
I mostly agree. NASA is another one of those "I believe in this, so I'm going to force you to pay for it" programs. If you believe in NASA, then fund a private organization to do it. Don't force me to pay for it, too.
Same goes for all of the other nice little programs politicians cook up. "This our moral obligation, so we're going to force you to pay for it whether you like it or not!"
Why don't you bitch about MILITARY spending, which easily dwarfs NASA's entire budget, and is designed to KILL PEOPLE!
JFC. I love the way 1/2 the people I talk to want to take NASA's budget and give it to the military. Like we need BETTER ways to scour the planet clean of life.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
growth methods for plants that produce higher yields/lower growing space
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Nonsense, if Bush were making a shuttle flight with a civilian passenger a centerpiece of his state of the union address, and NASA was on launch hold, you can bet his chief of staff would be calling and threatening to shut NASA down wholesale just like under Reagan, and NASA would launch just like under Reagan. The engineers were overruled by the political hacks that run NASA, there was no 'launch fever' , it was raw political pressure.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Good point. Add to it the fact that all your testing is done in a completely different environment (ie. NOT space). and the working environment is one of the most hostile environments we have come across. and the pressures put on the humans in terms of Gforces are enough to seriously hamper fine motor skills (like, say, running a spaceship). and.... I think you see what I am saying.
besides, we need to get into space. do you want to stick around on this rock for eternity? maybe you do. i sure don't, if only to get away from short sighted people like you.
I was in third grade, sitting in the elementary school library, watching it with my classmates. Scary then, and scary now. Quite a moment in the life of a youngster that can't quite comprehend all of what just happened...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
IHBT, but...
I still don't understand why our country/government has a responsibility to feed parts of the world that can't fend for themselves. Granted, I give to charities to help poor conditions (mostly at home, but some abroad), and I am taken in with the "fight for our fellow man" as much as anyone, but it just doesn't make sense to make statements about starvation in other countries when we have problems here at home. I also don't consider it sacrificing human lives to make golfs clubs or come up with the new technologies. There are long term advantages to technologies, even though for some it may come too late. A lot of medical equipment wouldn't be possible without the research and funding in metalurgy and computing that was done by NASA and the defence industry.
Natural Selection can be societal, as well as physical. Whether or not the Republic of the USA is anywhere near the final step in that evolutionary chain is quite debatable, but on a smaller scale societies also go through this, too. It is wonderfully idealistic to think that we can help everyone to wonderful lives, even in areas of the world that have extremely high rates of various fatal diseases (i.e. HIV) and land that has trouble supporting basic food needs, but we live in a world of harsh realities. Many people have suffered throughout the course of humanity, and many more will. We can try, but we can't help them all.
Sucks, doesn't it?
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Okay, I *am* a statistician, and I'm at work now. It's your lucky day. ;)
Assuming the problems with the wire are independent (i.e., the fact that one has failed has no bearing on any other wire)...
How about this: The probability any one pair would fail is the probability that both wires in the pair would fail, which is 2*(1/1514)=0.0013, assuming independence.
It sounds right to me, but I'm not certain I've accounted for everything (I'm on lunch break). If I am right, the probability was 0.13% of failure, or (just to match everyone else) 1 in 757.
I believe that's roughly the probability of a frozen mass surviving in a very hot place, too. What a great coincidence. ;)
RJHow detailed and precise they are now?! They have always been that detailed and precise. There's a reason we have an expression comparing difficult things to "rocket science". Throwing several hundred tons of metal into orbit (or beyond) without enough gas to recover from a gross error, in situations where you get it right the first time, or else (at best) lose years of research an planning, or (at worst) lose the lives of the crew of a manned flight, is amongst the most difficult feats of engineering imagineable.
What NASA has now is management too scared of being raked over the coals again for being criminally stupid. Go reread accounts of the Challenger investigation... the engineering was fine. That was a political and managerial fuckup of biblical proportions--"screw the freezing temperatures and the unknowns, we want that ship up there when Gipper gives his State of the Union address."
--
WHOA!! Ken and Barbie are having TOO MUCH FUN!! It must be the NEGATIVE IONS!!
Sorry, but I hope NASA gets the total axe. It's a huge waste of money. The programs of 30 years ago seem only to have created a huge nostalgia industry (for the freakin' "race to the moon" with the commies). Somebody enlighten me about any real benefits of the space program (and "velcro" doesn't count).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The person that said that wasn't near a monitor...he's watching the panels. He called it like he saw it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I read Feynman's report many years ago, and it has echoed in my head with almost every job I've had. Certainly the Challenger disaster was more significant than any of the disastrous projects I've worked on, but even the least qualified engineer couldn't do as much damage as the goons in management. It's unfortunate the article, in many ways, blames engineers for the disaster, which means the author didn't read the report. Fortunately, NASA management seem more inclined to listen to the engineers these days (a disaster will do that), so Feynman's report wasn't a waste. I'd be inlined to put it up there with the Mythical Man-Month as a must read for project managers.
>The article also talks about how detailed and
:-)
>precise NASA engineers are
Precision: The distance to the Mars surface is 18.387563
Accuracy: Them's meters, not feet.
It's the latter where they need a little work.
I remember where I was when Challenger exploded. I was in bed, sleeping. When I woke up, I was mad at myself for sleeping in. It was the first shuttle launch I missed.
When I got to school, one of my friends told me about it, and I thought he was joking. He was allways making fun of me for liking science so much.
When school started, the principal made the annoucement about the explosion, and we had a moment of silence for the astronuats and thier families.
When we got to science class, we went to the library to watch the launch, then we talked about "when sience goes wrong".
I think this is when my childhood dream of being an astronaut died.
I used to laugh at my parents, when they said they could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot. I don't anymore.
Select a future:
(1) Colonize the universe.
(2) Hang out on Slashdot and write perl scripts until the sun goes nova and all human history and culture is erased from the cosmic record.
Pick one.
:M
That was the first day I swore in public, the first major fight I got in at school, the first time I was *suspended* from school, and the day I decided that New Yorkers were scum all rolled into one.
(I've since met some nice and New Yorkers decided that mabye I was hasty to judge all new yorkers as a whole, but that day shaped my opinion of them for years)
I was in the 4th grade at Hobe Sound Elementary school in Martin County, Florida... about 100 miles or so south of the cape. As always, we were dismissed from class to the playground to watch the shuttle go up...
Only THIS time was particularly special because there was a *teacher* on board! And we were going to get lessons FROM SPACE!!! (via cable TV of course).
So there I was, two minutes into the launch when it blew up. I had seen a couple other launches from the cape go boom before, so when I saw it, I knew what happened. I was staring in horrification... ready to throw up. Like some others mave mentioned here... my childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut going up in vapour with the Challenger.
Then the new kid in class; the asshole new yorker; starts jumping for joy!?!?! He was like "wooHoo... YES!!! Yea!!!" My horror turned to sheer hatred. I turned to him, yelled "you SHITFACE", and punched him right in the side of the head. And thus began my first real schoolyard fight.
It eventually took three teachers to pull me off that SOB: one to pull me back by the torso, and two to pull my arms out of the chokehold I had the asshole in.
I was sent home, and thus began my first suspension. Two whole days off of school... As if I could enjoy it after what had just happened to the Space Shuttle. (How times are different, eh? These days, if a 4th grader had done the same, they'd prolly try him as an adult for attempted murder)
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Where is your data to back this claim up? If you ask me, I would suspect it would become more dangerous as the private industry tries to cut more corners.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
In the past,
Nassa has usually had funding increase during the period of a Republican President.
Has
futang futang!
Sorry, dude, but the THAAD and other interceptor failures have been pretty public. The specific data from these failures may be classified or restricted, but the engineers who need it get it (and they don't work directly for DoD, but for contractors).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I agree.
;-) You can read more details here.
NASA and government has NO RIGHT to FORCE _ME_ to pay for someone elses exploration of the universe.
Instead of "wasting" money exploring space, we should first improve the living conditions for the unfortunate on THIS planet first.
If you want, you can legally opt-out of having the government spending your money. (Thank Yahweh for the 14th Amendment
--
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." - Thomas Jefferson
> Anybody who thinks that charity could take up EVERYTHING government does is on crack themselves.
/., home of the worst (& best) trolls I've ever seend. Go figure.
I never said charities could do everything the government does. I just believe in not giving money to certain government operations, that can be better spent elsewhere.
> putting dollars where the wealthy find it trendy to put them
So giving of your time and money to help those less fortunate is considered trendy?! Whoa! Guess I've been "trendy" all my life then!
> instead of where they're actually needed
Yah, like spending money collecting more useless rocks instead of on helping *people* that actually need it [tongue in cheek.]
The POINT is, some people like having their money spent on cosmology. Others think it is a waste of their money (and should be able to opt out.) Some guy gets marked as flamebait because he stated he was in the 2nd category. I was just agreeing with him.
God help us all, if we can't discuss an unpopular opinion rationally. But hey, this is
Actually, while it was a NASA mission, it wasn't NASA who made the calculation error. It was some division of Lockheed Martin (IIRC), who happened to be the contractor working for NASA.
For another interesting read about Feynman and the Challenger investigation check Feynman's book "what do you care what other people think". It's a very entertaining book about his adventures and life, with a bunch of chapters on the challenger investigation.
According to testimony by Kilminster and Boisjoly, Mason finally turned to Bob Lund and said, "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat."
PS: I made up some plaques and managed to get Ben Bova to present them, as the first official public act of the newly formed National Space Society, to the 4 leading Morton Thiokol engineers who steadfastly opposed the launch of the Challenger. Too bad NSS turned into such a NASA cheerleading organization.
Seastead this.
It was on my Birthday... was wierd...
My apology.. I meant to say the largest thing that ever launched. It definately has the worst fuel consumption of any vehicle.
I was pointing out that astronauts are *aware* of the risk.. and they accept it.. however, there is "unforseen" risk, and then there is gross negligence.. Challenger was gross negligence.
The Russians have only lost 10 cosmonauts, but have lost a *hell* of a lot more equipment. (and dont forget, that is ten that we *know* of.. there may have been more.. and we may never know).
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Without reading that link, or reading anything about this for the last 10 years:
McNair, Scobbe, Onizuka, MaCauliffe, Resnick, I want to say Hamilton, but I dont think its right.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
I hit on this in an earlier post, but I figured I would post the link so people can find out for themselves what the space program has done.
h tml"> here </A>
IT is far more than just landing on Mars or walking on the moon..
link is <A HREF="http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.
Read it.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
What I am wondering is if Fortune 500 companies go out of their way to set up their servers with Triple Mirroring Hard Disk setups, why doesn't NASA also use doubly redundant cabling? I mean this is billions of dollars and lives we're talking about here. Shouldn't they be extra sure? It seems to me that one backup isn't enough
On the ground, the redundancy NASA uses is *scary*. However, on the orbiter, you are facing some very solid scientific principles that are set in stone. One is the weight to launch ratio.. the Saturn 5 was the largest thing to ever move.. and it was right down to the pound.. as you add more equipment, cables, backup machines, HDD's, you name it you add more weight. More weight means more fuel. More fuel means more size. More size means more fuel. It becomes an exponential expansion that at some point kills the ability to move.
Larry Niven goes into this pretty heavily in "Playgrounds of the Mind" and describes *why* once you get to Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds, or Generation Ships (heinleins variant) you are looking at Nuclear or Solar (radiation ram-scoops or flare-riders) due to the limitations of conventional energy ships.
basically, the SPace Program is as safe as it can be. The fact that we have *never* lost a ship in space, and that we have lost 7 on the challenger and 3 in apollo ground fires, means we have one *hell* of a safety record, one that shines compared to any other industry. Compare ours with the Russian or Chinese and you will see what I mean.
basically, Astronauts *know* it is risky, and they accept this.. the problem with the Challenger misfortune was that it *was* within their control. And the instruction booklet *FROM* morton thiokol explaining the O-ring seals specifically *states* that the O0rings may not work in cold temperatures. *THAT* was the basis of the suit...
bowing to media pressure is a bad thing, especially when 7 peoples lives are on the line.
Anyway.. I hope that sort of answered your concern.
maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
I'm trying to illistrate that people seem to think you could treat a huge organisation the way you would a child. If the parents are firm, a child could be made(hopefully) to do his homework by withholding the reward until it gets done.
But you can't go to someplace like NASA and try the same thing, they just won't respond in the same way. If NASA has problems they're going to be dificult to fix. Taking away their funding won't solve them and will just cause more problems.
I wasn't trying to say that all goverment employees are greedy idiots. I was just trying to point out that they're going to respond diferently then a single individual would. Perhaps my analogy is stupid.
-Andy
Yes, it is the cry of the Government-Funded Parasite, but sometimes its true! Its also the Cry of the under-funded project.
You cant treat a government agency the way you would a child. You cant say "Do your all homework correctly, then you can have some ice cream.".
The individual child will think "The only way to get ice-cream is to do my homework right. Therefor I must shut off the tv and concentrate on homework."
But the government agency is full of individuals who all think "Everyone else is lazy! They wont do the homework in time! Theres nothing I can do about that! Theres going to be less ice-cream at lunch today! Ive got do something to make sure Im not one of the ones going hungry!"
Withholding the childs ice-cream will make him realize that his parents arent fooling around, and if he didnt do it this time hell certainly do his homework next time. But withholding the Agencys ice-cream just weeds out the employees who arent good at covering their ass and playing the office politics.
That said, I dont know what a good solution to good solution to NASAs problems. But Im prety sure itll involve tax-payer dolars. And Im sure cutting the budget until results improve is a bad idea and would probably result in the scuttling of the whole project.
-Andy
Absolutely not. Id want more then one set of data on the region before I committed to landing anywhere.
I certainly wouldnt say "Well, Since Im going to Mars next year, Id better start thinking about mapping the surface, and discovering what the environment is like."
-Andy
> I ask you, what better way can our money be spent than to possibly prevent the extinction of the human race?
Umm...how about fusion for example?
The major thing I see that is stalling us from getting into space is how much it costs and the proper fule to do it. With fusion you can produce energy fairly cheap and (hopefully) get a lot of energy from a small amount of matter. I think that most of NASA's funding should be put into fusion research for a few years.
Now, the whole crew is in heaven approving of NASA's current decisions.
We CAN'T be anything like we were back during Apollo and the early shuttle days. Even if there's a snowball's chance in you know where of something happening, if there's any chance of a critical failure resuliting in the loss of crew and craft, we should take it seriously. I applaud NASA for it's current efforts.
What CAN be done now, is we can finally get around to designing a craft that can take off in adverse conditions safely. Can it be done? I don't know. Maybe. Should it be done? If it's possible, we should do it. Then, maybe, we can resume a schedule similar to what we had back in the eighties of a launch a month.
Gorkman
And we should be back on the moon, for crying out loud.
They're being used to conduct tremendously important research on global weather patterns and global warming. Without satellites, we'd have no real method of gathering information about these things on a global scale. The amount of information that can be packed into a series of geosat shots of, say, Africa, is staggering.
Without satellites we would never have found out about depletion of the ozone layer, nor would we have been able to successfully monitor progress toward restoring the ozone layer.
The war against Iraq would have been FAR more costly in lives without the use of satellite-assisted targeting. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the necessity of the war, in pure human terms, satellites probably saved lives by allowing the Coalition to decapitate Hussein's command and control rapidly.
Satellites are being used to identify viable areas of oil exploration. Again, regardless of whether you agree that oil is the future, it certainly is the present, and modern techniques depend to a great degree on satellites. Without satellite technology, we may well have actually run out of crude oil a decade ago.
Telecommunications. Our world would be profoundly different without the ability to transmit packets via satellite.
Weather reports. This may seem like a minor convenience, but if you're a farmer, it means the difference between a good crop and a great crop, or perhaps even a viable crop and one that forces you to go under. Farming is a sophisticated endeavor these days, and the people who provide the food we all eat depend on satellites to get us that food.
Treaty monitoring. How much more difficult is it for a nation to violate treaties on weapons of mass destruction, or to conduct troop buildups, now that we can monitor these things from above? The more visible things are, the tougher it is for anyone to mount the kinds of surprise attacks that have triggered world wars.
I could go on and on about this ONE technology made available to us all due to the space program. Now think of all of the other contributions, extrapolate each of them, and you'll realize how much better off we are because of our exploration of space.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Are the two wires: in different conduits, powered from different supplies... That was kind of the point: wires shouldn't be failing at that rate. If your servers keep crashing, you don't buy another redundant one in a quality operation - you fix the problem.
You guys all know about the mars orbiter which missed orbit because of a metric (non)conversion error? "Don't-go" fever prevented this thing from getting back on track.
They knew about this error before it was too late, and tried to get the operations people to do a burn to correct its course. However, the operations folks refused because they were worried that it would screw up their schedule (the orbiter was still barely within tolerances). So they went for it and missed.
There are plenty of things wrong with the way NASA does things..
Something as complex as a shuttle mission, IMO, shouldn't be simplified as such. And the known wiring problem (with an extremely remote chance of causing a major failure) should be cause to stop and re-examine: because it was discovered to be a NEW, STATIC problem. When something unknown is found locally, it is smart to examine the whole for that same unanticipated problem. They'll document it, understand it, engineer a way to better the system, and move on knowing that those types of wiring problems will be managed into the massive task as a whole.
Basing the odds of the whole mission on a local failure is sick.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
That's the aurthor's comment, not in quotes in the article.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Damn the O-Rings, full speed ahead!
I have only vague memories of man landing on the moon, and only because my mom made such a big deal of it and made me stay up to watch it. I have no personal memory of Apollo 13, and I don't think watching the movie is the same as watching the live TV reports of the real deal.
There is a little less than a 16 year difference between 1970 and 1986. I suppose if you consider the end of the Beatles equivalent with the beginning of the Smashing Pumpkins then there's no generation gap.
Sure you could say Michael Jackson was big in music around both years, eh? Ok, so he was a cute 5 year old in the Jackson 5 for the first one, and was cruising well after Thriller for the second. No difference there, eh?
In 1967 three astronauts died in an oxygen fire on Apollo 1. That was a top-drawer disaster in my book.
I remember perhaps too well the day Challenger blew. I had a meeting to prepare for lab that afternoon, and the boss told me that Challenger had blown up. I thought he was joking. I think everyone who heard about it by word of mouth had a hard time believing it until they saw TV footage.
I was a teaching assistant for a freshman chemistry lab, and spent more of my time that day answering questions about hydrogen/oxygen reactions than the subject planned for the day. (Oh, and getting questions about why a public school teacher was on something that dangerous wasn't fun either.)
A generation that had no space disasters finally had one. Instead of a run to the store, it was again a deadly serious business, and still is from what I can tell. Strangely enough, despite happening during the Reagan administration, the recognition of danger did not result in the removal of women from the space program.
Manned space flight isn't about science -- that gets done best with unmanned probes. The fact is that some of us want to go into that dangerous situation, and a bunch of us want those people to do it. I just hope it doesn't go back to where people are making "business decisions" when it isn't their pink little asses on the line.
There is a reason that just about every MBA program studies the decision making that led up to the Challenger disaster. Perhaps the benefit of that lesson won't be restricted to NASA. One can only hope.
I think the point of the report was that while to a statistician the probabilities are good, in reality we have to take into account that whatever caused the first wire to deteriorate would probably cause the second one to deteriorate too.
So the real chance of a system and it's redundant pair failing can be much higher if you never investigate why the first one failed, and whether that same condition applies to it's pair.
NASA didn't know anything. Read Edward Tufte's books (I don't remember which one his section on the challenger is in, but he did cover the topic) and you'll see that NASA had no idea what they were dealing with.
They had all the information in front of them, and they didn't see what it meant because they hadn't graphed it properly. If they had just done a simple graph of burn-through vs. temperature on the tests of the boosters, they would have known quite well that there was an approximately 100% chance of an explosion. What kind of scientist collects all the numbers and examines them in random order and doesn't graph them?
NASA engineers are so detailed and precise that they crashed a Mars lander because one team was using metric and the other was using imperial units and they didn't bother to tell each other. Is it any wonder, knowing that, that the Challenger exploded?
No capsule from Mercury/Gemini/Apollo was ever reused.
Here is an excerpt from the summary:
While NASA has begun to address the problem, the summary concludes that "continued NASA management emphasis on human capital planning will be critical to continued safe shuttle operations in an environment of increasing shuttle flights."So, although the stance of management has changed about tactical decisions, the budget just isn't there to support the workforce needed to support the demands of the Shuttle at the flight rate needed for Station assembly.
Does this issue have its origins in the Shuttle program or in the Station program? Probably a little of both. Station is probably not really paying its way, but Shuttle probably is not demanding the resources needed for high flight rate operations either.
My hope is that the new NASA Administrator (whoever that may be) will examine and address this issue early in his tenure.
same outfit that smashed a probe into mars by not converting units, right? This is a feel good piece of fluff that's so transparent it's sickening. I'm all for NASA and continued exploration of space but NASA will have to earn it's keep by successfully executing missions. Even if they're somewhat ridiculous little robots that do little more than send back pictures.
You've missed my point: silly articles like the linked one aren't going to help NASA. Successful missions are.
As to what Nasa's record is, they certainly have alot of succesful missions but the failures tend to be spectacular: smashing up a mars probe, blowing up a shuttle, destroying a billion dollar spy satellite, etc. Sure, these may only be 3 out of 20 (or whatever) but the reality is that the bar is higher for Nasa because the stakes are higher. All it takes is one of these failures at a $billion a pop to change public opinion. String together a couple of them and you've got a serious problem.
Now, I think you and I will have to disagree about the utility of that fucking little robot. In all likelyhood, it'll be 50 years or more before we get to mars. Would *you* want to rely on 50 year old pictures before you set your ass down on a planet millions of miles from home?
*sigh* Certainly mountains and craters don't move. While Mars would appear to be geologically dead, which would preclude new mountains, there are plenty of rocks roaming around in space to ram into the surface. These rocks could do two things: create new craters and move existing rocks around. I would think that one of the pieces of a Mars mission would be some small amount of recon in the landing area. *You* might not care whether you land on a rock but I would think the actual astronauts might.
As far as "the worst being landing on someone's house" goes, I would think that such a landing (especially 50 years ago) would be fatal. Firing the retro-rocket to slow your descent would burn the house and blow up any propane tanks. The ensuing conflaguration, with your lander in the middle of it, would be...unpleasant....:)
I'm not sure I agree or disagree but your quote: "Even if NASA stuff fails, all scientists/engineers still learn something from the failure (costly lessons sometimes). And we do gain alot when they succeed." could certainly be applied to the DOD stuff as well.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it's a fascinating read... any /.er with an interest in design or gui should read Tufte's books... bad design can kill!
circa75.com
I am tired of this blind admiration for Nasa. The space shuttle was so poorly designed that it has to be completely rebuilt every time it is launched(Read the second Feynman biography if you don't believe me).
If they had any balls they would of junked that thing and went with single use launch vehicles wich would save the America public a ton of money. Nasa is about politics, not science.
love is just extroverted narcissism
---I don't hold the person in contmpt or anything, I just thought it was eerie
This
---IN 1980 Lennon was shot and everyone thought that, that would be a defining moment in time but it wasn't. The Space Shuttle was.
---Where was I? I had just landed a job a Caldor's making $7.75 and hour, I was quite certain it would be the last job I would ever hold. College? I was making 16K a year!
---I remember hanging out in the TV department watching it go up and hearing the unitiated ooh and aww over how pretty the launch was. I stood behind them muttering, "That ain't right... That's not what it looks like."
---I don't remember the exact phrase but I remember the tone from the control announcer. It was like nothing out of the ordinary happened. It was like, "We have a system failure."
---I remember thinking that there was no system failure there was some dead people and one of them was a school teacher who didn't need to be dead. My Advanced English (whatever that is) teacher Mr. Posner was the alternate. I went and saw him weeks later and he was still visibly upset. "First time I was glad someone was better than me, my God why did this happen?"
---I enrolled at the Community College the next Friday. I decided I was going to be a Journalist based on my theroy that the government set this up to glamorize the program.
This
I was really caught up in the "teacher in space" idea for two reasons. First, I thought that some day I would have a chance at going into space even though I would not be an astronaut. (I wanted to take over third base from Mike Schmidt at the time) Lastly, and more real, was that my father had applied for it.
He is a science teacher in a junior high and he REALLY wanted to go. It had been his childhood dream, of sorts, to travel into space and back. He never really had a chance, though. The PR people was sure to pick a woman so it was just a question of ethnicity. I even remember my Dad saying something to that effect at the time.
Still, shortly after the "major malfunction" I couldn't help but think that it could have been Dad. I remember Mom and I just flipping from channel to channel and seeing what each news person had to say. My Dad even taped most of the news shows when he got home.
NASA has done a wonderful job. Considering what it had to do, send men out into space on rockets and get them back alive, and the complications of technology and monetary limitations I am surprised that we did not lose more people and missions. Sure, the Mars failures could have been avoided, but when you ride a motorcycle it's not a question of IF you will fall off, but WHEN you will fall off.
NASA has a record which give the illusion that this sort of stuff is routine and there are not many risks involved. Well, there are plenty of risks. Risks that need to be taken. Challenges that need to be met. We must continue to explore. We must continue to discover. We are pretty much done with exploration and discovery here on the surface of the Earth, save the deep ocean and the few remaining wildernesses. Our wanderlust has no direction to go except to the stars. If we can take these risks now, then we will be paving the way for our future. There are things out there that we need to see, and places have to go. Not for the present, but for the future. Imagine if we had never taken to the sea or dared to fly.
Let us dare to travel to the stars.
I'm no expert on the how and why of the Challenger, but in all the reading I've done here's what I came up with:
NASA was warned, warned, and warned that the O-ring system on the SRBs weren't capable of creating an adequate seal in cold temperatures.
There was an engineer, I forget his name, and as stupid as it sounds, his name was French sounding. He told them "Don't launch. It's not safe." This was repeated over and over. Morton-Thikol had tests showing that the O-ring was unsafe at low temps.
But when PR people clamored to have "The First Teacher in Space", and were sick of the delays, they forced a launch anyway. The results were pretty dramatic.
The engineer on the project, the one whose name I forgot, went public saying "look, NASA really screwed up". He got blackballed and will never again work as an engineer. He now makes a living, or at least used to, travelling the country and telling his story.
Challenger wasn't about hardware failures. At least not unpredicted failures. Everyone involved knew the possible consequences. What caused the Challenger explosion, looking at the wide-angle, was PR types and politicians trying to score some points for the department.
My point: there's no way to guard against stupid people if stupid people are in charge.
No sig is worth reading.
I'll never forget how I came about seeing the Challenger explode. I was in second grade. All the classrooms had TVs brought in to watch the launch. Well, about 1 minute before the launch it was time for everyone to go to lunch. I dropped my lunchbox and everything flew out and scattered. While I was picking up everything, the shuttle launched and blew up. I was in total shock. Because everyone else was at lunch, my teacher and I were the only ones in the school supposedly to see it explode. I'll never forget it.
BigCat79
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
What is wrong with all these slashdotters that think NASA needs to be cut all together. Exploration is at the heart of what the human race does. If the same attitude was taken hundreds of years ago, the USA would never have been discovered ...
If NASA had been in charge of exploring the Atlantic Ocean in the 1400s - 1500s, they'd still be taking soundings off the Azores to make sure they wouldn't run into something unexpected.
In order to explore, you must take risks.
If we want to "explore space", we need an outfit that will do it (or at least get out of the way). NASA puts bureaucratic arse-covering above exploration.
--
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
It helps explain the article featured on Slashdot, showing how management at NASA allowed political pressures to override from their engineers. It's possible that NASA has leaned back too far the other way, into over-cautiousness, but it's understandable.
Not a bad article, I always wanted to be a rocket scientist myself, just never followed through. :-)
:-) Why stop doing something just because you proved it can be done?
I remember the challenger explosion pretty well, and while I hope that something like that will never happen again, space exploration is a pretty dangerous business. Accidents do and will happen, but as long as we try to minimize the known risks, I say keep going. (Not that I have any authority on the matter.)
I hear people complaining about NASA all the time, (we have a few contacts with nasa people here at work,) but I find it hard to speak against any group of people who are struggling to answer questions about our worlds. (Even though oftentimes they simply create new questions...) I know that individually they're all people just as annoying and full of quirks and bad habits as the rest of us, but they're doing a good job togethere.
I just wish we could go back to the moon
-Space for rent
Yeah, but I don't agree with CNN that statistics isn't of use. The point is that one always has to be on the lookout for assumptions that are faulty, and that's what they do. Statistics is no less useful, it does put things in perspective, and it may sharpen your sense for where to look for probable violations of important assumptions. And indeed, yours is a good example, if one wire goes, the others may go for the same reason. It is a violation of the assumption of independence, which is a very important subject in statistics.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Nope, Occams Razor, really. The O-ring couldn't take the cold, it's been shown over and over again, you don't need no russians to explain it, so don't use it.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Sure, I might add the O-rings of my stove have survived much lower temperatures than this.
However, you seem to imply that there will almost always be someone with a greater plan with everything, but I can tell you, and I bet you agree, that when shit happens, it is far more common that somebody screwed up rather than somebody sabotaged it.
And I bet you'll find many indications, motivations and whatever that KGB or CIA or whoever would like this to happen. If you wanna do real research, however, you'll have to settle with what you can positively prove. This point is one of the very precious things we learned from the transition of middle-ages to modern science.
Now, if you think it is interesting enough to start researching to find that evidence, go ahead, but in this case, it is very well documented that you had an unhealthy culture, you had unfavourable conditions, you had a piece of hardware that didn't work very well. That accounts for all the facts, it had a very high probability of blowing up sooner or later. So, if you want to argue that the common case of somebody screwing up wasn't the case here, go ahead, but I think you'll seriously waste your time (and the time of anybody you'll be talking to).
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
well, I don't really agree with you about 'retaliation would be a given'comment. there is enough plausable deniability in the action that the soviets could simply say "don't be ridiculous!". and the few rabidly suspicious congressmen would grudgingly admit that when too little evidence was produced.
The reward would be a hobbling (or at least, some friction) for aerospace industry funding, via public resistance based on a lack of faith that the money would be or is being wisely spent. you know, as it actually happened. the Challenger disaster was a big fat delay in the official NASA roadmap.
I should like to point out that the cold war, and the eventual bankrupting of the soviet union was in effect played out in the race for aerospace dominance. the Challenger disaster is the biggest disaster in aerospace history. bigger than all of the sattelite failures and plane crashes in history, combined. Think about that for a minute, and you'll see why a shuttle launch was the perfect target for soviet saboteurs.
I am not directly accusing the USSR or the KGB in any of this, nor am I condoning such nefarious espionage, I am merely pointing out that if they had thought to do this, it would have been a wonderfully wicked coup de grace for them.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
I should point out the there have been hundreds of O-rings to survive such conditions, if not thousands after the rigorous performance testing that is involved
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
And just to add a supporting note, a typical coal-fired power station dumps several tonnes of particulate uranium into the atmosphere every year. Even if Cassini had detonated on the launch pad, it would have been lost in the noise of the noise as regards both radiation and heavy metal pollution.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
Dale Collis was supposed to be on that space shuttle, luckily he missed the bus from England.
-- "Are you smoking mapple leaves?"
As a former Lockheed Martin employee, I am getting tired of correcting this misconception. Lockheed Martin Missles and Space in Littleton, CO built and tested the rover. It was then sent to JPL in Sunnyvale for final test and launching from (probably) Vandenburg AFB. Yes, LMCO used English units for their forces and JPL used Metric units, but this should have been corrected in final unit test. No, I don't know why they used (old) English units.
Basically, LMCO screwed up, but JPL also should have noticed. OT, I wonder how many of the other failed Mars Missions around that time were as a result of this.
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
... that Shuttle Chief Dittemore couldnt work out the odds of 2 parts in 6056 failing with a 4 in 6056 failure rate. Thats 1/((4/6056)^2) or 1 in 2292196 if they came from 2 seperate batches of 6056 of which 4 fail or 1/((4/6056)*(2/6055)) being 1 in 3055756.67 chance if both came from the same 6056 batch of which 4 fail. Sorry if a shuttle chief who doesnt know basic statistics doesn't inspire confidence in NASA.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
Time to spin-off or dismantle NASA. Actually that time was long ago.
Not only is NASA a political organization which spends money like it's going out of style, it's subject matter is completely useless except as coffee table material, and really boring coffee table material to boot.
It's just a bunch of rocks! Who gives a rat's ass what shade of red the sky of Mars is? I'm not going there. Hell, I'm not going to Alaska, not even if you pay me.
I'm not suggesting government spend money on something more interesting like seep sea exploration, I'd rather spend my own money on my own coffee table books.
You NASA supporters are short-sighted Trekkies who can't imagine a non-government agency doing space exploration. Well wake up, most deep sea exploration would have been impossible without oil exploration pushing the science. NASA has done nothing but STIFLE profitable space exploration (read: stuff we actually care about, like cheap minerals).
---
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Please show me the math whereby you worked out $14,000,000,000 == food for 10 kids.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Let's not forget that Clinton cut NASA's budget 7 years out of eight. "Dubya" is pushing for a National Missile Defense which will help to invigorate some of the companies directly associated with space exploration. An side benefit of such a project might be lowered costs for LEO, or higher payload rates...
Any staticians care to check this...
The article mentioned 4 problems in a bundle of 6056 wires. That's 1 in 1514.
Assuming there's actually 3028 redundant pairs, the chances of hitting one of the redundant wires of the one you've hit before is 3 in 6055.
So the odds of hitting a redundant pair is 1 in 5,238,440.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
An interesting read -- for those of you who haven't seen it is the Appendix written by Feynman to the Challenger Report (otherwise known as the Rogers Commission Report).
t ml
. html
see http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.h
or
http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix
I can remember watching the Challenger take off on TV as a kid. They had a live camera on Christa McAuliffe's students and parents, and it was an extremely sad moment when the shuttle exploded, and half the students cheered thinking that was part of a normal shuttle takeoff.
I can only imagine what those people felt after they realized what actually happened.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
That moment was sort of like when JFK was assassinated, and then when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald (on live TV, no less). You knew where you were when you heard the news. Unfortunately, I don't; I was five years old, and no one wanted to tell me.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Political pressuse is NOT gone, it's just being dealt with in a different way. Take the ISS, for example, Nasa is going to do a amazing amount of space walks to get that thing up to specs (iirc 100) in a very short period of time. Nasa is also persueing a very agressive stance on launching (similiar to the state of the shuttle program in 1985). They also are willing to scrap missions over the most simple of things. That's the difference. Nasa's unwillingness to concern itself with such matters in Jan 1986 resulted in the Challenger exploding. Back then, Reagan wanted to promote the "Star Wars" program and the US's "Space might", today Clinton wants to promote the co-operation of several states for a peacful space program. Both are political agenda's, both require a very agressive Space Program. Except today, Nasa gets less money for more missions and does NOT loose people in space. Because they care now. To blame pressure on the repeated mistakes made by Nasa officials in the mid 80's is unreasonable, they made thier choices. Fortunately, today they don't make those choices anymore. They already lost one Shuttle, I doubt they want that to happen again.
On Jan 28 1986 Nasa lauched in conditions that no reasonable person would and it resulted in the death of all those aboard Challenger. You live in Titusville, you remeber how cold it was that mourning? I do, I was standing on the shore of the Indian River, my father took me out of school that day, so i could watch the first civilian go into space. He almost didn't because he knew it was unreasonable to launch the Shuttle that mourning. Everybody did.
Btw, the origional poster was not the person who refered to Bush.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The exec were wrong. No argument. But to ignore the political pressure is ALSO WRONG .
You'll notice that there was a COMPLETELY different attitude when Clinton decided to see the night shuttle launch...and not just on the NASA exec side.
BTW: if you had bothered to read the original poster...you'll notice that he actually KNEW that Reagan was President at the time of the explosion. He was making references to possible pressure that might be applied by President-Elect Bush. (And frankly speaking, your attitudes towards the cause of the explosion are likely to bring about a return of those political pressures - and more accidents.)
What I am wondering is if Fortune 500 companies go out of their way to set up their servers with Triple Mirroring Hard Disk setups, why doesn't NASA also use doubly redundant cabling? I mean this is billions of dollars and lives we're talking about here. Shouldn't they be extra sure? It seems to me that one backup isn't enough.
(I know the Triple mirror example isn't the best, since most triple mirrors are specifically so you can break one mirror and back it up, while you have regular mirroring still in place. But regardless of the backing up advantage, you still get doubly redundant data)
In this case, I didn't mean (and didn't refer to) manned space exploration. A fine point, perhaps, but a point in my defense nonetheless :).
Virg
Here we go 'round the mulberry bush. Every time I hear this argument I just shake my head in disbelief at the unscientific approach some take to science. "Let's solve all of our real problems before we go traipsing around in space," they say, again and again.
Well.
First, your starting assumption is faulty. We're never going to "solve all of our real problems" whether we go into space or not. Poverty has been around for thousands of years, and there'll be homeless people and those who get smashed down by circumstance on the first Mars base, or in New New York in the year 3001. Cure diseases instead of spending money on space exploration? How much money did we put into AIDS research in the 1960's? The answer is none, since AIDS didn't exist as a human disease then, and if we insist on spending every available dollar on disease research, that's all we'll ever spend our dollars on. You ask how many children could be fed by the cost of one space vehicle launch. I ask in reply, how many chidren could have been fed by the money poured into automotive development, or the cosmetics industry?
Second, your logical extension is faulty. What is it exactly that blinds you (and all of the others who like to make this argument) to the possibility that the cure for cancer is a chemical that synthesizes only in microgravity? Or that the next clean power supply can't be discovered by scientists trying to figure out how to make a sustainable Moon base? Science at its core is dicovery, and the farther we range from what we know, the more likely it is that we'll dicover something new. Some of the things we need to learn and do for space exploration could (and very often do) produce huge benefits for life here on Earth. Without space exploration, for example, there'd be no satellites. These wondrous little devices do everything from geological surveys and weather mapping to communications. Next time you say that we're wasting money on space travel, try telling that to the family who are still alive because of an accurate forcast for a hurricane path, or the person whose 911 call went through.
Pure science is not and cannot be forced. I agree that we shouldn't throw all of our money into space exploration, but then neither should we pull all of our money away from space exploration. The solution to the problems right next door may very well be "out there."
Virg
I really wish people would have the same attitude about some of the DOD programs. What a waste of money, and lots & lots of failures. Their recient attempts at hitting missiles still seems to include a large part of luck.
Even if NASA stuff fails, all scientists/engineers still learn something from the failure (costly lessons sometimes). And we do gain alot when they succeed.
I think we need to put more money into NASA, and less into DOD.
Alright, gotta say it... But the DOD would classify the failure, and no one learns anything... :(
A wingless design could not meet USAF requirements. There were several much lower cost higher payload designs considered including water landing designs. They were dropped because they did not meet the military requirements for a space transport. Wings on a spaceship are just plain stupid.
Don't believe me? Ever asked who owns the tooling needed to build a shuttle? It isn't nasa. It is the US DOD. That's right, nasa cannot even build spare parts without permission from the US Department of Defense.
BTW, I saw a Challenger launch in 1984 (a successful launch) from the VIP viewing stands. I have talked to the Thiokol engineer who said don't launch and I have talked to several Thiokol managers that backed him up.
Who on earth came up with the brain-dead design of the shuttle? ANY competent engineer will tell you that designing for two *largely incompatible* goals is a recipe for disaster. The shuttle is designed to launch vertically, be a spaceship and then land like a plane. Why why why? Reusable is fine, but why land like a plane? Why not just drop into the ocean, retrieve and reuse? Idiots.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
What is wrong with all these slashdotters that think NASA needs to be cut all together. Exploration is at the heart of what the human race does. If the same attitude was taken hundreds of years ago, the USA would never have been discovered (ok..the Native Americans already knew it was here and we basically took it from them...bad example), Magellan would never have proved categorically the earth was round etc... Astronomers predict that there is only 100,000 years before a cataclysmic event (probably an asteroid) will make this planet uninhabitable for many years. Simply put, we need space exploration to give us options. Even if no other habitable planet was found, the possibility of waiting out disaster in a space station in orbit is a viable one...especially after a few thousand years of research. I ask you, what better way can our money be spent than to possibly prevent the extinction of the human race?
A critical error with the DC10 is that although it triple redundant systems, they all followed a similar route. A pressure problem cracked the floor of a DC10 at Orly (the hold door wasn't sealed), the cables broke together and it went uncontrollable.
See my journal, I write things there
we have lost 7 on the challenger and 3 in apollo ground fires... Compare ours with the Russian or Chinese
Russians lost 4 during flights and 1 in Apollo 1-like oxygen fire.
Technically, they lost no manned ships in space (one smashed in the ground, and one returned intact with 3 dead bodies).
Two launch aborts resulted in no casualties: Soyuz 18-1, Soyuz T-10-1.
There were a number of ground crew casualties during ICBM and equipment testing; I don't think this counts as manned flights casualties, does it?
This is tough for Americans to swallow. So, there are urban legends about Soviet secret space accidents. So far nothing was confirmed. If you have any hard facts, let me know.
Nasa is about politics, not science.
/. know about it.
And who do you think approves their budgets? The politicians you (assuming you're an American) vote into office. You can always volunteer to work for them you know. They do a lot more than you see on TV. When you voluntarily design a new launch vehicle better than anything they're working on, let everyone at
Developers: We can use your help.
Would *you* want to rely on 50 year old pictures before you set your ass down on a planet millions of miles from home?
Yes I would. Do you think the craters will move? The mountains will shift much? The polar caps will melt and you'll accidentally land in water? The fundamental landscape of Mars hasn't changed much since the telescope was invented and people looked at it.
If you landed on Earch based on 50 year old pictures, the worst that would happen is you'd land on someone's house or a building where there wasn't one before. The deserts and forrests are in the same places. And I don't think we need to worry about landing on a newly biult martian house.
Developers: We can use your help.
And what is their failed/success mission ratio? How many have failed in the last 15 years? How many have succeeded? How many missions were executed? How many missions are done for sending corporate satelites into space compared to purely scientific expeditions?
How about getting more informed before building an opinion? The probe smashed into Mars because of the different measurement units between the US and european space agencies. It was a collaborative effort and the group responsible for checking calculations missed converting measurement units in one of their formulas.
Almost every mission of the last 15 years has been successful. You apparently only pay attention to the sparse few that fail.
Also, that "rediculous little robot" was sent partly to scan the surface for the soft spot that your ass would be landing on if you were fortunate enough to ever go to Mars. Let's skip the rediculous photography and just drop you there and see where your head cracks open.
Developers: We can use your help.
It was my 11th birthday, my teacher was one of the runners-up, the pilot (Dick Scobee) was teaching a class that I was taking outside of school, the children of several astronauts were sitting next to me watching the launch on the classroom TV. There was a lot of crying and running around as I recall.
NASA's very existence serves as a deterrent to privately funded space travel. Witness the recent demise of Beal Aerospace last October.
The article also talks about how detailed and precise NASA engineers are now
They're so detailed that they are capable of using both customary units and metric units simultaneously! Let's just hope they don't get them confused (again)!
Actually, I believe that you are misunderstanding what "Faster, better, cheaper" is all about.
NASA has a policy that manned and unmanned research have two diffrent priorities. Failure is unacceptable for manned exploration. Not so for unmanned exploration. The reason is simple. It costs more to "gaurentee" something to be fail-proof.
Now, "Faster, better, cheaper" takes this theory to the extream. The theory is simple enough. Develop realy cheap probes instead of realy expensive ones. This way you get more of them out. As a side benefit, you can reduce time it takes to develop said probes. The "better" part isn't that the quality of the probes as compared to higher budget probes. It's the fact that you can have 10 or more probe programs for the price of one. Hence, you will gather more data. Even if some of them fail! For example:
If it costs $60 Billion to develop a probe with a 99.995% chance of working flawlessly and it costs $2 Billion to develop a prove with a 95% chance of working flawlessly. Which would you rather have:
Now, perhaps I misunderstand "Faster, better, chaeper." But I'm sure someone will set me straight if I do.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I should have also pointed out that the O-ring is a backup system, the putty is the primary sealant. Yet, when testing showed problems with O-ring erosion, they chose to beef up the backup rather than fix the primary.
Go reread accounts of the Challenger investigation... the engineering was fine.
If you read the accounts, you find the engineering was not fine, the Challenger died because of faulty engineering. Not as urban legend has it, only because of out of envelope operations forced by management.
NASA and Morton-Thiokol engineers own studies show significant O-ring erosion at temperatures well above those seen by Challenger. The specification amounted to no erosion at all. Yes, managment failed in launching that morning, but they only added stress on top of an already faulty system. The engineers have a share of the blame as well. (I know this view will be unpopular, but facts are facts.)
At least one of the probes failed due to SOFTWARE problems... that means you /. geeks. Computer programs are always the worst buggers to get right.
The real engineers did their jobs just fine on that one. They also knew what they were doing on Challenger (it's now well-known the O-Ring problem had been discovered by both NASA and their subcontractor... the management just didn't listen).
Before everyone goes NASA bashing here let me point out a couple of things. 1. The reason Challenger blew up was the fact that it was so cold outside that the O ring on the booster engine cracked and with that little hole in the engine it ignited the fuel tank. Thats what caused the explosion. 2. There was a lot of political pressure at that time (even though im a little young to remember the explosion i have read a lot of the accounts of the investigations) because the space program was starting to loose popularity among the American people because we have been there and done that. We needed something new to do thats why we sent up the teacher with the crew and they didnt want to delay the launch. 3. If you want to cut NASAs budget further than those short sited politicians you'll have problems with the up keep of equiptment and youll have problems trying to find a way to send satalites to Mars and you just wont advance in the science field. If you look at any great civilization like Rome you see that if the country isnt advancing in science then that civilizaiton is dead. I for one would like to see more funding put into our space program instead of it being the only goverment foundation to have its spending cut every year. I really dont appreciate the fact that congress cant look further than their next term of relection to find things to do that will get them reelected instead of looking out for the good of their country. What happened to the American curiosity that we once had? I'll tell you what it is its the fact that our pride as a country has gone downhill like the fact that Clinton screwed that intern and didnt even get in trouble for it. Explore expand and conquer new thing instead of sitting here with out thumbs up our asses.
Space exploration *is* a dangerous activity. While lots of planning and quality control is important, so is making significant advances and getting something done. There is NOT a space 'race' anymore, just a dollar race. We need to keep around just enough that 'go-fever' to keep us inspired enough to discover something. Europa awaits. We don't want to trade go-fever for sit-on-your-butt-itis.