Columbia Accident Investigation Board: Final Report

ssclift writes "After nearly 7 months the Columbia Accident Investigation Board has released its final report into the February 1st loss of the Shuttle Columbia and all 7 crew members. This is more than a technical assessment of the immediate causes of the accident. Once again, sadly, the world's flagship space agency gets a thorough and grim review. Press briefings will begin at 11:00 EDT along with a webcast."

Comments

The "Culture of NASA"????

[tha_mink]

I actually read that they are blaming this accident on the "Culture of NASA". Meaning, that if you were some small fry in the organization and you saw a problem with a process, you would be afraid to approach the 200 suits. Even though they stand there and say "Anyone have a problem with what we're doing?" "Our doors are always open.."

Sound familiar anyone?

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[the MaD HuNGaRIaN]

Where I work, the doors are always open...it's the ears that aren't.

I suspect it's the same situation at all large organizations.

You can lead a manager to an idea, but you can't make him/her think.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Frymaster]

Sound familiar anyone?

of course. now how would you or anyone build a system that was more open? even the japanese "tan" system has failed...

the suits will always be there and they will always want "yes men".

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound familiar anyone?

Oh yeah, sounds exactly like my office. We were having foam strikes in the kitchen for the longest time. I had this nagging hunch that nobody was taking them seriously. I mentioned it in passing to a couple of my immediates, and they sort of agreed, but it never got any further than that. Really a shame. There was no reason for that coffee machine to go like that, it was just unnecessary. What a tragedy.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[cybercuzco]

There is a culture of NASA. I had a professor tell me a story about how they came up with the toilet on the shuttle. Aparently they already had a perfectly good toilet design from skylab, and it actually worked nearly as well as a conventional toilet, you didnt have to strap yourself down or anything. Just hold on and a centrifugical pump in the bowl takes care of everything. At any rate, it was designed at Marshall Spaceflight center. Of course the shuttle was beign designed at Johnson Spaceflight center (or maybe it was the other way around, dont quite remember) At any rate, Johnson couldnt use ANYTHING that had been designed by Marshall (and vise verse) So Johnson deisgned a completely new toliet, at very great expense to the program (~$10mil) When they could have used an existing design for much cheaper(probably still ~$1mil, but hey thats 10 times less). Similar thing happened with the flooring of the ISS. Again same two center, but reversed in stupidity. Skylab had an "isogrid" flooring system which basically was a bunch of aluminum triangles. You put a rubber triange on somebodys boot and voila, you canstand wherever you want and work without floating away by jamming your boot into the floor. Well that wasnt designed where the ISS was being designed so that was out the window. I think they use some sort of seat restraint system and velcro on the ISS now. Velcro is fine but it wears out over time, and of course seat restraints are more expensive than the floor you have to put in anyways. NASA needs to get rid of the Not Invented HERE (tm) syndrome and use the best ideas available and not whatever will boost a certain centers prestige.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Marc2k]

The visible difference being that most large organizations are not funded by the government, and do not strap men and women to tons of explosives and try to get them back without any danger to the astronauts or the people of Earth.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[neodymium]

well, another case of the "not invented here" syndrome is said to be the invention of a space-useable ballpen.

the NASA seeemed to spend a lot (several $100k) to develop a ballpen which could be used upside down in space. the russians used to use pencils at $0.1/piece...

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[smittyoneeach]

More generally, there is a coefficient of organizational friction to overcome.
See Kuhn, (and I am not shilling for Bezos).
The only irony in all of this is the hidden assumption that propeller-head organizations differ somehow from private sector ones. Sorry, all: peeps is peeps.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Gulthek]

Sorry. False.

"Fisher did ultimately develop a pressurized pen for use by NASA astronauts (now known as the famous "Fisher Space Pen"), but both American and Soviet space missions initially used pencils, NASA did not seek out Fisher and ask them to develop a "space pen," Fisher did not charge NASA for the cost of developing the pen, and the Fisher pen was eventually used by both American and Soviet astronauts."

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Renegade Lisp]

Nice story, and I've told it a couple of times myself. Looks like it simply isn't true, though.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to at least check a site like this before repeating something that sounds both ironic and iconoclastic, chances are you'll get a hit.


http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.a sp

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[L0C0loco]

First a disclaimer: I work for NASA.

The small fry is not afraid of 200 suits, just two or three in the level or two of management above them. There are many levels of management in NASA and it is likely that someone somewhere in that chain of management (I was going to call it command, but frequently the managers high up have insufficient command/knowledge of the topic they manage) will not want to pass bad news along. They'll either decide to report nothing or spin it into something less distasteful. Generally there are two concerns: Somebody goofed or We need more time/money to do it right. The latter is not acceptable since NASA has a fixed budget and congress is already unhappy about the growing cost over-runs in some programs. It all really boils down to too much to do with too little resources. Just look at the way things worked under the moon program or the way it works under the dark side of DOD where money was/is frequently no object. Nowadays, everybody underbids to get the contract and then tries to do what they can with the money (not necessarily what was promised). Yes, checks and balances would help a little a few years down the road once the short-comings are caught and exposed, but by then any last shred of confidence in NASA by the public will have evaporated.

Bottom line here is that you get what you pay for.
Congress and the voters have to decide what they want to do given realistic costs. The costs are frequently adjusted by managers trying to get the program to boost their self esteem or pay-grade with little regard as to what will happen to the likelhood of success. The underlings are all too eager to try and make do for similar motivations. Now toss in contracting functions out to the lowest bidder and you're really asking for trouble.

Sorry if this borders on being a rant for some.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Schnapple]

the NASA seeemed to spend a lot (several $100k) to develop a ballpen which could be used upside down in space. the russians used to use pencils at $0.1/piece...

That's actually an urban legend (and a particularly persistent one - it was on The West Wing even). Basically it boils down to the Fisher pen company volunteering to develop a pen which would work in space's conditions for NASA, in return they got to advertise their pen as "developed for the Space Program!" (which was a bigger deal in 1967 than it would be today). It worked better than pencils since pencils break easily and create debris - a problem in zero gravity.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[nolife]

NASA needs to get rid of the Not Invented HERE (tm) syndrome
My experiences with IT also. My last two jobs have been in large but remote offices away from the corporate headquarters. Same thing, if you are not part of the "inner circle", you are almost completely ignored. I spend more time configuring and reconfiguring the network and servers to meet the "standardized setup" they want even though we have different functions and requirements at our offices. Sometimes I feel better just sitting there and letting problems go out of frustration.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[DrMorpheus]

The visible difference being that most large organizations are not funded by the government, and do not strap men and women to tons of explosives and try to get them back without any danger to the astronauts or the people of Earth.

When or not a large organization is or is not funded by the government makes no difference whatsoever, market arguments notwithstanding.

The key is, children, it's a large organization. Being so it's relatively immune to external forces, or rather it's got internal resources to withstand any outside pressures to change. Again, this is true whether or not it's a government body or a corporate body. Local government bodies, like town councils are much, much more flexible than their equivalent in state or federal levels.

This holds true in private organizations too where small businesses, or ones with a thin layer of management are much more responsive/sensitive to outside pressures than are those from hugh behemeths like Microsoft, etc.

That same flexibility is also a weakness in that when a small organization has a good idea, government body or not, and faces a hostile environment it's not likely to succeed in implementing that idea relative to a larger organization so it's a trade off. Small and responsive, but also vulnerable and weak versus large and strong, but also insular and bullying.

Bottom line is, there's no single organizational structure that works in all circumstances for all times.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[delphi125]

Similarly NASA spent a lot of money developing a ballpoint pen which could work in zero gravity. The Russians used pencils instead.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no upside down in space, just zero gravity.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

Urban legend. Read above posts...

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[PW2]

I think your link needs to be added to every story about US in space

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[confused one]

Except, you can't go to the suit saying "Our doors are always open" You MUST go through the chain of command -- your supervisor, then his supervisor, and so on. Otherwise, you're not playing by the rules and are punished. Any one in the chain can decide to act / ignore your request.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

FLAMEBAIT! This is PURE flamebait. Jesus people, pull your heads out!

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[dilweed]

It seems to me that NASA is as poorly managed as many IS/IT departments. Nobody else in the organization truely knows what's going on, so they continue to throw money at it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But once you lose production time, or 7 astronauts, everyone wants answers.

All the while the admin is not updating the AV definitions, or that foam has fallen off many times before and no one cares...

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Rich0]

I've heard similar stories in big companies. Keep in mind the primary objective of any company employee is to stay employed. This includes managers. Managers have to be extra-careful, since they do not perform real work and their boss won't have dilemas like "he gives me a hard time, but then again who could I hire who can turn out such a good widget in such a short time?". As a result extreme-conservatism is the rule - which means if their boss gives them the budget the last thing they want to do is ask for more money to fix a problem.

I heard a story from a guy who happened to know his CEO personally (though distantly) in a mid-sized company (the CEO had worked his way up). Once he happened to bump into him and asked him why a certain expenditure was prohibited and gave reasoning why it wasn't out of line based on accepted expenditures and how it could pay for itself. The CEO thought it was a good idea and the policy was changed. Previously, the half-dozen layers of management in-between held the line against the expenditure religiously. It turns out the CEO had proposed the idea as a cost-saving measure and nobody wanted to tell the guy that it wasn't a good idea.

All it takes to turn an organization into molassas is 5 layers of senior management who like their jobs and know they'll never find another like it if they lose it. It leads to guaranteed status quo.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[pmz]

...you get what you pay for.

But what do we tell all the congressmen who need to fill their wheel barrow with pork lest they get kicked out of town? I think lots of contractors have grown used to doing meaningless work, because the constant flow of money is too addictive.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Grendol]

This culture is not strictly a NASA fault. Managers of DOE cleanup programs arbitrarily set artificial schedules with unrelated budgets on a regular basis. They dissagree with the engineered result they recieved as a result of their train wreck style of management and say that someone goofed instead of having the balls to confront their management with the inadequacies of the situation, environment, and their own managment approach. This is the way of things in contracted and non contracted government projects. NASA only made the news when it had casualties result on a high profile project precipitated from years of this style of managing.

The cost of science is hard to predict. Managers fundamentally do not like that. They want a clean $ in for benefit return. This mentality follows all the way up the chain to the people who run the system (voters,politicians, take your pick). They look at the system as a machine and say it is broken when a g.i.g.o. situation yields unfavorable results. So, open up the hood, change parts, and start it up again. Does that solve the g.i.g.o. factor? NO! We have to live with it though. This problem is unlikely to ever go away. Even if we increase NASA's budget, build newer and better spacecraft, and live on the Moon, we will always have this cultural problem that is not just a problem in NASA.

Look at power deregulation for example. The system is regulated for years and they start to see problems down the track, so the government (read managers) jump from the train, deregulation tries to change course but can't (at least not as fast or aseconomically as needed) and we get a train wreck. (high power costs and grid failures, really nothing new to be honest). SO, now people are blaming deregulation for the failures when they got a g.i.g.o situation.

It really is a stupid user g.i.g.o. type problem.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[stmfreak]

Bottom line here is that you get what you pay for.

No. The bottom line is that after the wasteful spending, cost overruns, not-invented-here episodes, overstaffing, over analyzing, ISO 900x+-triple-ought compliance meetings and multiple committees-on-how-to-proceed... No one wants to pass along the bad news that the real work still isn't getting done.

When things are running efficiently and people are working productively, it's really easy to report bad news about needing more time/money/people/whatnot. It's very easy because you know that any investigation will come to the same conclusions. Nothing to fear, nothing to hide.

But when there's a lot of waste and managers are very afraid of an investigation revealing how much they suck, then there is a strong tendancy to gamble and hope the bad news will never surface.

"You get what you pay for" only applies in a competative market.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

The visible difference being that most large organizations are not funded by the government, and do not strap men and women to tons of explosives and try to get them back without any danger to the astronauts or the people of Earth.

You mean like the airline industry stuffs hundreds of people into metal tubes and flys them from coast-to-coast accompanied by tons of volatile jet fuel many times per day?

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[EvilTwinSkippy]

One important exception: You can't back up astronauts on tape.

If I screw up, I might damage a few hundred thousand dollars of equipment, or a few million dollars in transactions and sales. Someone can write a check to fix that. No amount of money can replace a human life, let alone the life of dedication and training that goes into every one of those astronauts.

In a military environment the management team at NASA would be courtmarshalled for negligence.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it's the same situation at all large organizations.

At NASA/JPL anyone can raise a safety concern and it WILL get attention. I've done it myself and I'm a very junior employee -and we have unmanned spacecraft. The manned spaceflight program can do much better.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[EvilTwinSkippy]

If you want a good read on organizational dynamics, especially in regards to Engineering, take a flip through The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

The book is a series of Essays that illustrate the problems inherent in trying to use techniques for managing unskilled labor on a skilled workforce. The book is primarily structured around Software design, but it's teachings are readily adapted to most Engineering disciplines. It's chock full of un-intiuitive facts of life in engineering projects:

• There is a point in a project where adding more people pushes the project even further behind schedule. It takes time to bring new people up to speed on a project, doubly so on a project that is mostly completed.
• Engineers need to be structured like a surgical team, with definite roles and supporting functions to play. They aren't like day laborers that can be dropped in a cubical and hammer out equations.
• Projects need to constantly go back to the original vision.
• Development work is often like carrying a baby. Assigning 9 women to the task will not make it take any less than 9 months.
• A clear line in the sand needs to be drawn between the Architecture and the Implementation. The Architecture should leave Implementation details fuzzy. Implementors have a practical experience that often allows them to meet needs in creative and ingenious ways unknown to the Architect. Architects also need to listen to Implementor's when told a particular feature will require a tremendous number of resources to bring to fruition, and adjust accordingly.
• It is far better to let a schedule slip than to try to hurry it up. Hurrying up introduces mistakes, added expense, and more often than not an unsatisfactory product.
• (At least in software) 1/2 of the project is testing (1/4 component testing and 1/4 systems integration testing). 1/3 is planning. Only 1/6 should be spent on the actual design and fabrication.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

"Generally there are two concerns: Somebody goofed or We need more time/money to do it right. The latter is not acceptable since NASA has a fixed budget and congress is already unhappy about the growing cost over-runs in some programs. It all really boils down to too much to do with too little resources."

Well, NASA is a HUGE organization and is trying to do too many things. Maybe NASA should try to focus on doing less things (correctly), or maybe it should go away completely. Personally, I do not care which. All I know is that if NASA did not have the US government constantly funding it, it would have gone out of business long ago or figured out what it does economically and keep doing that. Lots of companies that are much smaller than NASA are just as innovative and expand the envelope of engineering and science. The only difference is that they either make money or go out of business.

Do not think that I am totally anti-NASA. I thought that getting people onto the moon was admirable. However, just remember that NASA did not build the rockets, capsules, landers, etc. Non-government entities like Rockwell, Grumman, and Boeing/Rocketdyne did.

Also, since before the end of the Apollo program NASA turned into an entity that saw the writing on the wall: Well we made it to the moon, now what?
Unfortunately, NASA's answer was: We must find a way to keep our jobs, regardless of the expense to the taxpayer.

In the light of what I perceive to be NASA's real mission---to keep their jobs---I find it appalling that they have adopted a culture of tremendous overhead, bureaucracy, and scorn for anything "Not Invented Here" while a complete mission failure or catastrophe is not uncommon.

I also wonder if one of NASA's biggest problems is that it appears to be employing too many "cannot see the forest for the trees" types. By this, I mean that specific type of selfish and egotistical PhD that is so myopic that all they care about is their research and not the big picture. NASA seems to have started with a much lower PhD to BS ratio. Now all it seems to have is PhDs and alot of B.S.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[jafac]

The problem is that the hierarchical nature of management organizational structures is based on wolfpack mentality. I'm sure y'all could point out hundreds of anaecdotal exceptions from your own lives. But statistically speaking, I bet MOST structures are more like this - it's basic human behavior, we're biologically hardwired for this, and I bet it's been so since the age of the dinosaurs.

Mankind might aspire to spaceflight,
but as individuals, we need to learn to interact without concern for our "status in the pack". That means - managers must listen to their subordinates. People must be judged by their actual expertise. Not their degree, or how expensive their suits are, or what car they drive.

Maybe computers will one day break this corporate hierarchy. But until that day, it's all "jocks versus geeks".

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[ubeans]

Search and replace:

• NASA with current employer
• Congress with current client.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[BigBir3d]

When or not a large organization is or is not funded by the government makes no difference whatsoever, market arguments notwithstanding.

I have to dis-agree with you here. It is not just a matter of office politics (a factor in all big organisations), but also national and international politics.

The problem with NASA is that the geeks and nerds are no longer in control of the big decisions. Most responsible scientific minded people are horrified by the nature of NASA today. Most people my age that could have gotten a job there, chose not because of the atmosphere there.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Dashing Leech]

Disclaimer: I work for a NASA contractor doing flight support and analysis, often at JSC.

I agree with L0C0loco take on things, but add to it. One problem I see is very little in the way of "proportional management" (if that's a term. If not, I'm trademarking it.) =)

As an example, I just spend about 3 months preparing a simple presentation on a simple analysis we did. The presentation went through about 12 reviews with the customer (one NASA group), involving about 4 or 5 people including higher managers. I just presented it today to another NASA group here at JSC. Just the presentation cost hundreds of hours at a high pay rate (managers, analysts, etc.). The analysis itself was quite informal, and knowing NASA culture, the numbers and findings will be used as if etched in stone.

In short, much effort (and money) went into a presentation that we didn't even fully get through, whereas the important part, the analysis, was underfunded and informal yet the results will probably be used as facts even though the analysts (such as me) don't agree they should be. All that matters is that somebody somewhere did some analysis that said such-and-such was ok, therefore NASA has done all it has to do to prove safety.

Which brings me to a second problem -- NASA tends to use analysis numbers as facts without understanding the context, the uncertainty, or even the analyst's opinions of the data.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Moofie]

Dealing with graphite particles, eraser particles, and wood shavings in a closed, microgravity environment are all non-trivial problems.

So it's not as cut-and-dried as you would like to believe.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[jayrtfm]

care to provide some examples? or your name?

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

care to provide some examples? or your name?

If I gave my name AND mentioned my affliation with JPL, then my statement would have to go through a review process before being made public. If the statement is anonymous, then its ok, because you may or may not decide to believe it and I can freely say that the rest of NASA is very poorly managed. [ If I'm wrong here, I'm sure it will be used as an example in next years ethics briefing :) ]

Here you still follow the chain of command... but your manager takes you to the meeting with his boss who takes you to the meeting with the next boss. This makes sense since the guy who found the problem is probably an expert whose input is needed in finding a fix for the problem.

Whever there's a problem with a spacecraft, anyone can raise concerns (unless the problem is time critical, then only the relevent experts have input).

People outside of JPL who attend meetings with JPLers are often suprised at the level of 'input' they get. (JPLers are used to looking for errors, and pointing them out). IMHO, other NASA centers are too interested in being nice and not looking like a jerk instead of questioning someone's analysis in a blunt manner.

Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[Anonymous Coward]

Shall we ignore the obvious rhetoric or perhaps add some background music for ambiance?

The mindset is the problem. The Bureaucratic Mind is the issue that endangers lives, wastes resources, and squelches innovation. Our history is full of innovation that comes from large organizations with paper pushing bureaucrats consumed with policy and politiking over the stated goals of the organization. These fine examples are worthy of emulation by any sized organization who wants to innovate and use their brains... Ok, now that THAT insanity is over, can we all come back down to Earth (ironic, eh?) and actually solve the problem? NASA suffers the same problem as the government at large does... bureaucrats. Get rid of the parroting, rhetoric filled suits and put competent managers and respected leaders in place of the career climbing monkeys.

At least they admit it...

[LordYUK]

"On Monday, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told CNN's Miles O'Brien that the agency missed signs of trouble that led to the accident.

"This was a case where we missed it. Just flat missed it," he said of the significance of the foam strike. "

At least they arent trying to cover it up. Now they can move forward, and hopefully we'll continue to explore space even more proficiently than before.

Who knows, maybe our grandkids (or their grandkids) will get to land on mars!

Re:At least they admit it...

[Ciderx]

I think Sean O'Keefe is already on Mars, after all, he thinks he's having a conversation with the teleportation expert from Star Trek, Miles O'Brien, eh?

Re:At least they admit it...

[hal9000]

Who knows, maybe our grandkids (or their grandkids) will get to land on mars!

Aww c'mon now. There are plenty of other organizations entering the mix. If not NASA, by all means let it be someone else.

Re:At least they admit it...

[cybercuzco]

"On Monday, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told CNN's Miles O'Brien that the agency missed signs of trouble that led to the accident.

You mean thisMiles O'Brien?

Re:At least they admit it...

[timmyf2371]

Nope, I think he is referring to the Miles O'Brien who works for CNN and is a correspondent in many articles, including:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/COMMUNITY/08/08/obrien.tho mpson/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/25/wbr.mars/index.ht ml

Re:At least they admit it...

[gorimp]

As unfortunate an accident as this has been for NASA, I believe it would be prudent to wait for further discussion on the first Volume of NASA's report before we can simply be content that the investigation is complete and we can simply move forward.

As Interesting+1 a report as it is, I couldn't help but feel a certain amount of politics working its way into it -- See Chapter 5 of the first volume for details, although I may simply be seeing what other /._ are referring to as the 'culture' at NASA.

A rare opportunity

[TopShelf]

I wouldn't say that it's "sad" that NASA gets a thorough review. Quite the contrary, I think it's a rare opportunity to make the case that cost-cutting measures involve tradeoffs that have a significant impact on how an organization like NASA operates. What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for increased NASA funding, as part of a commitment to keep America at the forefront of technological leadership worldwide. Particularly as other countries are stepping up their space efforts, this is going to be a growing concern in the years ahead.

Not having followed the eeaaarrrrllly presidential campaigning, are there any strong proponents for NASA out there?

Re:A rare opportunity

[RevMike]

What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for increased NASA funding....

I don't think it is a budget issue, though. Throwing money at this sort of problem rarely solves anything. The problem is a cultural one.

Organisations frequently have an upward focus. Too many people concentrate on what their boss wants to hear, instead of what needs to be said. Everything is about satisfying one's boss by helping them satisfy their boss, by helping them satisfy their boss, ad nauseum. It is more important that things look right the most senior administrator than that they are right.

An organisation that depends on highly skilled highly professional people at relatively low levels needs to have a downward focus. The most senior people need to focus on how they can help their direct reports do their job, and those people need to focus on helping their direct reports do their jobs, ad nauseum. In the end, this type of culture helps the engineers and technicians actually do their job.

The US military went through this kind of transition in the early 1980s. More and more command and control was moved lower and lower in the hierarchy. Tactics were left to the people on the scene. The senior personnel focused on strategy and logistics, coordinating and supplying, which enable the local personnel to do their jobs effectively. Taking out a machine gun nest is a job for a sargeant or lutenant on the scene - not a general in Washington.

Re:A rare opportunity

[ImpTech]

I dunno... seems to me if you wanted to make sure the US was the leader in space technology, the first thing you'd do is tell NASA and their funding to promptly go to hell, or maybe make them into a regulatory agency. I mean c'mon... they've been pushing this whole "space shuttle" thing way too far. Smarter people than me will tell you it was an abortion of an idea to start with, and its STILL being used despite its exorbitant cost and inefficiency for most tasks. Some would say that if NASA had more funding they could build something better, but thats what they were supposed to be doing when they designed the shuttle in the first place. Seems to me there's no pressure on NASA to be practical or cost efficient, which is whats really needed.

Re:A rare opportunity

[cybercuzco]

Unfortunately, I think NASA is pretty low on every candidates radar. Things here on earth tend to take precedence. So NASA makes an easy target for people who need a few million dollars here and a few million dollars there. Same thing happens with foriegn aid. People think its alot more than it is, and nobody really corrects them, so when candidates say "slash foriegn aid" people think its ok. (Americans think that 15% of the budget goes to foriegn aid, and it should be around 5%, wheras in reality its more like .4%)

Re:A rare opportunity

[cK-Gunslinger]

Another thing I think NASA needs to do is make the public more aware of just how much *good* it does, especially commercially.

I think they should produce quarterly/yearly results of their findings/discoveries, commercial applications, patents, etc along with thier respective monetary implications. Then maybe people like my dad will stop complaining about the "hundred of millions" of dollars wasted by some people just "floating around in space" and can see some of the more tangible benefits of space exploration.

I think the public in general doesn't have any idea how much comes from NASA's experiments. They probably still think the only things to come out of it are Tang and the pen that writes upside down!

Also, I would like for someone to simply give them a fixed budget for 3-5 years, saying "Here's all the money you are getting for a while. In 5 years, I want a fully detailed report on how you spent it. If you don't operate at X level of efficiency, you're getting budget cuts." Something like that in order to force NASA to think lean and aggressively, instead of trying to spend every dime they get in order to look like they really need it all. No more $10 million toilet re-designs! Force them to think more like a private company (but without the whole 'stepping on anyone who gets in their way' attitudes.)

Re:A rare opportunity

[Morrigu]

What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for private space exploration. Technological progress into space needs NASA like the American West needed the US government - only enough to open up the doors for anyone and everyone with money and a dream to set out and make the unexplored frontier their own.

Re:A rare opportunity

[L0C0loco]

I agree that it is not totally a money problem, but the machine gun nest would be a problem for the sargent if he had to work with a fixed budget and needed to either buy the bullets/grenades to take out the next or buy fuel for the M1A1 he is going to need down the road at the bridge he has to take. He does not have these worries. Nor does he have two other units competing to take out the same nest in order to see who gets the next promotion to leutenant. Sufficient funding is required.

That said, the people have to be talented and motivated. They need a certain degree of security and comfort to be able to focus on the task at hand. And, they need to have the guts and authority to make the decision without the worry of a spanish inquisition from above. They also have to have significant input from the beginnning of the project/effort. The last thing you want is someone who doesn't care doing something critical with insufficient authority and resoruces to accomplish the job - especially if lives are at stake. "CYA" This last statement is a generality and probably has no bearing on the investigation. "/CYA"

Moving control down the ladder only works if they had the input from the start. Otherwise, your just creating the ability to blame someone under you later if something goes wrong. "I told him what to do, gave him the resources, and the authority. He wasn't up to the task!" Yeah, too bad it was an impossible task with twice the time and money and he would have told you so if asked at the start.

Re:A rare opportunity

[PhiltheeG]

No, but there are already people on both sides of the political landscape using this tragedy to attack the other's values

Insight on the News seems to think environmentalists share blame:

Because of demands that the agency help to front for environmentalism, and under pressure from the Clinton-Gore administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) led by Carol Browner, NASA had stopped using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greens claim damages the ozone layer, in its thermal-insulating foam. NASA found in 1997 after the first launch with the politically correct substitute that the Freon-free foam had destroyed nearly 11 times as many of the shuttle's ceramic tiles as had the foam containing Freon. The politicized foam was less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures. But apparently little or nothing was done to resist the environmentalist politicians.

Re:A rare opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

"What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for increased NASA funding, as part of a commitment to keep America at the forefront of technological leadership worldwide"

You mean like this one?

Re:A rare opportunity

[pmz]

Things here on earth tend to take precedence.

One interesting side-effect of the "good old days" of the cold war is that NASA fed tremendous amounts of "space tech" into regular earthly endeavors. Now, the world is much less directed and much more scatterbrained, so the effeciency of an agency like NASA to do targeted R&D cannot be good. In the 1960's they just build a big damn rocket and put three men on it--very direct and practical. Now, no one can decide between single-stage to orbit, space airplanes, nanotube columns, rail guns, traditional ballisic rockets--just watching the Discovery Channel about these things leave one confused and wanting their security blanket.

(Americans think that 15% of the budget goes to foriegn aid, and it should be around 5%, wheras in reality its more like .4%)

I thought the "Defense" pie slice covered the foreign aid part...

Re:A rare opportunity

[Mr_Matt]

Seems to me there's no pressure on NASA to be practical or cost efficient, which is whats really needed.

Not only does this pressure exist, it has been listed as a contributory cause to both the Challenger and the Columbia accident. Chapter 5 and 6.2 of the CAIB final report goes into this in great detail.

"An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little" seems to sum up these sections. Keeping in mind that NASA's budget varies between one-half and one percent of the national budget, that's not to far afield. By way of comparison, NASA's budget is comparable to what the U.S. spends on food stamps. We spend ~30 times as much money on Social Security as we do on the entirity of NASA, with much, much higher expectations on safety and mission success. Don't even get me started on the ratio of DoD funding to NASA's. :)

Seems to me there's too much pressure on NASA to be practical and cost efficient given the dearth of resources we give them. Frankly, it's a miracle we fly in space at all.

Re:A rare opportunity

[ansible]

What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for increased NASA funding, as part of a commitment to keep America at the forefront of technological leadership worldwide.

Well, to be very blunt: Fuck that.

I will say to anyone and everyone that NASA gets far, far too much money, for few tangible results.

Just take a look at what the X-Prize contenders are doing with thousands (not millions and certainly not billions) of dollars. It costs hundreds of millions per shuttle launch (probably more after the accident). Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we gave that money as a prize to organizations demonstrating cheap and safe lauch vehicles?

Through a variety of factors, NASA and their buddies the major aerospace contractors have strangled real research and innovation in space technology. We could have had tourist rides to orbit and space hotels already, for the money that was spent on the shuttle program. And more digital radio and TV, and more location services, and cheap satellite mapping, and so on.

Burning more money on a 30 year old launch vehicle isn't keeping us at the forefront of technology. It is holding us back. NASA these days is a jobs program for the aerospace industry. They do things to keep people busy, rather than helping humanity go to the planets and stars.

Re:A rare opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need to do is give NASA a goal and time table that are completely unreasonable. Going to the moon by the end of the decade was ludicrous when Kennedy first said it, but we still got there because we had brilliant people who were very well motivated (not just by money) working for a common goal that "can't be done".

If you told all the NASA engineers that you wanted a Mars colony by 2015 and that 1) money was no object and 2) all the idiot suits were out of a job as of now, you'd not only get a Mars colony in late 2014, but you'd also see some really cool new technology. It'd be the stuff that had to get invinted to make the goal happen.

Re:A rare opportunity

[Moofie]

Screw that.

All NASA need do to justify their existence is point at the tax revenues from businesses that depend on satellite communications.

Then we can double their budget, shoot all the bureuacrats, and get to work colonizing the solar system.

Re:A rare opportunity

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Unfortunately, I think NASA is pretty low on every candidates radar. Things here on earth tend to take precedence.

NASA is located where, exactly? Though I grant you, sometimes it seems that Texas is on a planet by itself.

Re:A rare opportunity

[mr_tap]

Have a look at the following quote from the April 1980 article linked to by the parent comment

Some suspect the tile mounting is the least of Columbia's difficulties. "I don't think anybody appreciates the depths of the problems," Kapryan says. The tiles are the most important system NASA has ever designed as "safe life." That means there is no back-up for them. If they fail, the shuttle burns on reentry. If enough fall off, the shuttle may become unstable during landing, and thus un-pilotable. The worry runs deep enough that NASA investigated installing a crane assembly in Columbia so the crew could inspect and repair damaged tiles in space. (Verdict: Can't be done. You can hardly do it on the ground.)

Scary!

The future of NASA

[Liselle]

NASA appears to have fallen from a great height. I wonder if this means that the space program is going to become more and more privatized. It also makes me curious: if there was more public interest in space program in general (ie: more tax money for NASA), would this sort of thing still happen, or would it just be on a larger scale?

Summary:

[RealityProphet]

"A terrible accident occured. It's nobody's fault, really. These things happen. We'll try to be more careful in the future. But, spaceflight is risky business, we can't make any guarantees."

Re:Summary:

[applemasker]

What I find most distressing is how the mission managers and program managers have all run for cover. There are people to blame, starting with the folks who never followed up on the previous foam issues; the managers who squelched engineers requests for imagery; and the mission team who met a handful of times during the flight (even though the regs require daily meetings) and never thought of what might happen if the foam had hit the RCC. Come on, it IS rocket science guys.

Re:Summary:

[terrymr]

The military/intelligence services had a hand in the imagery issue, because they hadn't cleared the Shuttle Program Manager to be briefed on the spy satellite's capabilities he was operating under the impression that they were unable to image small enough details. I don't remember where I read this but it was in one of the earlier reports.

Re:Summary:

[Chanc_Gorkon]

These managers are not realy to blame. Looing at the report, it, to me, is distressing that the money budgeted to NASA over the years has gone DOWN! Way down. The expectations for money spent, especially in times such as these, has gone up. Unfortunately for NASA and lots of others (IS Folks included) when we say we need X amount of days to do this safely or right WE MEAN IT!

Case in point.....where I work we are in the midst of completely replacing a mainframe system with one based on UNIX. They expected to get the whole thing crammed in and working in a year. This is a much more comprehensive system then our current one and you also want to have all of the data you have accumulated in 30+ years of operation. Sure, some data is not needed that long but how would you like to tell the guy who wants to take a programming course who had already been doing it for many years that he had to take College level Algebra again because his record was lost? You don't. But the luddites in other areas think you can BELIEVE what a vendor tells you and be able to get a system converted in a year. A System that took 20 years of development (over time). Not going to happen.

Same thing happens at NASA. They EXPECT the shuttle to do things it was not really intended and to last longer then it was designed to last and this simply can't be done. It can be extended for a time, but that time can't keep moving out. The US needs to put MORE into space as it's the key to knowing where we came from. Space is also going to be the most likely place where our demise would be met. Not knowing what is out there is our drive to go explore. Finding things that are important to know also is a pleasant surprise.

I find it strange that Boeing is looking at capsules again. Maybe it is our answer for keeping things safe? I don't know. One thing that still kind of baffles me is that they have yet to study a replacement for the TPS that has a higher tolerance for impact damage and that has less seams. Are TPS systems for spacecraft still stuck in the 60's? Apparantly they are!

Vol. 1

[pheared]

248 pages and this is only volume 1.

So, what they're saying is...

[gowen]

What they're saying is that

for a successful technology, reality must take precedence to public relations, for nature can not be fooled.

Well, surprise, surprise. Thats what Richard Feynman said is his minority report on the Challenger accident.

Plus ca change...

Lessons learned

[byolinux]

Hopefully there can be some valuable lessons learned from this tragedy. Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

Re:Lessons learned

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly the fuck was that supposed to contribute? This is a serious question.

Re:Lessons learned

[sphealey]

Hopefully there can be some valuable lessons learned from this tragedy. Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

While no one is in favor of needlessly throwing away life, do consider that the bones of a good percentage of the settlers who tried the Oregon Trail can still be seen along the sides of that trail today. For the ones who made it, Oregon was a good life. But quite a few did not make it, and that is the nature of exploring/pioneering.

Also consider that that same week 90 people were roasted/squashed to death while attempting the life-altering experience of seeing "Great White" live on stage. Seems to me that space exploration is worth a bit more risk than that event.

sPh

Re:Lessons learned

[Urkki]

Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

Yes sure. But something like this inevitably will happen again. I just hope it won't deter us from continuing with manned space exploration. (There might be other reasons to have a pause in manned space exploration, but fear of loss of life should never be one.)

Re:Lessons learned

[SpamJunkie]

Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

That's what we said last time. Spaceflight is a risky business and will be for a while.

Re:Lessons learned

[jafac]

"For the ones who made it, Oregon was a good life"

yeah, but now, Oregon's forests are being stripped bare, and there's 10% unemployment.

Accident Report

[JeffWhitledge]

"The total blame for the Colombia accident rests squarly on the shoulders of Kim Johnson of Springfield, MO." Ever have one of those days?

Re:Accident Report

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame Kim for everything

Failure is not an Option?

[tinrobot]

Funny how the History Channel special on the early space program came out this week. After watching it, I realized how much different NASA is today. They have no fire in their belly, seems like they're more interested in keeping their jobs than anything. If we want to continue sending men into space, we had better start doing it right once again.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[The Original Yama]

I don't blame them. Since the end of the space race with the USSR, NASA funding has been continually eroded over time. Understandably, NASA personnel have become more conservative and focused on keeping their jobs rather than taking risks. NASA isn't the problem, it's politics that's retarding their progress.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[stratjakt]

I realized how much different NASA is today. They have no fire in their belly, seems like they're more interested in keeping their jobs than anything

You know this how? You work at NASA? You were in mission control when Columbia went up?

About the only thing that's changed is that there's a no smoking rule. I live only a stones throw away from Gottard, and know dozens of people at various levels within NASA.

They are all extremely passionate about their work, and they all took Columbia very, very personally.

Dont make overly broad statements about a group of people you know absolutely nothing about.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[urbazewski]

They have no fire in their belly,

I agree that NASA seems to be wandering rathering than striding forward. I personally think the primary cause is lack of a clear goal. I worked as a contractor at the NASA Ames Research Center for several years, and I had a look at NASA's 'mission statement' which came out in a very glossy 25 page booklet. (This was when Dan Goldin was Chief Admin.) It had a vision statement, key values, crosscutting procedures, about 10 significant questions, which all had subquestions, as well as some goals. My overall impression was "this could only have been produced by an organization that has no idea whatsoever what it's trying to do." A bit of an overstatement, but I think that the individual researchers and engineers (including myself) had plenty of drive but not enough direction.

Not to mention, NASA had its share of PHB type memos, particularly the ones Goldin used to send around about 'safety'. Worse was the requirement for each group to have a 'safety marshal' to give little talks on 'safety'. Alas, no shiny plastic badges or hats were issued with the job.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Detritus]

Back in the "good old days", there was enough money and people to do things the right way, even with some overkill. The post-Apollo era has been a long slow slide downhill. Much of NASA is now a hollow organization. Budget cuts have resulted in dramatically lowered standards. The institutional memory is fading away as people retire, die, move on to better jobs or get laid off. New hires are rarely seen. Periodic reorganizations try to mask the fact that the agency is decaying. The question is never "What do we need to do this the right way?", it's "How do we survive with N fewer people next year and perform some critical subset of our current responsibilities?", with the critical subset being redefined to match the available budget.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I live only a stones throw away from Gottard"

And yet you can't spell it.

Sheesh.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I live only a stones throw away from Gottard"

If you live so close, then how come you don't know that its spelled "Goddard" ?

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow a typo! Lets not listen to him!

Sheesh.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a typo. A typo would be 'Gossard' or 'Godfard'. Typing 'Gottard' is a misspelling. In this case, it indicates that the the guy's story is likely bullshit.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been thinking that we need another John Kennedy.

If someone in power could sell to this country that we need to go to Mars, a lot could turn around. NASA is losing respect, because they're piddling around in low-earth orbit. The thing is, that's most of what they're asked to do right now. They have to much burocracy, partly because they're running lots of little programs with lots of outside agencies, which sucks up management. They also have high overhead because they try to do things right.

Now, if the president decides to spend $10b to get to Mars by 2010 (wait, Jupiter!), then NASA really gets to build up steam, invent new technologies, do lots of science, etc. They get to try to regain the 60's.

I also think that a good portion of the country wants to be able to root for something. Look at the unity after 9/11, people want to be proud to be an American, but we have nothing to really get behind. Being able to get excited about doing another "first in history" thing might be enough to wake up the country. Happier people, some more money bouncing around in the economy, good things.

The biggest problem I see is that we're a nation of cynics now. If GWB proposed the plan, then every democrat or green party candidate would come out about how it's a waste of money and will ruin us all. We don't have the "evil russians" to compete against this time. As I said, we need a leader strong enough to propose something that drastic, and charismatic enough to actually sell it to the people. We also need congress to stop playing politics long enough to actually do the right thing.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[demachina]

You can certainly blame some of NASA's problems on politicians, and the Air Force. But from my view the huge bureaucracy behind the space shuttle and the space station simply don't deserve any more funding. Don't try to tell me the problem is they aren't getting enough money. They are spending huge sums on the space shuttle and space station, but they aren't accomplishing anything with either.

The GAO, in 2002, estimated the total cost of the space station will be $100 billion dollars and it now appears that will be a crippled subset of the original design. It may well house just enough people to maintain it and its unlikely it will accomplish any useful science. When was the last time you heard of a scientific breakthrough coming out of Spacelab or the ISS to justify the vast sums being spent?

These two programs are bleeding the rest of NASA white and will continue to do so for ever unless someone stops them because they are entrenched bureaucracies living on pork barrel politics. They are starving programs that might do something useful. Real cases can be made for investing in all new cheap launch vehicles, and to funding a moon base or a Mars colony. The latter two would revive some sense of adventure in space exploration which is completely lost in what NASA is doing now. There current goal appears to be "lets just get a few people to low earth orbit and back again without killing them".

I think the whole agency, along with their political overseers, needs to step back and develop a real and provable case for why what there doing now is worth the amount of money being spent. If they can't, the shuttle and ISS should be scraped and the money should be poured in to programs that matter. It would also help if the whole entrenched bureaucracy in these two programs were sacked and they start rehiring for new programs fom scratch based on merit and rebellious can-do attitude.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Qa-Spel]

Thanks for the support of NASA. I hate it when somebody makes swooping generalizations about something that don't know anything about. Oh, and it's Goddard, not Gottard.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[johnnyb]

I don't think they need a provable case - space exploration is something we need to do. However, I do think they need to have a _goal_. Right now their goal is to send people up and come back. Can't we have a better goal than that? Perhaps the next goal can be a station on the moon. But we need to have a goal.

Now, the problem is that us on the ground really don't know what all is necessary to fly into space, so our calculations of cost aren't necessarily useful. However, we should give them a fixed budget, and have _them_ tell us how much time it's going to take.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA isn't the problem, it's politics that's retarding their progress.

I really think the problem lies somewhere in between. When this foam-hitting-the-shuttle issue started coming up, their final analysis (atleast public analysis) was that since it didn't cause any problems before, it should be ok. It doesn't take an engineer to figure that a gash in the wing and/or body of the craft will eventually cause problems. Now why they were taking this type of approach to the situation might be related to funding, down-sizing, whatever. Either way, things need to change at NASA if they expect their funding to atleast stay where it is at, let alone get more funding in the future.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[4of12]

PHB type memos, particularly the ones Goldin used to send around about 'safety'.

Ah, yes.

My company, the same one that Dilbert works for, does similar things when the shit hits the fan.

Everyone runs around with their hands up in the air -

"How could this have possibly happened?"

"Who's to blame?"

"What processes need to be put into place?"

when they start to "put in place processes" then you're on the road to mind-numbing bureaucratization.

I can't tell you how many times I've sat in mandatory meetings about safety, environmental consciousness, equal employment opportunity, ethical behavior, etc. just so that someone can check the boxes that say:

"The X Corporation believes in Y. We have a documented program for Y. Annually, 100% of our employees attend a Y training session. Additionally, our Y documentation is reviewed annually and has become incorporated into our Mission/Vision Statement. Everyone receives a copy of this statement."

what a crock.

When I was younger, in school, one of my engineering professors gave us a 5 minute talk about safety, the upshot being that if we designed anything that was unsafe and it took someone else's life that we'd feel worse than we'd ever want to know.

That was enough for me to realize the responsibility involved.

And the Columbia disaster brought home this message to everyone at NASA in stark terms better than anything else.

The accident itself represents a more important prod to not let anything like this ever happen again than any number of Y programs or processes or finger pointing after the fact.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[demachina]

I'm afraid the ISS and space shuttle aren't doing anything remotely resembling space exploration. They aren't doing anything that wasn't done 20 years ago. Spending vast sums to achieve LEO is embarrassing, its not exploration. Some things that would qualify as exploration are missions to the moon, mars and the asteroid belt.

I'm 100% in favor of space exploration and I wasn't saying it needs a provable case, I just don't think NASA's manned space program does any of it any more. The remnants of exploration are a handful of unmanned probes and observatories launched from expendable rockets.

It appears the only hope our species has for doing space exploration again lies in places like China since they will have the economic wherewithall and they are setting challenging goals in the same way the U.S. did in the 60's.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just stick to sending women into space instead.

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[orius_khan]

I've been thinking that we need another John Kennedy.

You mean that asshole that keeps trying to get me to renew my "TopSites.us listing"?? Fuck that guy!

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think part of the problem is that NASA doesn't seem to have moved on from the von Braun vision: build a shuttle to reduce launch costs, build a space station as the basis for exploration missions, then start exploring the rest of the solar system.

Problem is, von Braun's vision only makes sense if there are large numbers of flights involved. As it stands, the shuttle and ISS, the first two parts, have used up so much money that it will be years if ever that they can be used to launch *a single* out-of-LEO manned mission. And by the time the money's there both may be beyond their effective lives.

Stephen Baxter's novel "Voyage" is an interesting what-if of NASA going all-out for Mars and keeping Skylab instead of developing the shuttle ('though I think he's over-critical of the NERVA nuclear rocket).

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Nothing's changed?

Would von Braun have overlooked the foam strikes? Or taken a contractor's Powerpoint presentation at face value?

Would Gene Kranz have vetoed getting satellite photos of the wing area? Would he have assumed that there was no corrective action, therefore no point in finding out?

Would *anybody* in the Apollo project have launched in weather the vehicle wasn't qualified for, after getting an explicit description from an engineer about what would go wrong?

Re:Failure is not an Option?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a few of them are already there.

Looks like it's going to take a while...

[NerdGirl82]

...for anyone to RTFA.

Re:Looks like it's going to take a while...

[mortonda]

Not to worry... with /.'s patent pending O(0) RTFM algorithm, /. readers can RTFM in no time at all, and be complete experts on the matter, as evidenced by the great quality of posts.

In other words, you're new here, aren't you?

Re:Looks like it's going to take a while...

[jayrtfm]

I just did. made me want to start a "deport Linda Ham" petition.
otherwise, not much dufferent than the Rogers report. very sad.

Re:Looks like it's going to take a while...

[orius_khan]

So? It's not like that's going to stop us from posting or anything...

Well Duh

[ShishCoBob]

I think most of us saw this coming. You do need to give credit where credit it due. At least they got the full report out in a timely manner unlike some other places.

Not another boring space launch!

[yoshi1013]

"So how's the shuttle doing?"

"Hmm, I don't know, all this equipment is for measuring TV ratings"

:P

Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[Alrocket]

I don't seriously believe that the culture of NASA will change as a result of this report. Feynman noticed all of these issues and made sure that he met the engineers alone, without any management, when he needed to find out the real answers.

It didn't change since then, it's not going to change now.

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[ChuckDivine]

Sadly, you could be right about NASA not changing.

There are, however, some hopeful differences. Let me list a few:

• There have been a lot more obvious blunders committed in the public eye. Consider Hubble's focusing problems, the crash on Mars of probes because one group was using metric and the other English units, space station woes, the X-33 failure.
• Compared to 1986 there are more people with real knowledge about the agency who are willing to speak up about the agency's problems. In 1986 extremely interested people were far more willing to cut NASA a break. That's not true anymore.
• Significant politicians (e.g., Mikulski) are more aware of the problems and are willing to take action.
• The CAIB's citing of a "culture" problem marks an important step. People are no longer looking just at technology, but at the organization that creates and uses the technology.

This event is being viewed as NASA's Vietnam. That's a real wake up call.

Yes, things could still go wrong. There are plenty of well entrenched people who have turf to protect. But that's going to be much harder now.

And, I suspect, a lot of the good people who still manage to work in aerospace are also going to work to change things.

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[EvanED]

"The CAIB's citing of a "culture" problem marks an important step. People are no longer looking just at technology, but at the organization that creates and uses the technology."

The Challenger report* also significantly critized the organization of NASA, though they didn't use the word "culture" per se. Of the report however, only one chapter was on the technical aspects of the accident, while two (one of which was longer than the technical one) examined two different management issues.

The commission gave 9 reccomendations. Here's how they broke down:
-Only one was in an area concerned with the accident proper: fix the O-rings
-Four more were in other "technical" areas: review criticality 1 and 2 components (those whose loss would likely destroy the shuttle), improve the landing systems (the runways, not parts on the shuttle), "make every effort" to provide an escape system, and increase maintainence.
-*Four more* were in management areas: put astronauts in management (presumably they would feel more accountable to the safety of the crew), have an office for safety that oversees the entire program, eliminate "management isolation" (managers not talking to one another), and slow its attempted flight rate (NASA wanted 2/month in the early days to prove the shuttle was worth its cost).

So looking at management is not a new thing here.

*The full title is Report to the President, by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident... how's that for a governmental report title?

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[EvanED]

BTW: the classifications into technical and management reccomendations is my own; in the actual report they are mixed together based on where they are discussed in the text.

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[jafac]

X-33 had little or nothing to do with NASA.
A contractor thought they could do "x", and when they tried, they found they could not. End of story. A worthwhile pursuit - and were it not for the vagaries of budget assignment, it would still be a worthwhile pursuit, because I belive that "x" (SSTO in a reusable craft) *CAN* be done - it just needs more time on the drawing board.

But NASA was not much involved beyond the requirements stage. They're certainly not responsible for the failure of the project.

Re:Feynman said exactly this 16 years ago

[forgotmypassword]

There have been a lot more obvious blunders committed in the public eye. Consider Hubble's focusing problems,

For anyone that works with large telescope lenses, the lens problem was completely and absolutely understandable. It was fixable and it was fixed.

The media really blew things out of proportion.

Now for the units thing, that was absolutely retarted and not forgivable at all.

Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

I used to be a big believer in the NASA Myth: that they were the only ones capable of doing big space launches and that space access for humans was inherently expensive.

Then I heard Jerry Pournelle speak a couple years ago at a convention. He said something that shook me: NASA has many good people and does many good things but needs to get out of the business of launching people and robots into space. It surprised me because here is a guy who is in favor of space exploration but against NASA.

NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut! The shuttle accidents are a symptom of bureaucratic mentality. Think on this: the Russian space agency will charge you about $15M for a trip to the space station. It costs between $500M and $1 billion just to do a shuttle launch.

NASA does a great job building Mars rovers and such, let's keep them doing that. But we should turn everything else over to private industry.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[stratjakt]

Turn what over to private industry?

Theres nothing to turn over, private industry can just go ahead and launch stuff into space, and do, as they shroud our planet in satellites.

Thats like saying the Air Force should stop researching new airplane technology. Let private industry develop the SCRAM jet.

Private industry isnt interested - they're motivated by profit. There's no money to be made studying the effects of 0 G on lima beans.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[geekoid]

whew, I guess that explains why there budget doesn't get cut all the time... hmmmm

Private industry can not take up the flag for space exploration until a cheaper way is found to get there. In order for that to happen there must be central agency that focuses on this, and the agency must get government funding.
Nasa needs to keep doing what it has been doing, and it needs to be able to explore other RnD efforts.

The only company the could do priovate space launch successfully would be microsoft, and even there 40+billion wouldn't ge them far.

Actually, it doesn't have to get cheaper, but it oes have to get profitable.

once private companies do start backing manned space exporation, we had be damn sure there is a controlling body for safty, and launches. I do not want the space equivilent of baby bells.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[costas]

Agreed. I also buy the analogy the Rutan brothers and the X-Prize folks are using for their efforts to the time of the Wright brothers: even while heavier-than-air-aircraft would have been a huge military deal just before WWI, most of the true research and development happened by individuals and private companies --and that way of thinking and excelling continued straight into WWII.

In those days NACA (NASA's pre-cursor) did not compete with aviation companies, like NASA does today. NACA would conduct extensive (and expensive) research (into airfoils for example) and release massive amounts of data into the public domain. Hell, the NACA airfoil series are still very, very useful today.

All that changed post-WWII and into the Cold War when aerospace superiority begame a Huge Deal and massive amounts of government spending into defense products created/re-inforced the military-industrial complex that has taken over aerospace in the last few decades. Today, NASA is a cartel of the big US aerospace companies to live off huge government contracts while achieving very little and avoiding competition and raising cost-of-entry into exorbitant levels...

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[TheSync]

NASA is the only organization that can work on nuclear rockets, which I believe will prove to be the only efficient way to get into orbit for reasonable prices. Other aspects should be left to private enterprise.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[gclef]

Wait, you're using the fact that a totally government-supported group (Russian space agency) will do something cheaper than a public-private consortium (shuttle) as evidence that the *private* sector does this better? Funny, your example seems to prove the exact opposite.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[solarlux]

How this parent get modded to 5?

> NASA as an organization doesn't really care about cheap, reliable space launches, because that would mean that their budget would be cut!

NASA has quite a few projects under research and development. See NASA Projects -- NASA is researching cheaper ways to conduct space launches. Believe me, it behooves them to do so. Cutting costs in ANY area leaves more to apply to additional research. Congress doesn't ask NASA for bill based on the "cost of exploring space" -- they toss whatever crumbs they can spare from the budget. Granted, congress monitors how the money is spent, but to say cost savings = budget cuts is a massive oversimplification.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[gpinzone]

Let's see, it costs NASA 500M and the Russians only 15M. Unless they have some kind of magic rocket technology that the USA doesn't know about, I'm going to assume that the Russian system probably lacks a number of "frills" from their American counterparts. And now the obligatory Simpson's quote:

Crazy Vlaclav : She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.
Homer : What country is this car from?
Crazy Vlaclav : It no longer exists. But take her for a test drive, and you'll agree: (states their slogan)

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[jandrese]

NASA will never work on nuclear rockets. The political dangers are staggering, and NASA lives and dies on the whims of congressmen and their idiot special interest groups. They can barely sneak radio-isotope reactors out of the atmosphere as it is, imagine them trying to use a nuclear rocket on Earth.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[solarlux]

See this News Article for information about NASA's Space Launch Initiative program.

"The reusable space plane, equipped with crew escape and automatic landing systems, would be far safer than the shuttle, officials said Tuesday in unveiling 15 design concepts. It also would be much cheaper to operate, they promised."

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

NASA has been doing what NASA does for the past 20 years with Shuttle. It hasn't gotten you or me any closer to leaving this rock. The Shuttle program is the biggest single expense for NASA. NASA hasn't really dealt with the cost issue at all.

For the price of a single Shuttle launch, the Russians can put 50 people in space. For $40 billion you could run 4000 X-Prize programs.

Government involvement in the form of X-Prize style programs might not be such a bad thing.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[hackstraw]

Private industry can not take up the flag for space exploration...

There is no profit in exploration. The only equivalent is R&D, and that typically only accounts for about 10% of a company's budget.

In order for that to happen [cheaper space flights] there must be central agency that focuses on this, and the agency must get government funding.

That would be the FAA.

Nasa needs to keep doing what it has been doing, and it needs to be able to explore other RnD efforts.

Just because you and 99% of the population associate NASA == Space Shuttle does not mean that it is true. Its name is Aeronautics and Space, not space, and thier budget is something like 20% for space IIRC. (BTW, NASA's budget is currently about the same ad DEA. Which would you rather fund?)

The only company the could do priovate space launch successfully would be microsoft, and even there 40+billion wouldn't ge them far.

Oh really. Take a look at this PDF that talks about private launches and how there has been a 15% growth in the market annually.

once private companies do start backing manned space exporation, we had be damn sure there is a controlling body for safty, and launches.

Again, there is no forseeable profit in sending a couple of people in space a couple times a year. Airlines have a steady flow of revenue and have trouble making profits.

For more info, there is an article discussing France's private launches. And one and another about Brazil. This looks like a new US company for space launches called space tethers. And this talks about how "Latin America Pioneered the Satellite Communications World".

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[confused one]

Ever heard of Prometheus? It's a nuclear propulsion system... It's been funded.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[Rich0]

I think he is referring to the cost of a ride that the Russians were selling on the free market (think Lance Bass).

The prices are real - and the Russian craft is the same they use for any other work. However, there are a few reasons the costs are so different.

1. The Russians really do control costs far more than the USA does. Their ship design is far more minimalistic - it gets people and cargo into space and little more.

2. The costs being compared are apples and oranges. The one is the price of a flight, the other the cost of a ticket. If a russian ship could hold 4 men and they sold 4 tickets for $60 million there is no way they could afford to launch it. However, if they have to fly the ship anyway for a few hundred million and they have an empty seat, the $15 million will more than pay for the each fuel.

The same sort of reasoning applies to discount airline tickets. If all airline tickets were sold on priceline.com, the airlines would go out of business - they're sold below cost. On the other hand, if you already have a profitable flight booked and have a few extra seats, as long as the discount ticket price pays for the peanuts and soda they might as well get something for the seat.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

NASA has not delived on their promises in the area of human spaceflight for the past 25 years.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[pmz]

Private industry can not take up the flag for space exploration until a cheaper way is found to get there.

Then explain how Burt Rutan appears to have created a very elegant X Prize plane within the means of his relatively small company.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

Consider that a big pile of taxpayer money is going to support NASA, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. This money could be more effectively spent via bounties like the X-Prize.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

This is a good point and should be modded up.

My point was that there are clearly better ways of doing things, but NASA isn't doing them.

The Russians have stuck with a cheap spacecraft developed in the 1970's. The Americans have stuck with an expensive spacecraft developed in the 1970's.

I admit it: there isn't really any proof yet that X-Prize type bounties will work. But it looks likely that the X-Prize will be won within the next year. And that should help kill the NASA myth.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Private industry can not take up the flag for space exploration until a cheaper way is found to get there. In order for that to happen there must be central agency that focuses on this, and the agency must get government funding.

A couple of suggestions; NASA could contract-out for launches. They could even guarantee a minimum number of launches per year, and a good contract could include a performance clause to penalize shoddy work. Kind-of like the early airmail contracts in the last century.

The aforementioned Jerry Pournelle also has proposed a sort-of government awarded X-prize idea.

THIS ALL BEGAN WHEN I SAID:

I can solve the space access problem with a few sentences.

Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States:

The Treasurer of the United States is directed to pay to the first American owned company (if corporate at least 60% of the shares must be held by American citizens) the following sums for the following accomplishments. No monies shall be paid until the goals specified are accomplished and certified by suitable experts from the National Science Foundation or the National Academy of Science:

1. The sum of $2 billion to be paid for construction of 3 operational spacecraft which have achieved low earth orbit, returned to earth, and flown to orbit again three times in a period of three weeks.

2. The sum of $5 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a space station which has been continuously in orbit with at least 5 Americans aboard for a period of not less than three years and one day. The crew need not be the same persons for the entire time, but at no time shall the station be unoccupied.

3. The sum of $12 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a Lunar base in which no fewer than 31 Americans have continuously resided for a period of not less than four years and one day.

4. The sum of $10 billion to be paid for construction and maintenance of a solar power satellite system which delivers at least 800 megaWatts of electric power to a receiving station or stations in the United States for a period of at least two years and one day.

5. The payments made shall be exempt from all US taxes.

That would do it. Not one cent to be paid until the goals are accomplished. Not a bit of risk, and if it can't be done for those sums, well, no harm done to the treasury.

Henry Vanderbilt points out that having a prize, say $1 billion, for the second firm to achieve point (1) above will get more into the competition, and produce better results. I agree.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[solarlux]

What have they promised in terms of space launch developments? They simply haven't aimed very high, being content with their expensive shuttle launch method. However, the next 10-15 years are looking much more positive.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

And all of NASA's R&D on cheap space launches in the last 30 years has paid off how, exactly?

You failed to mention a critical step in the process: NASA makes a budgetary request every year to Congress to tell them what they need. This year's Shuttle budget is about $3.8 billion, which they could use to run 10 Russian space programs or 380 X-Prizes.

Congress then cuts back from that, adds some pork, then approves the budget.

Eliminating the Shuttle would mean transfers, layoffs, re-training, firings, demotions, and the like. If you worked for NASA, would you want to be the one responsible for putting that in the budget?

Oh, and the parent was modded to a 5 because it makes sense.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[chroma]

I'm guessing that you're younger than I am and thus don't remember the stuff that was said in the 80's and 90's.

The promise I was thinking of is the cost of space access via the Shuttle. But others come to mind, too: ISS costs, DC-X/X-33.

And back on topic, after the Challenger accident they also promised that management would listen to the engineers when so that the Shuttle wouldn't kill any more people.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[ansible]

Private industry can not take up the flag for space exploration until a cheaper way is found to get there. In order for that to happen there must be central agency that focuses on this, and the agency must get government funding.

Bullshit.

Rocket science isn't "Rocket Science" anymore. That was 40 years ago. We know how to do cheap launches. We could put payloads in orbit for 1/100th the cost that NASA does with the shuttle.

The problem is that we've created this bureaucratic mess called NASA. Between them, the major aerospace contractors (who don't want their meal tickets cancelled) and the FAA, they're preventing anyone from developing cheaper and more reliable launch platforms. Read about the trials and tribulations of the X-Prize conteners for example.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[mfrank]

I've got a 25 year old book that describes how the space shuttle will have a launch cost of $100 a pound, and can be launched every month.

You can't trust anything a govt bureaucrat says because they can't be fired. No big whoop for them if they don't meet their cost targets.

Re:Time to shrink NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many space trips has it done?

Wake me up when private industry provides a manned orbital flight.

*sigh*

[rwven]

It's interesting that the first thing they said about it was that there was only a tiny chance that the foam had anything to do with it. It's weird how things turn around like that.

I think the bottom line behind all this is most likely money. They have cut so many budgets as far as space goes and forced them to do fewer and fewer pre-flight inspections that something like this was almost guaranteed.

"Confidential interviews with shuttle workers at NASA and its contractors, 'from line technicians all the way through management', found no one who believed that preflight safety inspections were adequate, a member of the independent board investigating the loss of the Columbia has said." Linkage (and more of the same): http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/29/10541776 72378.html

It's sad that it had to come to something like this for a wakeup call to be heard, but i guess all they can get out of it is to be more careful and not let it happen again. what else can ya get i guess... :-/

Re:*sigh*

[NerdGirl82]

I beg to differ on the foam issue.

"The physical cause of the loss of _Columbia_ and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing, cause by a peice of insulating foam which separated from the left bipod ramp section of the External Tank at 81.7 seconds after launch, and strsuch the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel number 8...."

Re:*sigh*

[rwven]

i know, that's whay i was acknowledging. But right after it happened, they all but dismissed that that was even a possibiliy of the problem. and now they say that that is what it was after all. kinda interesting...

Re:*sigh*

[NerdGirl82]

Fair enough. I misinterpretted your remark. I thought you meant first in the article rather than early in the aftermath of the accident.

Re:*sigh*

[Ripp]

Righto...however what the original poster was referring to was the initial response (at the time of the incident) of NASA that the foam couldn't have been the problem. I watched the NASA-Channel press briefings where the man-in-charge (forget names) passed around a chunk of the stuff and said "This *can not* be it!"

Whoops?

Re:*sigh*

[glassesmonkey]

It's sad that it had to come to something like this for a wakeup call to be heard, but i guess all they can get out of it is to be more careful and not let it happen again. what else can ya get i guess... :-/

Jebus, I can't believe I see this mentality EVERYWHERE regarding this story!!

Wrong -- this was the 1986 response, not the 2003 response. This is such BS that the same failure of mgmt response to engineering concerns is ALLOWED to happen yet again. Clearly nothing changed from pre-1986 NASA and I doubt anything real will change in the future NASA. Just throw enough reports and studies at the problem, wait a while, and then call it solved... erm, until the next incineration of humans due to engineering oversight.

change of mindset

[mks180]

It seems to me that somewhere along the way NASA has changed from an operation mode where you had to prove that something was safe to proving that something is not safe.

Plus ca change...

[Anonymous Coward]

plus c'est pareil.

It's Huge!

[Jeremy Erwin]

Look's like a 10 megabyte pdf-- you can download chapters individually,but unless you're piqued by soul inspiring names such as "Chapter 3", Chapter Nine", and "Chapter Seven", it's a bit of a black box.

So, for handy reference, here are the chapter titles.

PART ONE THE ACCIDENT
Chapter 1 The Evolution of the Space Shuttle Program
Chapter 2 Columbia?s Final Flight
Chapter 3 Accident Analysis
Chapter 4 Other Factors Considered
PART TWO WHY THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED
Chapter 5 From Challenger to Columbia
Chapter 6 Decision Making at NASA
Chapter 7 The Accident?s Organizational Causes
Chapter 8 History as Cause: Columbia and Challenger
PART THREE A LOOK AHEAD
Chapter 9 Implications for the Future of Human Space Flight
Chapter 10 Other Significant Observations
Chapter 11 Recommendations
PART FOUR APPENDICES
Appendix A The Investigation
Appendix B Board Member Biographies
Appendix C Board Staff

Managed by accountants rather than engineers

[hughk]

In an engineering led process any engineer has the right to say "stop, I believe we have a problem". The problem may be proved to be non-existant, but someone must address it and escalate it.

Regrettably, many organisations insist that you be "Part of the solution" not "Part of the problem" (I think this was an AC buzz-phrase). This meant that unless you could deliver a problem with a solution, you were associated with failure. At the bottom engineers may gripe but unless the PHBs supervsing them help the problems be escalated, nothing will happen.

In the end if we want public money spent responsibly, then projects have to be managed and accountants must count the beans. However, engineering must have a voice that is equal to that of the manager and the accountant. It is right that an experimental program takes risks, but they must be informed.

Lastly, the space program has provided some very good examples of the managed delivery of quality projects. With Columbia and Challenger we have two major counter-examples. It is both useful and a good memorial to those who died if everyone, both inside and outside NASA learned from this.

mynuts won...AGAIN?

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be .confused buy your corepirate sponsors robbIE?

the planet/population rescue initiave (formerly unknown as the oil for babies effort), IS the topic/stuff that matters until the crisis mode has been lowered.

you probably still bulleave that stuff just 'happens' buy "accident"?

Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[MtViewGuy]

The final report on the loss of Columbia reminds me a lot of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in January 1967. =(

It appears that NASA frequently ignored safety warnings about the fragility of the shuttle tiles, and it appears that in a way that the switch to a more environment-friendly external tank foam material in 1997 may have contributed to the accident due to the fact the new foam had a tendency to shed material at an alarming rate. It reminds me a lot about the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire in the way NASA engineers tacitly ignored the serious fire dangers of exposed wiring, flammable materials and 100% oxygen atmosphere on the ground.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[WolfWithoutAClause]

and it appears that in a way that the switch to a more environment-friendly external tank foam material in 1997

One of the reasons that Columbia wasn't in the same orbit as the ISS was that Columbia was using one of the older, heavier tanks, and as I understand it, those use the older type of foam.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[i_really_dont_care]

Now I don't know anything about NASA, but I think with projects of this scale, project management is more difficult than one might think at first.

If you ever have participated in a bigger industry project you will have noticed that every specialist involved has a _lot_ of objections to how things currently are done. Yet, the optimum solution is often not feasible due to cost constraints. As a result, project managers constantly get a lot of emails in their inbox with people bitching around that this-or-that is not secure enough or that this-or-that should be built more stable or this-or-that software module should please use the Perl programming language. In such a scenario, shit happens, and warnings do get lost.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[terrymr]

It wasn't in the ISS orbit because it wasn't going there.... there's a lot more to an orbit than altitude.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[WolfWithoutAClause]

It wasn't in the ISS orbit because it wasn't going there....

You've missed the point; Columbia wasn't going there partly because it couldn't. Columbia didn't have the delta-v to reach the ISS even from the ground with that version of the tank; but the fact that it didn't have the new tank meant that it didn't have the new foam formulation either.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[mpthompson]

The other night on The History Channel there was a show on the early history of Mission Control through the Apollo program. At one point they had a group of retired flight directors reflecting on the Apollo 1 accident and you could still see the impact the accident has on these men even today. Gene Kranz summarized how everyone at the time had "Go Fever". Despite clearly obvious problems with the capsule, crew training, safety issues, and a host of other nagging issues, nobody in management said time out -- let's slow down and make sure we are doing this right. There was enormous pressure to keep things on track for getting on the moon.

I'm not sure that what happened to Columbia could be traced back to "Go Fever" such as with Apollo 1. Instead, there seems to have been a pervasive attitude of not doing anything that would rock the boat and jeopardize future missions or schedules -- much of it being driven by the need to stay within extremely tight budgets. Something like a "We Can't Afford To Stop Fever".

With 20/20 hindsight, it seems clear that NASA should have done more to investigate impact damage to the wing as soon as it was first suspected. However, doing so would have involved an unplanned and potentially dangerous EVA that would have jeopardized the rest of the mission to look for damage that was only suspected. Then if the damage was confirmed, there would have been the arduous and budget breaking task of quickly launching a rescue shuttle before Columbia ran out of power, water and oxygen (I'm not sure how long consumables could have been stretched, but it would have been a repeat of the Apollo 13 ordeal). Finally, Columbia would have been abandoned in orbit until another expensive mission could be launched to repair the wing and resupply the shuttle with consumables -- if that was even possible. More likely, the abandoned Columbia would have been ditched in the ocean or an attempt made to bring it down remotely with the damaged wing -- either of which would have been a complete loss of the $3B shuttle.

I'm sure that had the astronauts been able to look out the window and see a gaping hole in the wing the rescue of Columbia would have been one of NASA's finest hours. However, given the don't rock the boat mentality, it was sadly easier to pretend nothing was wrong than to really look and live with the consequences of what would have been found.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[cosmo7]

flammable materials and 100% oxygen atmosphere on the ground

very apposite.

Ironically it was the lack of altitude that killed the Apollo crew. When the command module was pressurized in space, it would be at about 0.2 atmospheres of pure oxygen, ie: no great fire hazard. To run the drill on the ground the command module was at over 1 atmosphere of pure oxygen, which is obviously dangerous - it caused velcro in the capsule to explode on ignition. The velcro had been deemed safe, because it wouldn't burn at 0.2 atmospheres. It's easy in hindsight to point out the chain of mistakes, but each individual decision made sense.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[cosmo7]

The reason Columbia never went to the ISS or Mir is that it was too heavy. Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour are lighter.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[MtViewGuy]

Despite clearly obvious problems with the capsule, crew training, safety issues, and a host of other nagging issues, nobody in management said time out -- let's slow down and make sure we are doing this right. There was enormous pressure to keep things on track for getting on the moon.

You have to remember at the time the Apollo 1 fire happened we were in a serious race with the Soviet Union to get a man to the moon. In the haste to get the speed up the Apollo program the issues of the exposed flammable materials, 100% oxygen atmosphere, and slow-opening hatch were tacitly ignored.

Unfortunately, the same haste also caused tragedy with the Soviet space program. Soyuz 1 (the design of which was to eventually become the Soviet equivalent of the Apollo Command Module for their program to fly to the Moon) was launched with cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in April 1967 well before it was properly tested on the ground. When one of the solar panels on Soyuz 1 could not deploy Komarov could not control the spacecraft properly. The return to Earth was essentially an out-of-control re-entry that resulted in the tangling of the parachute and the Soyuz capsule crashed into the steppes of Kazakhstan at around 400 mph, killing Komarov instantly from the impact. Like the Apollo program, it wasn't until the middle of 1968 that the Soviets finally flew Soyuz 3 successfully.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[MtViewGuy]

From reading the Thompson Commission report on the Apollo 1 fire, what happened was that between having WAY too much flammable material exposed inside the Command Module and the fact the escape hatch took too long to open, small wonder why when the fire broke out the astronauts inside never had a chance--they were goners in under 15 seconds.

That's why when the newer AS-204 Command Module was built they made sure there was very little (if any) exposed flammable material inside the spacecraft, the breathable air while on the ground was changed into a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, and the hatch was redesigned so it could be quickly opened.

Re:Reminds me a lot of Apollo 1 disaster

[FamousLongAgo]

RTFR

First, it wasn't a different foam material, it was a blowing agent. HCFC instead of CFC, to help the ozone layer.

Second, the foam that actually broke off was hand-applied, and the report clearly states that hand-applied foam continued to use the old blowing agent.

But don't let that stop you from drawing your insightful conclusions.

what about the oceans?

[justforaday]

for all the good NASA/space exploration has done for us, i have always believed that we need to focus at least the same amount of resources on exploring the ocean. i'm more than certain that there will be some significant gains in doing so...

Re:what about the oceans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if YOU are certain, we had better get right to it!

NASA is no longer a flagship

[Mahrin Skel]

NASA hasn't been the leader in space technology for a long time. They spend too much, accomplish too little, and paradoxically they make it *too* safe. If we were throwing up a launch every other day, and losing a bird a year, we'd get used to it. Astronaut would be just another dangerous profession, like "test pilot", "commercial fisherman", or "underground coal miner".

But because we've lost only 3 crews, and spend over a billion on every launch trying to bring it to zero (and therefore don't get a lot of launches), people are able to delude themselves into thinking that space travel should be safe. So when we do have a problem, everyone looks for someone to blame, NASA writes a few more books of safety procedures, launches get more expensive and less frequent.

You know why we lost the Columbia? Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders. If the astronauts weren't treated as remote voice-controlled drones by the ground crews, and the shuttle commander had the responsibility and authority that goes with that title in any other field, somebody would have put on a suit and taken a look. But an EVA requires the input of hundreds of desk jockeys, and an "emergency" EVA requires authorization from the agency director. What kind of bullshit way to run a railroad is that?

Disband NASA, turn over civilian spaceflight regulation to the FAA (after first burning every regulation NASA ever wrote), turn the shuttle over to the Air Force and unmanned launches over to the civilian companies that really run them already. Otherwise, get used to the idea that the good old USA is no longer a space-faring nation, and other countries with the stomach for it are going to take the lead.

--Dave

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[stratjakt]

Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders

There was no way to do so even if they had an idea there might be something wrong. It's impossible to be crawling around the underside of the craft in orbit.

It had nothing to do with regulations. It was simply not possible.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[kurtkilgor]

And what would they have done if they found a hole in the wing? Patched it up with duct tape? Unfortunately, our technological limitations make the kind of cavalier attitude that you have impractical. Sure, it worked with Apollo 13, but then if you remember, they weren't sure if their heat shield was intact either. They just had to go in with their fingers crossed. Unfortunately, it's going to have to be this frustrating for a while to come.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[introverted]

You know why we lost the Columbia? Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders.

They didn't have the necessary maneuvering equipment (a "rocket pack" if you will) for an EVA that would allow them to look under the wing. An astronaut going outside without one would have no way of moving around to look at the shuttle's lower surfaces. An EVA under those circumstances would have been useless.

Another "obvious" options that wouldn't have worked would have been to go to the ISS for a lookover. The problem there are that ISS is in a different orbit and they didn't have enough fuel to make that orbital change. And even if they did, they'd still have had no way to get aboard the ISS - Columbia had no docking equipment and the lack of EVA equipment would have left them with no way of making the transit. (Jumping between ship and station is nicely dramatic for the movies, but not a terribly good idea in real life.)

The one option they could have used would have been to ask the Military to redirect one of their telescopes and take a look. Sadly, at the time, nobody seems to have thought the foam impact was likely to have caused significant damage.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Anonymous Coward]

You know why we lost the Columbia? Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders.

Logic 101: we lost Columbia because the foam chunk put a hole in it. Looking at the wing would have only told us ahead of time that we were going to lose it.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Anonymous Coward]

It had nothing to do with regulations. It was simply not possible.

I'm sorry but that's not true.

Jim Oberg had an article on MSNBC a few weeks after the accident explaining how the crew could have done a space walk to inspect the damage had anyone thought to do so.

In the article he also went on to explain what options the crew had (suprisingly more than a few) once they discovered their ship was crippled.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Mahrin Skel]

Airlines fly planes with a safety record that exceeds that of automobiles. Hundreds of nuclear facilities have operated for decades with only 3 significant accidents, the only one of which that had an effect outside the facility (and that one would never have happened under the regulations the rest of the industry operated under). Thousands of chemical plants and refineries operate with an acceptable safety record.

Fine, there was no MMU. Why? Wrong question, there was no MMU because after studying it to death NASA decided there didn't need to be an MMU, and it wasn't safe to make the inspection by going out on a tether. NASA's current culture is that if you plan well enough, anticipate thouroughly enough, you can make space flight safe through sheer force of brainpower. Their reaction to *this* is going to be to study the problems more, implement more safety regulations, slow down the launch schedule more, increase the cost of each launch.

Here's a concept NASA doesn't culturally comprehend: Acceptable operating loss. At some point, the gains from additional safety measures exceed the value gained from taking those measures. Why does it cost a billion a shot to launch a vehicle that costs less than $100 million each to build? Because NASA studies every damned thing to death. Right now the failure rate of the shuttle is about 1 vehicle and crew every 50 launches. Let's say that throwing the regulations out the window and boosting them up as fast as we could would increase the failure rate to 1 in 25 missions, at a cost per launch of $100 million (including 4% amortization for the expected loss rate of the vehicles). We'd lose a couple of shuttles (and their crews) per year, get 10 times as many launches, and learn what we really need to know in order to build safer spacecraft. We'd also be able to constantly increment the quality of the designs and integrate new safety features, as we'd be building them all the freaking time.

In a few decades, we'd have systems that failed about as often as commercial aircraft, and the cost-per-pound to orbit would be a tiny fraction of what it is now. Pay astronauts high salaries to go with the high risk and you'll have no shortage of crew (like fishermen and deep coal miners, you think those guys do it for *fun*?).

But we don't have the balls, and NASA isn't going to get out of the way. The Chinese, or the Russians, or *somebody* who is willing to do what it takes is going to fulfill the dream. But it won't be us, not at this rate.

--Dave

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Rich0]

Can't they just tie a long rope to the shuttle and kick off? They don't need fancy thrusters to get around, and just getting under the shuttle with a big flashlight would have shown any big holes. Just do it while the sun is straight up and you don't even need the flashlight. To get back you just pull on the rope.

If there is a perceived life-and-death situation there are a lot of makeshift solutions people would try that you wouldn't consider acceptable under ordinary circumstances...

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Qa-Spel]

Manuevering around in space is not an easy thing to do. The reason for all of those procedures is that they tell you how to do something in that null-G environment. The astronauts have practiced those manuevers over and over and over before they ever go into space. You can't just pop open the door and go out, without knowing EXACTLY what you are going to do.

In the early days of space flight they tried to do what you said. In the second EVA they told the astronaut to just climb out, go to the back, get a jet pack on and fly around. After hours and hours of exhausting labor, he returned to the cabin without accomplishing a thing, and too afraid to try it again.

You don't do ANYTHING in space without a great deal of planning. Which they just didn't have.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Chanc_Gorkon]

This is the problem. They should have been prepared for every foreseeable contingency. Sometimes there is no way to fix this. Why was there no MMU or airlock? These should be REQUIRED equipment....for EVERY mission. Be a Boy Scout! :) How many Apollo Astronauts did we loose? 3? This was not even in space...it was on the pad because the idiot who designed the door did not make it so you could get out quickly if you needed too. Apollo 13 had a engineering flaw that caused a O2 tank to explode. The ingenuity of the folks both in orbit and on the ground helped NASA bring these 3 astronauts back. This kind of incident happened again with Columbia. You have to think and try ANYTHING that increases the probability of bringing your crew home. At least you could have said you tried! The NASA culture since Challenger has evolved into one that wants to minimize risks at all costs. This is approach does not allow innovation unless it cuts risk or costs. Ask any astronaut if they'd go up TOMORROW. Almost all would enthusiatically shout YES! No matter whether they fixed the spacecraft or not. Alas, the culture of NASA currently does not let innovation happen if humans are at risk. The culture of business in general does not let this happen either. Space is a frontier. All frontiers that have been conquered in the past were conquered with great risk. Space is no different. Sure, you test the idea before risking a human, but if one test works and you think it's safe and the human who is next in line thinks it is, then what is the problem. I am ALL for making spacetravel safe but it's always going to have risk.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[introverted]

If there is a perceived life-and-death situation there are a lot of makeshift solutions people would try that you wouldn't consider acceptable under ordinary circumstances...

Ah. There's the rub. We have the advantage of looking back on the accident and saying, "Well, they should have done such and such and they'd be OK." Put yourself in the position of someone who doesn't know there's a gaping big hole where the foam hit. They only know two things. (A) A piece of foam hit the shuttle during the ascent. (B) In the past, pieces of foam have hit the shuttle without doing significant damage. Knowing what they knew then, there was no perception of a life-and-death threat.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[introverted]

They should have been prepared for every foreseeable contingency. Sometimes there is no way to fix this. Why was there no MMU or airlock? These should be REQUIRED equipment....

Why no MMU? I don't know. Possibly because the mission profile didn't call for one and the cost of boosting what appears to be "extra" equipment into orbit is just too high. But I don't know.

Why no airlock? That's a bit easier. The adapter for docking to ISS is only useful for docking with ISS and this wasn't an ISS mission. Because Columbia was the first shuttle built, it had a lot of extra sensory equipment and just generally weighed more than the rest of the fleet. As a result, they couldn't get it into the same orbit as ISS along with enough other cargo to make the trip worthwhile. So instead, Columbia mainly did Hubble and other low orbit missions.

So now we're in a cycle of trying remove even more risk from something that's inherently risky. I wonder at what point the general public will decide the cost of reducing risk exceeds the value of reduction and will let flights resume.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[lone_marauder]

Your first three paragraphs are brilliant. The fourth, when taken in context of my experience as a student pilot, is not.

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[jafac]

It's not just the Astronauts they need to keep safe.

If the Shuttle guidance failed on launch, there's a guy at Patrick AFB sitting there with a big red button in front of a telemetry screen.

If the missile goes off course, the Range Safety Officer must destroy it. (as happened with the SRB's when Challenger exploded).

Now, if you were the RSO, and a fully-manned shuttle started flying wild - it would be YOUR job to press that button, to prevent the Shuttle from crashing into Orlando. Kill 7 astronauts to save potentially thousands of civillians, many of whom were probably not even aware that there was a launch that day.

As the Brazillians recently demonstrated, ground crews at launch facilities are also at risk.

This is proven by the enormous costs that are sunk into safety testing prior to unmanned launches.

Saying that we need to accept the risk - and view astronauts as expendable, won't come close to reducing the costs of spaceflight. Manned or otherwise.

By the way, spaceflight regulation isn't owned by NASA. Even for civilian launches, it's all owned by the USAF.

We lost Columbia because there was a technical problem that was a safety risk - and that safety risk was reclassified as a "maintenance issue". Had nothing to do with red tape, and everything to do with "fear of being the messenger".

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean this article?

Re:NASA is no longer a flagship

[srn_test]

Yes. I've just finished reading the report, and basically there were lots of requests to get on-orbit images that would probably have shown the damage, but they were all knocked back.

The reasoning was spurious - "we've had foam hit the orbiter before, and not lost anything, so it should be fine now.".

The report is well worth reading. It's absolutely damning of NASA's management.

The report has some nice pictures.

[Snags]

This document has some beautiful photos of Columbia and Challenger in it, especially at the beginning of each Part. These pics are add a nice memorial feel to the report, in addition to the let's-not-let-it-happen-again tone.

NO

[Anonymous Coward]

Cleary, they are not saying that.

It's obvious the failure is due to the lack of communication in NASA. It's what the guy said up top:

Mgt: "Anyone see any problems with this flight before takeoff?"

Workers: *silent* too afraid to speak up.

Privatized space exploration

[greygent]

Fuck all this talk about privatizing space exploration, you people HAVE seen the Aliens films, right?

Re:Privatized space exploration

[pmz]

you people HAVE seen the Aliens films, right?

If they would have simply checked the landing gear on takeoff, they would have been just fine. Again, we have people blaming all their problems on privatization and deregulation, when the fundamental problem lies elsewhere. Sheesh.

Re:Privatized space exploration

[evilviper]

You have a point... Anything that travels into space can cause incredible destruction, and should remain very tightly regulated, at the very least.

For one thing, anyone that feels like giving a gigantic asteroid a push torwards the planet could cause destruction many, many times the force of the most destructive weapons we have. We don't let private companies develop nuclear reactors, so why should we let them develop private outer-space travel?

Look at how big a deal has been made about the 3,000 deaths because of the negligence of (mainly) the FAA. Just imagine how much media coverage the death of every living thing on the planet would get... Oh, never mind...

Jesus said it first, Feynman said it second

[d'fim]

"This was a case where we missed it.
Just flat missed it," he said of the
significance of the foam strike."

No, they didn't miss it.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

NASA seems to mean...

[blcamp]

No Actual Space Aspirations.

I mean, think about it. What is the point of using the Most Expensive Fireworks In History to ferry people to the Most Expensive Tin Can In History, then send them back? Is is simply so that we can conduct the Most Expensive Science Projects In History?

Such things can, and should, be done by private industry, who not only can do these more cheaply and efficiently AND (sad to say) MORE SAFELY.

Let NASA get back into the business of discovery, of space exploration. Let the rocket scientists do rocket science.

Re:NASA seems to mean...

[stratjakt]

Private industry may do things cheaply and efficiently, but no way do I believe they will do it more safely. They'll adhere to whatever safety guidelines the government sets up.

They wont do anything that doesnt generate a profit. And safety in industry is directed by the legal department, a la "will this 'we are not responsible for blah blah..' disclaimer hold up in court?" This will be true so long as lawyers are cheaper than R&D.

I'd rather go to the moon with NASA than Amtrak or Delta, thanks.

Private industry leaves a 50 year old transmission grid unrepaired, leading to the largest blackout in US history. Private industry lets a 30 year old Concorde fly when its riddled with stress fractures.

Re:NASA seems to mean...

[stiggle]

Government sets the regulations and demands the safety checks which allowed ancient power grids to remain, and Concorde to fly, and SUVs to pollute.

We don't need people in space at the moment.
But the government needs to keep the manned space program so it can appear to be a leader.

Re:NASA seems to mean...

[Qa-Spel]

NASA would LOVE private industry to do more, but they wont. Private industry looks at the bottom line.

How much will I earn by going to space?
Is there a net profit?

Unless they can say yes, they wont do it. What government agencies (not just NASA but FAA, NSF, DOE, etc.) do is spend money on things that will not produce a net profit. NASA has not gotten a single penny back from the space shuttle.

Once something is developed to the point where industry can turn a buck, industry takes over and does it. The Space Shuttle is not there yet.

famous last words...

[iplayfast]

What's this button for?....

Oh so familiar...

[RetiredMidn]

NASA's problem is a reflection of the institutional behavior I have seen at my last 4-1/2 employers (the least recent morphed into a pathological organization while I was there); it has become more important to appear to have a product or strategy (or quality) than to actually have it. Nothing Scott Adams hasn't been saying for years.

BTW, the mindset did not start within NASA. In the 60's, the mandate was to spend what was necessary to build the best solution that could be conceived; starting in the 70's, it was all about compromises.

It Would Be Nice if NASA could be given a mandate and execute on it in such a way to once again set an example on How It Should Be Done, but I think we ultimately need to fix our broader culture about the standards of how we conduct business.

Re:Oh so familiar...

[mike77]

...it has become more important to appear to have a product or strategy (or quality) than to actually have it.

Oh, you work for SCO then?

Re:Oh so familiar...

[pmz]

In the 60's, the mandate was to spend what was necessary to build the best solution that could be conceived...

And the 60's was also the era of the moon missions, the SR-71 Blackbird, and lots of other projects that modern engineers look back on with total amazement. Remember that 3GHz 32-bit CPUs hadn't even been dreampt of, yet--these engineers did things in their minds and with slide rules (yes, boys and girls, that is possible without Matlab and Pro/ENGINEER!).

Re:Oh so familiar...

[abolith]

Thats is what a professior of mine had been saying for years, and he always made us use either a) slide rule or B) or heads and some paper, no calculators or computers allowed...... and I'll be damned if I didn't kick the shit outta other classes by using his time-tested and true methods.

Re:Oh so familiar...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Let us also not forget that the goal of these projects was to go out and do. They had budgets, and constraints of technology. But folks were willing to spend money. Now, if you tell a supervisor you will need $50,000 and 5 people to complete a project you will get $25,000 and 3 people.

And it's not exactly like we are getting a whole lot of benefit from these "optimizations." All we end up with is a system that is either never completed, or is only a slight improvement over its predicessor.

Wait, I'm seeing a pattern...

Re:Oh so familiar...

[pmz]

Let us also not forget that the goal of these projects was to go out and do. They had budgets, and constraints of technology. But folks were willing to spend money.

I just remembered another engineering feat, where during World War II, companies would design and prototype an entire fighter aircraft in months. Months! Try getting modern engineers to pull that off. They'll be debugging the software controls for two years.

Re:Oh so familiar...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Don't forget:

• Modern weapon systems can detect, target, and prosecute a target before the pilot can even see it.
• An F-15 can carry more bombs (by weight) than any aircraft in WW-II.
• Modern aircraft have to fly well both below and above the speed of sound, which requires substantial ly more design and testing for the controls.
• WW-II aircraft were plagued with problems, to the point that crews created the legendary Gremlins to explain them.
• The most famous aircraft of the War took years to develop:
  • The B-29: 4 years (1940-Dec 1943)
  • The Spitfire: 4 years (1934-1938)
  • P-38 Lightning: 5 years (1937-1942)
  • Japanese Zero: 2 years (1937-1939)

  Given the increased complexity of modern fighter jets, 10 years for an F-22 seems about par for the course.

Re:Oh so familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the P-51 Mustang, which was brought from design to production in 100 days.

Re:Oh so familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was from design to first flight. The original intention of the British purchasing commission which ordered it was to have Nth American build more P40s. NA management said that they could build something far superior. The British were interested but due to their desperate need for aircraft at the time NA had to show it *real* quickly.

An amazing performance for arguably the best and most advanced single-engined prop fighter deployed in quantity during WW2.

Some other very fast ones:

Lockheed XP80 Shooting Star (c. 100 days) (although the production P80 was an almost total redesign)
Heinkel 162 (62 days? World record?)
Commonwealth Boomerang (Australian fighter) (c. 120 days; first combat aircraft the country had ever developed. Supposedly the chief engineer was a German Jew who'd worked with Hienkel, then in Japan, and was interned in Australia as an enemy alien!!!)

I think the Bell P63 Kingcobra was a very fast development project as well.

Amazing what a war can do to development schedules :-)

Mr. Feynman...

[Mindwarp]

...said exactly the same thing 16 years ago. Makes you wonder who's going to be saying it in 2019, doesn't it?

Using a BETA product for Production

[Uncle Op]

The second speaker, who was charged with reviewing the history of how the accident could have come about, observes that it's dangerous to use beta tools for a long time as if they are production ready.

The shuttle is and was an experiment. It's effectively a very functional prototype, but the completion - or at least the ongoing refinement - of the shuttle program has been in stasis for too long. We're not driving Model-T's anymore for a reason.

The report itself is a great read.

[mjuarez]

I'm planning on reading it over the weekend. Looks like I'll be able to learn a LOT about NASA in the process.

Marcos

Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

NASA is no longer the pride of the nation as it was in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo days. We no longer have a goal as we did after JFK's challenge to land a man on the moon. The budget at NASA has been cut over and over so that they now have far less purchasing power than they did decades ago -- despite the commitment to build the International Space Station. Starting with Reagan, NASA has increasingly been viewed as a way to orbit and service military payloads.

Want NASA to prosper?

1. Provide an inspiring goal. Choose one that average people can relate to. Landing men on Mars would be a good one.

2. Stop all use of NASA for military work. Pass legislation prohibiting NASA from military missions. It's demoralizing and tends to many of those who are excited by the exploration of space.

3. Fund NASA adequately. We've spent far more in IRAQ and Afghanistan than NASA has seen in recent years. Wouldn't you be more proud of your country if it put a man on Mars rather than bombing a third-world country?

4. Scrap the Space Shuttle. It's 1980's technology that was disappointing in its performance the day it was first launched. Even using NASA's own very low cost-per-flight figures in the 1980s, the cost to put a pound of payload into orbit on the shuttle was $6,000. That compares to an inflation-adjusted figure of only $3,800 for the Saturn V expendable launch vehicles that carried men to the moon.

NASA needs The Right Stuff in order to be something more than just another government bureaucracy.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[Paulrothrock]

Something to add to number 4: The booster should have recoverable rocket engines. Instead of throwing away the expensive turbo-pumps after launch, return them to earth to be reused.

Just a thought.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[TheSync]

I hazzard a guess that the long-term benefit to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan of the recent US interventions will be much larger than the benefit to them of the Space Shuttle.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

I hazzard a guess that the long-term benefit to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan of the recent US interventions will be much larger than the benefit to them of the Space Shuttle.

You've been listening to too much propaganda. The U.S. has attacked numerous countries over the years and failed to establish humane democracies in most of them.

In 1953, we helped overthrow Iranian President Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the brutal Shah of Iran -- who was later ousted by Islamic fundamentalists.

In 1954, a CIA-organized coup toppled the nationalist reformist government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in favor of a military government that suppressed opposition until the return of democracy in 1986. Civil war effectively continued until 1996.

In 1960, Congo African nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba, elected in June 1960 as the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was assassinated following a US/Belgian-organized coup designed to remove the Soviet-backed government. Succession by Mobutu Sese Seko ushered in 32 years of dictatorial and corrupt rule.

In 1973, the CIA secretly funded a coup against Chilean Marxist President Salvador Allende which brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power for 17 years. General Pinochet later faced charges for human rights abuses committed during his years in power, but the Chilean Supreme Court dismissed the case, ruling the Pinochet unfit to stand trial.

We don't have a great record.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[Lumpy]

Want NASA to prosper?

all your answers are wrong....

your first step is to get all the asshats out of washington DC that are intent on killing NASA...

GWB is one of them.... most of cingress is the other place to start....

Until we are rid of them, nothing can help NASA.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[proj_2501]

I don't think the people of Afghanistan outside of Kabul are going to see much benefit, since the US isn't in control outside of the city limits.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[terrymr]

HUH ? WHAT ?

Which turbo-pumps are thrown away ?

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

all your answers are wrong....

No, all of my answers are right and yours is a great addition to them.

your first step is to get all the asshats out of washington DC that are intent on killing NASA...

GWB is one of them.... most of cingress is the other place to start....

That would be a great first step, but whoever replaces the "asshats" should seriously consider the steps that I've outlined in order to resuscitate the ailing agency.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[Schnapple]

Landing men on Mars would be a good one

See here's the rub - the average person thinks "we have poverty, no cure for cancer, we need better schools, better paid teachers... (etc.)" and then NASA says they want to put a man on Mars for the tiny sum of, say, $400 billion dollars (I think that was the number at some point). Oh and it will take like four years to send someone there (and four years to get them back) while at the same time we've lost unmanned probes on their way there and we have 16-day missions end in tragedy. The average person will say let's not go to Mars, and instead let's spend that money on domestic issues. Once you get the kids educated, the cancer cured, the projects fixed and the teachers paid, I'm sure that we'll all want to go explore space, but until then there's more pressing issues to spend money on.

And I have to say I agree with them.

Plus another thing is that we all realize the cool shit we see in things like Star Trek will only happen if we start exploring now - but we all realize it'll never happen within our lifetimes - maybe not even in our great grandkids'. Meanwhile we have issues today that need solving. This is why people don't want us to spend more money on the space program.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Even using NASA's own very low cost-per-flight figures in the 1980s, the cost to put a pound of payload into orbit on the shuttle was $6,000. That compares to an inflation-adjusted figure of only $3,800 for the Saturn V expendable launch vehicles that carried men to the moon.

But the Shuttle is a lot more versatile than a Saturn V. Just putting payload into orbit is not the whole point; even today we have unmanned rockets that will do that.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

See here's the rub - the average person thinks "we have poverty, no cure for cancer, we need better schools, better paid teachers... (etc.)" and then NASA says they want to put a man on Mars

Many said the same thing about landing a man on the moon. There has to be more to life than just surviving. Without lofty goals, mankind will stagnate. You can't cure poverty by shutting down NASA and putting tens of thousands of well-compensated people out of work. Nor would that cure cancer or result in better pay for teachers. The money would probably just end up going to replenish our supply of cruise missiles or be given to Halliburton to rebuild oil wells in Iraq.

You want teachers to be paid a decent wage? Then don't vote for politicians who cut taxes since taxes are what pays for schools and teachers.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[fmaxwell]

But the Shuttle is a lot more versatile than a Saturn V. Just putting payload into orbit is not the whole point; even today we have unmanned rockets that will do that.

In what way is the shuttle so versatile? It just boosts payloads into orbit. What's so spectacular about it? The robot arm? You could orbit a vehicle with a robot arm using Saturn Vs or even Saturn 1Bs, depending on the payload weight. I've worked in the satellite business with engineers who were part of the Space Shuttle program. Trust me; it's a failure.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that your points would be naturally picked up in the event that the US Government decided to move the human race foreward instead of backwards.

but until then, it ain't gonna happen. no chance in hell as long as rich lawyers are running this country.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[ansible]

Indeed. The Saturn V was used for moon missions as well as launching a space station in once piece.

It's not the ideal platform for fixing satellites, but if lauch costs were lower, we'd just send up new ones, rather than trying to repair them.

Re:Starved for money and lacking direction

[n5vb]

1. Provide an inspiring goal. Choose one that average people can relate to. Landing men on Mars would be a good one.

Get people to believe in space exploration again. Find a better justification for it than sticking it to the Russians (or whoever our enemy is this week) by beating them to some specific objective. Get the public fired up about it, and the politicians will hopefully get the clue and start funding NASA again.

2. Stop all use of NASA for military work. Pass legislation prohibiting NASA from military missions. It's demoralizing and tends to many of those who are excited by the exploration of space.

Agreed. Most of the military payloads that need to go up nowadays can ride on an Titan II or a Thor-Delta.

3. Fund NASA adequately. We've spent far more in IRAQ and Afghanistan than NASA has seen in recent years. Wouldn't you be more proud of your country if it put a man on Mars rather than bombing a third-world country?

See my reply to 1.

4. Scrap the Space Shuttle. It's 1980's technology that was disappointing in its performance the day it was first launched. Even using NASA's own very low cost-per-flight figures in the 1980s, the cost to put a pound of payload into orbit on the shuttle was $6,000. That compares to an inflation-adjusted figure of only $3,800 for the Saturn V expendable launch vehicles that carried men to the moon.

It's actually late 1960's technology with incremental upgrades and mission creep mixed in over the first 20 years. It was in development as early as the Apollo era, and was originally supposed to roll out in 1976, I think, then got pushed back to 1977, then 1978, then 1980, then 1981. The basic article was 60's design. And don't get me started on the original "high tech" GPC and BFS ..

The big problem with the Shuttle, however, is that it's designed around the "drive it from the ground" concept that was necessary for Mercury/Gemini/Apollo because the computers wouldn't FIT in the spacecraft. Believe it or not, there is no "intranet" in the spacecraft tying its systems together -- every subsystem is designed to be controlled from a console in the MCC -- and *this* is why the astronauts are treated like voice-controlled robots. A design that would make far more sense, in today's terms, would be one that starts with an integrated flight control and management system, onboard, with supervisory control over an "intranet" of dedicated control modules for specific functions. Use MCC to supervise and monitor the automated systems, but put the primary control in the spacecraft itself. Totally different focus, but necessary for the next generation of missions, such as manned Mars missions, etc.

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen .. sigh ..

Key excerpts from Executive Summary

[Ridgelift]

This is a little long, but it gets to the heart of the accident and why it happened:

Executive Summary: Paragraphs 2,3 and 4

The Board recognized early on that the accident was probably not an anomalous, random event, but rather likely rooted to some degree in NASAs history and the human space flight programs culture. Accordingly, the Board broadened its mandate at the outset to include an investigation of a wide range of historical and organizational issues, including political and budgeary considerations, compromises, and changing priorities over the life of the Space Shuttle Program. The Boards conviction regarding the importance of these factors strengthened as the investigation progressed, with the result that this report, in its findings, conclusions, and recommendations, places as much weight on these causal factors as on the more easily understood and corrected physical cause of the accident.

The physical cause of the loss of Columbia and its crew was a breach in the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the left wing, caused by a piece of insulating foam which separated from the left bipod ramp section of the External Tank at 81.7 seconds after launch, and struck the wing in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel number 8. During re-entry this breach in the Thermal Protection System allowed superheated air to penetrate through the leading edge insulation and progressively melt the aluminum structure of the left wing, resulting in a weakening of the structure until increasing aerodynamic forces caused loss of control, failure of the wing, and breakup of the Orbiter. This breakup occurred in a flight regime in which, given the current design of the Orbiter, there was no possibility for the crew to survive.

The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Programs history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision for human space flight. Cultural traits and organizational practices detrimental to safety were allowed to develop, including: reliance on past success as a substitute for sound engineering practices (such as testing to understand why systems were not performing in accordance with requirements); organizational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organizations rules.

Re:Key excerpts from Executive Summary

[Ridgelift]

"...including political and budgeary considerations..."

It may just be the cynic in me, but is this document and the board itself a political attempt to wrestle control from the current NASA leadership?

Re:Key excerpts from Executive Summary

[Cyno]

Its much deeper than that. Its money. Its how we force NASA to manage money.

They're doing the impossible. They should have the resources to do it without worrying about money. But its impossible for our capitalist system to provide that kind of support to all those engineers, workers, managers, etc. So no matter what changes we make it all always come back to money.

Their culture is based entirely on money. Managers wouldn't have their authority without it. The most intelligent engineers would have authority. But I can explain this over and over again until I run out of breath and it will just go in one ear and out the other.

Well, good money to ya. May you die rich.

Reduced Engineering Staff at NASA and Contractors

[LoneStarGeek]

I am a former Software Developer for a NASA contractor. In 2000, I left this job due to inpending cuts by the agency. I saw many talented developers, engineers and scientists do the same thing. NASA seems to cut the budget like this about every 10 years (once a decade). They are attempting to shift a lot of the day to day operations over to contractors and alleviate the need for in-house staff to handle the load. Unfortunately, with a reduced technical staff and unapproachable executive style directors they have let launch safety slip on the Shuttle once again. I am sad at the loss of the astronauts onboard this doomed craft and pray for the famlies that have lost more than NASA can repay.

Time to get out the broom and clean the house.

Private Space Exploration?

[Channard]

NASA does a great job building Mars rovers and such, let's keep them doing that. But we should turn everything else over to private industry.

'When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that will name everything: The Ibm stellarsphere, The Microsoft galaxy, Planet Starbucks.' - The Narrator, Fight Club

If we do let private industry get their paws on space exploration, whose to say that isn't the direction we'll be going?

Re:Private Space Exploration?

[mfrank]

As opposed to how it is now, where we're keeping two or three astronauts on a space station that needs 2.5 people just to do the routine maintenance?

I've heard that Stanford is a good school. Stanford was one of the *businessmen* who made a fortune building the transcontinental railroad, which opened up the American West. I don't really care if the first moonbase is called Starbucks Moonbase, as long as they ship back a bunch of He3.

I nominate DARL MCBRIDE

[greechneb]

Lets all send Darl to Mars, and put him in charge of the intellectual property there.

Re:I nominate DARL MCBRIDE

[pmz]

Lets all send Darl to Mars, and put him in charge of the intellectual property there.

I believe Robert Heinlein already addressed this topic.

Re:I nominate DARL MCBRIDE

[lone_marauder]

Lets all send Darl to Mars, and put him in charge of the intellectual property there.

Yeah, that would really piss of the Psi Corps.

Re:I nominate DARL MCBRIDE

[Moofie]

I'd much rather send all the non-fuckwits to Mars, and we can go ahead and take another crack at setting up a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Re:I nominate DARL MCBRIDE

[Nucleon500]

I hear there's a lot of solar research McBride could do. (He claims to own the Sun, Moon, and stars; the Moon's been done and the stars are impractical.)

give the engineers/commanders some autonomy

[snooo53]

I would hope that NASA already operates like this, but the gist of what I'm getting is that mgmt. in NASA are "big picture" people and don't really understand how to effectively let the people who know what's going on and how to solve problems do the actual work. With something that complex, understandably you should have 2nd, 3rd and 4th opinions, but the engineers and commmanders need a little autonomy to do things like go on EVA's and bring to light any problems. Like you said Dave, they should be paid to do their jobs as part of a team, not as drones following orders.

From what I understand it seems like everyone is so wrapped up in procedure, that they're scared to bring up problems and/or deviate from that procedure. Just from working in an office or at home you know that you can't stop and micromanage every little thing without getting overwhelmed. And it's so easy to be afraid to bring a potential big problem to management when there's the possibility it isn't one. I think the solution is to give people more responsibility over their respective areas. Inform the desk jockeys/management what's going on, but give them a chance to do their jobs!! Let the MBA's there run the PR dept and leave the engineering to the Engineers, and the commanding to the Commanders.

Even larger is the "Medium Resolution" version

[kaszeta]

Look's like a 10 megabyte pdf

At http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html they also have the 28 Meg "Medium Resolution" version, which you'll want if you actually want to read any of the fine print on the graphics...

Re:Even larger is the "Medium Resolution" version

[eln]

That link is malformed.

Try Here

Preview is your friend.

Re:Even larger is the "Medium Resolution" version

[jayrtfm]

charts are vector, so the only advantage of the medium res version is nicer photographs

Now totally off-topic...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the benefit of those 'interventions', while potentially enormous, is uncertain at best.

You can't enforce law and order without a dictatorial regime unless the people are both ready and willing to civilize themselves, and that's not easy when they've grown up in an environment that fosters brutal and selfish behavour as the primary means of survival. I hope it works out for them, but I'm not holding my breath.

Communication

[CyberGarp]

Both space shuttle disasters have a common thread: The inability of an engineer to communicate. In the first disaster, NASA was faxed a "don't launch" from some rocket engineers with pages and pages off scribbled supporting data in random order. NASA couldn't make sense of the scribblings, and twisted a few arms and got a "go ahead and launch but don't blame us" from the rocket engineers. We all know what happened.

The second disaster, engineers noticed the debris and said that this needed immediate investigation--it could lead to a crash. Once again, upper management didn't believe them or their supporting data.

Failure to communicate both times. Communication classes should be required in Engineering for accredidation.

Re:Communication

[Anonymous Coward]

Communication classes should be required in Engineering for accredidation.

They are.

Re:Communication

[CyberGarp]

Writing doesn't count. I don't know about today, but when I was in school it was a one hour seminar that required the use of slides. There was no real study of communication. Just how good you looked as multi-colored slides rolled by behind you.

What I'm talking about is a real course. With problems, where the engineers are given piles of scribbled data and told to present an argument for some position.

Maybe they have classes like this today, but fifteen years ago, they sure didn't.

Re:Communication

[TimeZone]

Failure to communicate both times. Communication classes should be required in Engineering for accredidation.

And just maybe management too?
Not to make light of the situation, but here's the obligatory Simpsons quote... "The problem is communication. Too much communication."

TimeZone

Re:Communication

[Kphrak]

They do now. In the classes I was in at Portland State, they were even taught by idiots so you can understand the challenges facing you when you start communicating with middle management. ;)

All those communication classes are completely useless unless your managers listen. Sometimes they don't. If that's the case, it doesn't matter how many outlines, Powerpoint presentations, or 30-page reports you write -- if they consider you to be only the button pusher that they tell what to do, if they don't respect your professional opinion or believe anything you say...it will be a big waste of time. Spoken from experience.

Re:Communication

[Anonymous Coward]

Communications classes for the Engineers?
How about listening classes for the NASA decision makers?

What is unclear about "Don't Launch" ??

Re:Communication

[confused one]

They're making physics students take a communication class now -- seems we were misunderstood too often...

Re:Communication

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I would like to point out that Engineering is one giant exercise in communication. Through schematics, blueprints, and systems of equations we turn the chaos of reality into a working system. This includes the written word.

Do not mistake real Engineers for the MSCE down the hall. MSCE's are technicians by any other name. Engineers are not like the programmers you see squirreled away in a cubical.

Indeed, my only problem in communications with managment is that my prose is entirely too precise for their purposes. There is no wiggle room, no equivication. In a few paragraphs, a diagram, and a few data charts I can demonstrate to the layman any number of phenominon.

Where management goes wrong is thinking that by understanding these reports they understand the underlying phenominon. Hence the whole Crater debacle.

Re:Communication

[EvilTwinSkippy]

All those communication classes are completely useless unless your managers listen. Sometimes they don't. If that's the case, it doesn't matter how many outlines, Powerpoint presentations, or 30-page reports you write -- if they consider you to be only the button pusher that they tell what to do, if they don't respect your professional opinion or believe anything you say...it will be a big waste of time. Spoken from experience.

I second that, also from experience.

Re:Communication

[Simkin1]

I deffinately third that... also from experience.

Meanwhile, in Parkes, Australia

[s20451]

(Thick Australian accent) You slashdotted NASA!

(With apologies to The Dish.)

We don't need more funds....

[nlinecomputers]

per se. We need a real goal! Putting men into space just to have them there is a great waste of money with little return. If we set our sights on Mars then we would have a workable goal. As it is now we just have a big pork barrel that we shove into space 6 times a year. What science was on that last shuttle mission that couldn't have been done on the space station?

Re:We don't need more funds....

[reallocate]

Hah! A sensible post. NASA has cultural, management and budget problems. But the nation has a serious space leadership problem. I.e., there hasn't been any for 3 decades. Without setting a specific national goal, any changes at NASA, and budget increases, will simply be soaked up pointlessly in more Shuttle flights.

Chapter 10 is a must read for R&D engineers

[TNN]

p.217: "In the years since the Shuttle was designed,NASA has not updated its engineering drawings or converted to computer- aided drafting systems.The Board's review of these engineering drawings revealed numerous inaccuracies.In par- ticular,the drawings do not incorporate many engineering changes made in the last two decades."

p.219: "While ISO 9000/9001 expressed strong principles, they are more applicable to manufacturing and repetitive-procedure industries, such as running a major airline, than to a research-and-development, non-operational flight test environment like that of the Space Shuttle"

And it goes on with interesting points regarding maintenance documentation, procedures, design flaws, and managerial training.

Re:Once again NASA engineering comes through...

[Glock27]

Learn to speel right before you criticize others, jackass.

Did I claim to be a world-renowned organization with a multi-billion dollar budget run by (supposedly) some of the brightest people in the U.S.?

I think not.

Once again...

[TastyWords]

We see a situation whereby engineers feel (maybe can't substantiate it at the moment) or know something "isn't right". They pull the rip cord and are made to feel like an idiot, usually instigated by a herd of PHBs. There were stories of this happening in this story. Engineers thought something wasn't right but were afraid to stand forward. Unfortunately, this likely helped cause the loss of the mission. Sure, the engineer(s) should have stood their ground, even to the point of their job(s)/reputation(s), but...suppose they'd hit the red button and nothing bad happened?

Secondly, Look at the missing tiles, et alia? They're applied manually, one-by-one. Do we need sensors (e.g., a filament) on every one of them so we know which ones are still there (or not)? The same goes for all of the other sections of the shuttle. Sensor mesh ingrained to various parts of the body, inside & out, learning to know "what's normal" and "what's not"? We take a lot of chances simply because we've gotten away with it. (It's good if it works - not unlike the software industry) If we had to make another landing on the moon, could we do it (and return safely) without a lot of flights to start over, just as we did in the 60s (for those reading this who were alive in the 60s) to get us "ready" for such a trip? How long will it be before we have a real-life "Capricorn One" (including OJ Simpson in the cast) and this is the twenty-fifth anniversary of that movie: Capricorn One There really wasn't any science in this movie - it's the suspense from finding out what happens with a doomed flight to Mars and the fact the public can't be told it fails. (Let's hope no schlockmeister gets the opportunity to remake it just as they did with other classic such as RollerBall.) Seriously, Capricorn One is worth the rental or late-night viewing.

No news

[EinsteinWasRight]

My family has had several of its members working for NASA for the past 30 years. We have seen NASA locked in the same vicious cycle for the past 7 presidents, it goes something like this:

1. Congress tells NASA to cut budget.

2. Congress says no Centers, no matter how useless can be closed.

3. Directors of centers give actual job of cutting budget to middle managers(Who haven't done any engineering in decades)

4. Middle managers vote to fire everybody but themselves(What a surprise!) that is fire all the engineers under them and farm out the actual engineering to contractors.

5. Make wild claims of success

6. Repeat after next election cycle.

This has been repeated now so many times that NASA doesnt do any actual engineering any more. Furthermore many of these MMs farm out even the writing of the specs!

It is the opposite of what private industry does which is to fire the MMs and keep the engineers(Flatten the organizational chart, keep the Indians fire the chiefs, etc.)

There are so many reasons why this is bad that I wont list them all here (the average Slashdot reader knows them anyway) but the most devastating effect is zero accumulation of organizational knowledge. Constructing space vehicles is very technique oriented; the devil is all in the details. That is the difference between success and failure may be knowing that the lubricating grease on the control moment gyro needs to be of a specific viscosity and quality. (Speaking hypothetically, no slur to ISS, really). Going outside of these parameters means that the CMG fails which means that the spacecraft cant change attitude which means that you have a 100 M dollar piece of junk.

This has been has been documented at NASA ad nauseum but the basic organizational structure prevents accumulation of knowledge. Which means that we pay to reengineer every time will build something.

Now add in ?Low bid always wins? and see what happens. An experienced contractor who has built spacecraft now knows that they have NASA over a barrel because they are the only ones who know how to build what they want. So they jack up the price. The bid then is won by the inexperienced contractor who now has to learn everything all over again. Repeat.

The solution? Do the same thing private industry does: Keep the Indians, fire the chiefs. Prevent the loss of organizational knowledge at all cost. Begin the slow process of knowledge accumulation so that eventually the price of space vehicle construction will come down.

Naaah, makes too much sense.

EWR

Re:No news

[mvdwege]

The solution? Do the same thing private industry does: Keep the Indians, fire the chiefs.

While your idea is entirely the right one (i.e. people's ability to actually do things is smothered by too many layers of management), I must point out for completeness' sake that private industry is guilty of the same practice.

Just look at the waves of downsizing that have been happening since the late eighties: it was the workers, non-skilled or skilled, that got the sack, whereas management stayed. In fact, management has been bamboozling the public with so much propaganda that until recently it was very acceptable that CEO salaries kept rising despite same CEOs running companies into the ground, requiring yet another round of lay-offs.

Institutional problems are common to all large organisations, both public and private. The government has no monopoly on needless bureaucracy.

Mart

Re:No news

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

It is the opposite of what private industry does which is to fire the MMs and keep the engineers(Flatten the organizational chart, keep the Indians fire the chiefs, etc.)

I don't know what dreamworld you're living in, but most of the time in private industry it's the engineers who are fired when there's a budget cut, not the managers. I've been working for NASA for two years and my impression is that it's no worse at NASA - and potentially better: JPL just created a new fund specifically to pay the salaries of people who are too smart or too important to lose but don't currently have a good assignment at the lab. Clearly they're trying to retain as many of their best and brightest as possible.

Re:No news

[jafac]

Keep the indians, fire the chiefs?

How's that going to happen when the chiefs are in charge?

(by the way, I agree with everything you say, except "It is the opposite of what private industry does" - - that's not true. It's EXACTLY what private industry does, and has always done.)

Re:No news

[Cyno]

That's only a temporary solution because money is still part of the picture. Greed will eventually win again. It always does.

We care more about money than we do human life. It has been proven over and over again. But almost nobody will admit it.

Actions speak louder than words.

Re:No news

[Simkin1]

100% agreement with you... while it wouldn't be a good thing to have no organization, the current layers are horrible on maintaining even a moiety of proficiency in relevant areas.

Re:No news

[Simkin1]

Yeah... you're still in the honeymoon phase of working at NASA... don't worry, it will wear off in time, and then you'll hit phase 2 -- pure frustration at not being able to do your job. Finally after a couple years you'll hit phase 3, and give up banging your head against a wall... what's odd is how long you've stayed in phase 1... you didn't by any chance ride the short bus to school did you? (only kidding)

Is shuttle fligh safe?

[kurtkilgor]

People are commenting that if 100 flights took place in a year instead of 4, we wouldn't worry about safety so much. But I think what's frustrating about the Columbia and the Challenger accidents is that they were caused by seemingly simple problems which were known before the accident occurred. Not a single astronaut has been killed by any of the things that make space dangerous: asteroids, radiation, etc. They have been killed by essentially terrestrial things that we expect to happen on a passenger car (leaky seals, cracked body panels) but not a multi billion dollar spacecraft. It's like sailing out of a storm alive and then drowning as you step off the boat.

Re:Is shuttle fligh safe?

[MightyTribble]

Well, no, it's not. As others have pointed out, it's an experimental machine that's considered operational *purely* because we've had it for a long time.

If we did 100 flights in one year, we'd be down to three orbiters pretty quick. The loss of two orbiters in a year would convice people that it's experiemental, and that more work needs to be done. Any vehicle with a MTBF of 60 flights, even if you rebuild the damn thing from scratch after each one, is not really flight safe.

As it is, when you drage things out over 23 years, the loss of two vehicles doesn't look *quite* so bad. And Astronauts, being mostly test pilots or Navy guys, are willing to take the risks involved. But it's still an experimental, non-ready-for-primetime system.

Re:Is shuttle fligh safe?

[HeghmoH]

Actually, asteroids are a total zero threat since there aren't any around here, and radiation is also a zero threat unless you're going to the Moon or farther for a long time.

Oddly enough, the threats are something like this:

Sealed container for the astronauts makes survival in the event of a disaster harder. (Apollo 1)

Sitting on top of a few million pounds of highly explosive fuel can have certain obvious effects. (Challenger)

Hitting a planetary atmosphere at several miles a second and temperatures higher than the surface of the sun is hard to protect against. (Columbia)

So in sum, the people who have died in our space program have died for exactly the reasons you'd expect.

Re:Is shuttle fligh safe?

[Cyno]

That's because NASA was too cheap to equip the boat with life vests.

Asimov fan.

[PsiPsiStar]

What's wrong with mass drivers?

Re:Asimov fan.

[uberdave]

Mass driver? What is that, the Popemobile chauffeur?

I am NOT a rocket scientist

[the_flatlander]

IANARS, but... Can anyone imagine what airplanes would look like today if the early pioneers had had to answer to Congress? Does anyone have any idea how many of those innovators died? (I don't have the numbers, but it was a whole lot of them. From bad equipment, bad weather, bad technique, bad luck.) Early flight was new technology. It was very risky. And because of all those folks risking their necks, we now enjoy all the safety the airline industry possesses. Space flight, while it is not being carried out by individual crack-pots and geniuses, as early flight was, is still very risky, and very new. All the astronuats understand that, I am sure. We've flown all those missions; landed on the moon, all that, and we've lost 17 astronauts all told. I do not mean to trivialize it. (And I am certain that their families and friends miss them greatly.) But could we have a little perspecitve here? What did the U.S. lose on the highways yesterday? Probably about 80 people. In one day. (Figure about 30k people/year.) But no one is calling for Congessional Oversight of all the idiots that get drivers' licesnses. If you attempt to squeeze all the risk out of spaceflight you will almost ceertainly squeeze all the reward out as well. Get over it. Did we learn anything from this mistake? Did we learn anything from the mission _before_ the ship and valliant crew were lost? Then call it an expensive set of lessons and let's keep going. For the record, I LIKE "wasteful" spending on Manned spaceflight, it keeps money away from, for example, the other uses to which the military puts money. (Who needs "better" H-Bombs anyway?)

Re:I am NOT a rocket scientist

[sceptre1067]

Yes but...

Just like the last disaster this one was caused by ignoring a problem and then assuming the problem was normal operating procedure.

To explain... The o-ring issue (of burn through due to cold temps) had been observed serval times before (including when the boosters were tested.) But a full burn through never happend so it was assumed the o-rings were safe, then tragedy number one happened.

It has been observed numerous times that foam insulation would come off and hit the shuttle (this was admitted to early on.) But since the damgage caused was always minor, it was assumed that the situation was never really criticle. Yes, well determine damage after launch, but nobody ever said gosh should this be happening to begin with.

Both situations speak of engineers that are not, imo, taking enough responsibility. Hence a culture issue that has not changed since the last disaster.

To put a twist on it... a pressure seal on a 747 (I believe I'll have to double check) faild and people died. When the Boeing engineer who had designed it found it it was a design fault caused by him, he comitted suicide. Not that I believe engineers should commit seppuku when things go wrong, but... in NASA's case it may be the only thing that will get them to wake up and fix things.

Re:I am NOT a rocket scientist

[cosmo7]

To put a twist on it... a pressure seal on a 747 (I believe I'll have to double check) faild and people died. When the Boeing engineer who had designed it found it it was a design fault caused by him, he comitted suicide. Not that I believe engineers should commit seppuku when things go wrong, but...

The accident you recall - which killed 520 people - was this one. It was a botched repair, not a design flaw. I guess seppuku would be somehow appropriate considering it was a JAL flight.

Re:I am NOT a rocket scientist

[sceptre1067]

Thanks.

I'll have to double check who comitted suicide then... (e.g. person who desinged it, or person who oversaw the repair.)

High School French Translation Service

[MyHair]

Plus ca change...

From your HSFTS:

Put a goatee on the "C" in "ca" and it means:

"The more things change..."

Re:High School French Translation Service

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew I needed a cedilla (sp?), I just didn't know how to generate one. Oh, wait, I bet emacs can help -- c -- rats, it can...

Re:High School French Translation Service

[MyHair]

ç (or ç) Is supposed to be the html code for a small "c" with a cedilla, but Slashdot allows very few codes. &, < and > are the only ones I know of that /. allows.

Physics question about foam impact

[phidipides]

I've probably missed this somewhere, but the "smoking gun" that determined the accident was due to foam impact was a test wherey the fired a chunk of foam at hundreds of miles per hour at a wing section and then showed off the damage. What I'm missing is why the impact on the Columbia would have occurred at hundreds of miles per hour. The foam was a part of the shuttle, so it should have been moving at practically the same speed as the shuttle during the impact. It's not like the shuttle was going ridiculously fast and hit a stationary object.

Granted, the foam would have slowed due to friction with the air, but why hundreds of miles per hour? Can someone explain?

Re:Physics question about foam impact

[crawling_chaos]

The foam stopped accelerating with the Shuttle as soon as it broke off and began to fall. Meanwhile, the Shuttle kept accelerating, thus increasing the relative velocities. The difference in velocity was measurable by looking at the time it took for the foam to strike the wing. The distance is known, and the time could be captured from the film. Of course, it was a bit approximate, but the foam strike test that did so much damage was well below the maximum velocity determined from the tape. The tests were conservative.

Re:Physics question about foam impact

[Anonymous Coward]

it should have been moving at practically the same speed as the shuttle during the impact.

Don't tell Sir Isaac Newton what to do.

Re:Physics question about foam impact

[Crispen]

I remember a NASA PowerPoint slide from a few years ago that said that the impact resistance of the RCC was something like 16 inch pounds. A 2 pound piece of foam travelling 500 MPH exerts slightly more than that (KE=1/2 MV^2).

I've always believed that one of the contributing factors to the loss of the orbiter and crew was that not one engineer remembered the (high school) equation for kinetic energy.

Re:Physics question about foam impact

[applemasker]

And no one (including Boeing) thought to hypothesize what would happen if the foam hit the RCC, everyone assumed it hit the tiles beneath the left wing.

Transportation fatalities

[Smallpond]

Here's the relevant figures for various dangerous modes of transportation. Based on this I would say its not about how dangerous it is to life and limb, its about the money, period.

Fatalities per 1 million passenger miles

Auto: 110
Urban transit: 83
School bus: 14
Shuttle: 0.006

Shuttle data so you can check my math

Total fatalities: 7 on Challenger, 7 on Columbia
Total passengers: over 600
Total time on orbit: 19179 hours
Avg orbital period: 90 minutes
Total miles: 329 million
Avg crew: 7
Total passenger miles: 2304 million

Re:Transportation fatalities

[raytracer]

It just goes to show you that you can prove anything with statistics. Let's spin this another way. STS-107 was the 113th shuttle mission. For the sake of argument, let's assume each mission had 7 people aboard, and that they were all distinct individuals. 14 have died because of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. This places your odds of returning from a shuttle mission at about 1.7%. If we take the number of astronauts as 600, we get 2.3%.

The number presented for fatalities due to automobile seem absurd. 110 fatalities per million passenger miles means that there is one fatality every 9090 miles per passenger. Whatever the number 110 is supposed to represent, it isn't fatalities per million passenger miles.

The usual rate quoted for automobiles is 0.75 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Oswald]

I don't doubt your figures; I doubt their relevance.

Few people in making a decision about whether to risk their life flying on the Shuttle would look at the question this way. One does not make a choice between travelling half a million miles on the shuttle, or doing it some other way. One chooses between flying on the Shuttle or doing something else entirely with one's time. Few of the alternative ways to spend that time (even if one includes time spent training) involve a 2% chance of violent death.

Re:Transportation fatalities

[andrews]

When comparing space flight to terrestrial travel it might be more accurate to use fatalities over time or passengers carried instead of miles. The statistical universes of automobile travel and air travel are much larger than maned space travel and it seems a bit like comparing apples to oranges to use fatalities to miles when the passenger mile on space travel is so large compared to terrestrial travel.

From another viewpoint, 40% of the available shuttles have been destroyed, killing all on board. What would the death toll be if 40% of all cars were involved in wrecks where all passengers were killed or 40% of all airplanes eventually crashed killing all on board. Do you think people would keep flying or driving?

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example of "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics".

What are the statistics for "fatalities per trip" or "fatalites per trip (flight) hour"?

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Rick Richardson]

You really ought to compare fatalities per million passenger-minutes. Its a more reasonable measure in this game of how to lie with statistics.

If you do that, the quick back of the envelope calculation has cars at about 100, urban transit at about 45, school bus at about 10, and shuttle at about 2.

However, it only makes sense to use shuttle passenger-minutes (or passenger-miles on the orbital track) if you consider it a pleasure craft with the goal being to circle the earth.

If you consider that it has an actual orbital destination that is about 200 miles from where it started (400 miles round trip), then you should compare fatalities per million passenger-miles based on a 400 mile round trip for the shuttle. This works out to about 44, worse than a school bus, but better than a car or urban transit.

-Rick

Re:Transportation fatalities

[bap]

Good one. You can skew the statistics even more with the trick actually used by the airlines in their safety claims: "fatality-producing incidents per million passenger miles." Then you'll be down to 0.001.

Anyway isn't the shuttle just going in circles?

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Smallpond]

As someone pointed out, I screwed up on the decimal places. Thats what I get for using a slide rule.

Fatalities per 1 billion passenger miles

Auto: 11
Urban transit: 8
School bus: 1.4
Shuttle: 6

40% of first year drivers are in accidents. Does that mean we should give up driving? How many 25-year old cars have never been in an accident? If you want to look at it in hours of operation, the total on-orbit time for the fleet is 19,179 hours. Thats like a truck being on the road 8 hours a day, 200 days a year (typical for commercial vehicles) for 12 years. Two accidents? Its not a lot, considering.

My point is that no matter how you look at it, the shuttle is safe considering what they're doing. Compare their record to any dangerous endeavor like deep sea diving or climbing Everest and its far better.

NASA's problem is that they didn't set the expectations correctly up front. There will be losses. They do keep them to the minimum. They should never have had a "teacher in space" making it look like space travel is ready for passenger service.

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Smallpond]

What trick? Can you come up with any measure by which passenger auto, mass transit, or even bicycle riding is safer than commercial air travel? Do you consider air travel unsafe?

Re:Transportation fatalities

[crawling_chaos]

40% of first year drivers are in accidents.

Apples to Oranges, I'm afraid. Let me put it to you this way: if 40% of first time drivers were involved in fatal accidents, would we demand an overhaul of car safety regulations? I think you can answer that one for yourself.

Re:Transportation fatalities

[Simkin1]

Might be a more interesting statistic to post the number of fatalaties per single end to end voyage. Meaning, how many cars travel from home to work, how many fatalities based on the total number of trips made. Then compare how many shuttle missions have there been. It doesn't matter if you travel 10 billion miles... it only takes one mile to kill people... so the real question is how many trips vs fatalities.

Maybe we should yell "stop!"

[tinrobot]

In the History Channel special, they talked a lot about a frenzy called "go fever" which resulted in the Apollo fire. This was that everyone would always yell "go" whenever the question was asked. At that point, Gene Kranz said to his team something to the effect of "it was our fault because nobody had the courage to yell stop."

Personally, my view is to give these guys more money, because I think space is important. But, if the budgets are so crappy and staffing so thin, why doesn't somebody just yell "stop?" If we can't have a reasonably safe program, maybe we should just have no program at all.

Not in this world. Not in this lifetime.

[Spamalamadingdong]

I would like for someone to simply give them a fixed budget for 3-5 years, saying "Here's all the money you are getting for a while. In 5 years, I want a fully detailed report on how you spent it. If you don't operate at X level of efficiency, you're getting budget cuts."

You'll get that just as soon as you can keep the congresscritters from insisting that the money flows back to their districts. Efficiency is the enemy of pork, and pork is how the votes for things are assembled (both money and safety were sacrificed to put the SRB business in Jake Garn's district in Utah). Efficiency is also the enemy of bureaucratic empires; managers will fight to have (and spend money on) more personnel as long as it means that their pay grade and visibility goes up, and hang the organization's alleged objectives.

The cure for this may be competition. If NASA was put out of the transport biz and the money went to whoever could deliver X tons of consumables to the ISS on schedule and provide taxi and emergency rescue service, we'd probably have tons of money left over... as long as we could keep the pols from skewing the contract awards to their campaign contributors. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening either.

Anyone from NASA wanna weigh in?

[G-Spot]

So far in this discussion, a lot of outsiders have been telling us all how NASA's internals work. Are there any NASA employees out there who feel they could add to the discussion?

Re:Anyone from NASA wanna weigh in?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The management have decided that everyone "must be on the same page" and "must pull together", so everyone agrees that there is no problem.

Re:Anyone from NASA wanna weigh in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked as a NASA contracor from 91 to 94 on flight research software. Nothing in the report is surprising. PHB's run the place all the way to the top.

I outproduced NASA people by 100's of times without breaking a sweat. The other contractors were competent and generally made things that worked.

Most of the NASA people were functionally incompetent idiots looking for the next endlessly funded project. Even some of the competent ones became PHB's and were more interested in power and control and endless budgets than real results.

I was explicity told by the HR Director that faking it for NASA and pretending that NASA was competent was my job. I was "allowed" to resign because I refused to fake it.

Re:Anyone from NASA wanna weigh in?

[Simkin1]

Read my other comments on this subject... I've got a lot to say to folks. There are problems within NASA, but there are just as many truly dedicated civil servants and contractors trying desperately to do the best job they can in spite of the never ending red tape and mgmt morons who get in the way. Keep this in mind when you think about NASA. There are mgmt folks who are interested in only increasing their own 'domain of control' at NASA, these are the sharks that once in power negatively effect NASA. There are contractors mgmt, who are only inteseted in their personnel being their to continue to bring in revenue from NASA (i.e. -- no care at all for how work gets done, or if it even gets done, just so long as they keep getting paid). And then there is a core group of folks, the engineers, and scientists, who are dedicated to doing the very best job they can. They're dedicated to their research, and without being dramatic to the idea of NASA and what NASA stands for. Those core folks take most of the heat when things go wrong, but they get no major part in the decision making process. It's my opinion that the NASA mgmt system and heirarchy is thoroughly screwed up, and that the sentiments of another poster are correct -- machine gun the mgmt and let the engineers do their job.

From the Executive Summary

[podperson]

The organizational causes of this accident are rooted in the Space Shuttle Program?s history and culture, including the original compromises that were required to gain approval for the Shuttle, subsequent years of resource constraints, fluctuating priorities, schedule pressures, mischaracterization of the Shuttle as operational rather than developmental, and lack of an agreed national vision for human space flight.

Emphasis mine.

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What moronic moderator called the parent post a troll? Undo the stupidity and mod the parent post back up!

NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[EvilTwinSkippy]

NASA more or less fell flat with the decision to persue the Space Shuttle. They did not have the backing to do the project right, so they ended up selling their soul to multiple competing interests and clodged together a camel of a spacecraft.

It was a big hauler for the Military, which required so much tweakage to the engines that they require complete rebuilds between flights. It contains parts made from congressional fiefdoms scattered around the country. For example, the O-Rings were needed because the boosters are built in Minnesota and flown in chunks to Florida. The size of the shuttle and short shrift Congress paid to its budget led to useful items like atmospheric propulsion for landing to be scrapped during development.

The best thing NASA can do for itself is to just let the Shuttles sit in a hanger. They cost too much to launch and keep running. If the money that went into keeping the fleet running went into R&D they could have a replacement in a few years.

What sort of replacement? The shuttle has 3 almost mutually exclusive roles.

• A manned orbital shuttle, needing proven engines, endless testing, and tons of life-safety equipment for takeoff and landing.
• A high-performance heavy-lifter, where every pound is accounted for.
• An orbital space platform for short term experiments.

NASA has no shortage of heavy lift rockets. What they can't hurl into space, the Russians surely can. The ISS is in orbit 24/7, it can take over the "can ants in space sort tiny screws" experiments. So the only the part that NASA needs is the getting people to and from orbit part.

Once you strip the need to carry cargo, the shuttle suddenly shrinks. Every pound you don't have to launch is 3 pounds of propellent. You also save weight on the structure of the craft itself, it's landing gear, brakes, etc. The engines can be de-rated back to a range where they don't tear themselves apart every liftoff. Or better yet, just design them to use a cheap, quickly replaced, and disposable motor.

Since you are not riding the edge of performance, you can also utilize easier to handle hydrocarbon based fuels like aircraft Kerosene. Sure it's not as efficient, but it is readily available and simpler to store.

Even though you do have a permanent orbital platform, I do see some merit to keeping the ability to orbit for several weeks, not to mention the robot arm. EVA protocols will have to be adapted working without the cargo bay, but it could be done.

In short, by reducing the requirements of the shuttle you end up with the very simple spacecraft NASA had originally intended.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[omnifunctional]

You are missing the entire point of the Shuttle orbiter. The simple fact that it can do so many different things is what has made the shuttle a success.

We don't need a vehicle for the missions we have today. We need a vehicle for the missions that we have not though of yet. Things like orbital repair or satellites were not on the mission list when the shuttle was designed. But it is a flexible enough craft that it was successful in performing that mission too.

Look back on the over 100 successful shuttle missions. Count up every mission objective that has been accomplished. Now try to find any THREE space technology platforms, existing, or in development, that could have accomplished all of them.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Actually satellite repair and retrieval were the primary design requirements for the Shuttle. The problem is, once launched most owners of satellites don't want them back. They are obsolute after a few months, and it's cheaper to de-orbit a malfunctioning satellite and launch a replacement than to send a shuttle after it.

The shuttle has retrieved 2 satellites (STS 51-A), and repaired 2 satellites in orbit: Canada Telecom's Syncom IV (STS 51-D) and The Hubble space telescope (STS 61, STS 82, STS 103, STS 109.) Aside from the Hubble, the last time the Shuttle fixed or retrieved a satellite in orbit was in 1985.

And for your information there are several systems that have performed all of the mission of the shuttle. The most direct was the Saturn V used in the Apollo and SpaceLab programs.

Actually, looking through 100 missions the missions for the shuttle break down as follows: (My spreadsheet crashed during tabulation, here's the jist)

• Space Technology Evaluation: 6
• Orbital Experiment Platform: 30
• Satellite Launches: 30
• Space Station Construction: 10
• Space Station Support: 10
• Satellite retrievals/repairs: 6 (4 for hubble)
• Secret Squirrel DOD Projects: 10

Most shuttle missions where either launching a satellite or puttering in orbit to perform experiments. Very late in the day, it hoisted parts up to the ISS.

Off the top of my head I can tell you one other system that can hoist stuff into orbit and shuttle people in relative safety: The Russian Proton rocket (for lifting) and the Soyuz for people transport.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[MushMouth]

Fantastic comment, I suggest reading (if you have not already, as this comment seems to hit on his points) . And his followup 22 years later.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[zeromentat]

Once you strip the need to carry cargo, the shuttle suddenly shrinks. This actually makes too much sense, I wish it could be so. The fact is the shuttle was, is and unfortunately probably will continue to be a cash cow that is more politics than a workable solution. We do have heavy lift capability with rockets, though I think we can do better. The ISS still needs to be completed, and probably expanded for the addition of short term experiments. A new "shuttle" that has a primary function of transporting live people, docking with the ISS and being re-usable would be ideal. Because of the smaller agenda you could add many more safety featurs, including the beloved glider separation ( http://www.design-career.com/interior_design/deck_ design/deck_design_msg15946/deck_design_msg15946.s html , here , here ,

here

). I live in Houston, and the second shuttle disaster of my lifetime is even harder to take than the first. Especially when you are smart enough to know that it is entirely possible to avoid the accidents of the past.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. There are a couple of fatal problems with your analysis and proposal, though.

1) It makes too much sense and spends not enough money.

2) It involves admitting that we have persisted for a full generation in a horrendously costly error.

No, eviltwinskippy! We are Americans, goddammit: we shall drive our SUV into space and land photogenically no matter what the cost or dangers. Let the Russians go up in disposable tin cans.

Re:NASA Has been in trouble for a while

[hughk]

Actually satellite repair and retrieval were the primary design requirements for the Shuttle.

Actually, the shuttle flys too low. The big expensive satellites with a long life tend to sit out in Geosynchronous orbits. You would have to reduce the orbit of the satellite to where it could be captured by the shuttle.

The fact is that a Shuttle launch is more than the cost of most satellites.

No turbo pumps have been harmed in the making of..

[Shadowmist]

The boosters are solid rocket engines, very much like giant roman candles. They're recovered and refurbished for each launch. The only "turbopumps" are within the orbiter itself, the expendable component is literally a large fuel tank.

Nasa funding and Pentagon

[wimbor]

In the previous comments, a lot of people made the argument that NASA costs to much for the results it achieves. I don't have an opinion on this, since I do not know all the facts. There are important factors to consider though if you want to have an opinion on this.

A BBC program (I think) recently touched on the fact that the Shuttle has been made a lot larger (and hence more expensive) than originally designed by NASA because the Pentagon wanted the craft to be able to launch heavier (military spy)satellites, and apparantly the Shuttle also harbours some other non-specified defense technology. I lost the name and original air date of this program, but you can trust me on this. :-) I may believe previous writers that NASA is too large/bureaucratic/whatever/..., but not all blame for the Shuttle program should be laid on NASA. The Pentagon also has a responsibility here.

NASA's budget may be huge... but its total budget is only as large as three DAYS of budget of the Pentagon... Maybe the US government should change something there, and jumpstart the space program: exploring space instead of other countries...

Before I get flamed, please consider this: Let's admit it, ONE of the reasons why the US likes the Army is because it generates jobs, not only directly (soldiers) but also indirectly in the defense contrators that supply the Army. The Army has a huge impact on the US economy. I can understand that the US doesn't want to cut the budget, certainly not in economic troubled times.

Changing the budget from the Pentagon to NASA would have the advantage that have all those clever defense contractors and engineers work for benevolant technologies (hopefully) for the benefit of all mankind. At the same time the effect to the US economy and workforce would be limited... In the long run new technologies and discoveries could even strenghten the economy.

Re:Nasa funding and Pentagon

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'let's blame the Pentagon' argument loses considerable force when you realize how desperately NASA needed DOD's business to justify the shuttle in the first place. DOD's endorsement was never anything but lukewarm, and they were backing out even before Challenger.

The underlying problem is that the shuttle never made any sense economically -- the launch demand was never going to be high enough to justify its development. This forced NASA to prostitute itself for customers and generally fudge the accounting. Improved expendable launchers would have been cheaper and safer.

Re:Nasa funding and Pentagon

[hughk]

You are right. There is a bunch of stuff on NASA's website about the USAF' reuirement for single orbit capability and the ability to launch specialised satellites as well as MOL components (the USAF space station).

The thing is that NASA does create work. There is a lot of labour going into the construction of a space vehicle. Even when the work isn't being done by NASA, the prime contractors through to the subcontractors are working on it and this directly contributes to the economies of several states.

Next, Read This. You'll Learn Something

[reallocate]

After you've read about the commission's report, read this piece by former astronaut Walter Cunningham.

In addition to Cunningham's perspective on the failings of NASA managers and personnel ("Former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's decade of "faster, better, cheaper" in the 1990s was not better -- it was less safe and delivered only on the cheaper part. Focus switched to avoiding individual blame or responsibility, and risk avoidance became part of the management culture, even as operations became more risky.)"you'll learn some things you need to know:

--NASA funding is 20 percent of 1965 levels;
--The shuttle's piece of that budget is down by 25 percent in the last decade;
--Spending on research and personnel at NASA's safety office was cut by almost one-half;

Cunningham says: "You can't continue to make draconian cuts in spending and have acceptable mission safety. What you get, instead, is a shuttle flying into a barrage of foam it was designed to avoid at all costs and not recognizing it as a flight safety problem."

Columbia was lost no matter what

[Spamalamadingdong]

You know why we lost the Columbia? Because NASA regulations didn't allow anyone to go out and look at the damned wing in orbit without specific orders.

And if they had looked and did find a hole in the wing, then what?

Same outcome, one way or another. Either they try to de-orbit regardless and crash, or they don't de-orbit, run out of power and oxygen and then lose the Orbiter when it comes down due to air drag. There was no place to park it and no way to rescue the crew on orbit. Screwed.

All the orbiters should have been in museums by now. The whole Shuttle system should have been replaced long since. Our failure to do so is testament to the triumph of inertia and pork over concrete goals.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[Alomex]

BS. Once the breach had been identified, any number of out-of-the-box solutions could have been worked out to go and rescue the astrounats... E.g.

- resuply with a Progress ship
- rescue with a Long March
- send space-age duct tape with an Atlas
- send more fuel to the escape pod in the SS, then use the scape pod to ferry astrounats from the shuttle to the SS
- dust off an Apollo re-entry capsule from the Smithsonian and send it on an Ariadne 5 to be used as re-entry pod

and on and on... With so many options available chances are we could have found a way...

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[tmortn]

Resupply with progress.... intresting notion but progress can't make Shuttle's primary orbit which is where Columbia was. That is the reason for ISS's odd orbit, it is the compromise position between shuttles ability and soyuz.

Rescue with long march... ummmm they havn't even sent a person up yet that I know of in a long march. Also questions about orbital inclnation possibilities.

SPace age duct tape.. right let me go down to wally world and pick some up. It dosn't exist. Tile is custom fitted and fixing the projected hole on orbit ad hoc simply wasn't an option. Docked at ISS with full EVA and both arms ( SHUTTLE and STATION ) would be almost as useless. Vacume and conditions in space make it extremely difficult to effect repair operations. COuld they weld, could they apply fixatives in the temprature environment, could they seal and control the temprature at the necesarry areas to do so ? These are questions that have been around for ages regarding space construction and they have no answer as yet.

Escape pod in the SS ???? What the hell are you talking about ?

Dust off an Appollo. feasible but problematic. One is time to 'dust off', two is docking, three is can you fit 7 people in one much less how to get any of them at all.. probably 8 seeing as a truly dusted off Appollo module would likely have ot have at least a pilot to even try to rendezvous lets not even talk about the fact the quesiton of who the hell would fly it. perhaps Jim Lovel or another one the Appollo era who are the only remaining people trained to fly the thing ?

From a Can do attitude the best option was Atlantis, possibly with a docking node and a spare node to install on columbia ( no idea if thats possible ) with a canada arm. Possibly loaded with payload assist modules to boost to ISS orbit.. not sure if the delta V needed would be possible to achieve, I know its out of the question with a fully charged OMS system once your on orbit.

If you could launch and install a docking collar on orbit and carry enough boost capacity in one form or another to match ISS orbit what you do is install the docking collar transfer the crew and boost Columbia to ISS orbit if possible and dock it there while you try to figure out what to do with it. Everyone else returns on Atlantis. If ISS is impossible then you use assit modules to boost the shuttle to as high an orbit as possible and figure out what to do with it later, or do a planned re-entry ditch.

In either case launching Atlantis incurrs the exact same risk that Columbia had just run afoul of. To launch Atlantis you risked having two injured birds and even more crew loss. I would choose to launch the rescue had we known Columbia was incapable of re-entry and had at least a real snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. However, thats becasue I think trying to rescue and fialing is easier to deal with than some chilling dcision to cut losses.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[Alomex]

intresting notion but progress can't make Shuttle's primary orbit which is where Columbia was. That is the reason for ISS's odd orbit, it is the compromise position between shuttles ability and soyuz.

Wrong. Progress cannot reach Shuttle's orbit on normal, day-to-day operations, but in an emergency, only Progress engineers know for sure if it could be stretched to reach the Shuttle.

To give an example that is familiar to all of us, the lunar module was most certainly not designed to house three astronauts moving around (in places the walls of the module where literally tin-foil thin), yet in a pinch it was used thus, and saved the lives of Lowell and his crew.

Escape pod in the SS ???? What the hell are you talking about ?

There is a Soyuz capsule in the ISS for use as an escape pod.

Certainly there was no ready made escape for them like send another shuttle but simply pointing out difficulties does not get you any closer to proving impossibility. The rescue of Apollo 13 looked equally impossible at the beginning, yet they pulled it off.

not even talk about the fact the quesiton of who the hell would fly it.

Actually Apollo astrounats reported that it was reasonably close to flying an airplane and reported good success on it (as opposed to the lunar module, which was a lot more difficult to handle). The Shuttle had, count'em four extremely profficient pilots (two test pilots, Israeli air force ace Ilan Ramon and US air force flight instructor Michael Anderson).

To launch Atlantis you risked having two injured birds and even more crew loss

Again you confuse normal operation with emergency use. I bet it is possible to launch the Atlantis with a crew of two and an escape pod in its cargo bay, thus ensuring that, at the very least, the two rescue astrounats could return safely back to earth, even if the Atlantis suffered the same damage (which is unlikely as foam separation was mostly an old shuttle problem).

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[tmortn]

First progress is not a re-entry vehicle and whether or not it can make Shuttle's typical orbit is more or less moot, perhaps they could have used it for a life boat though I do not belive progress has self sustained life support, I believe it is reliant on connections to ISS for that. I could be wrong. A quick fix jury rig is always possible but IF it could make it its payload would be severely limited. More likely it carries life support supplies for Shuttle then you have to figure out how to get the goodies with no arm and no docking ability and no EVA pack.

Soyuz can't make it that I am aware of and it is even smaller than an apollo command module. It is also a squeeze just to get 3 people in it. If you could whistle up two of them and squeeze every one in AND they could make it, great.

When I say Its not possible that is because its not a real qustion of nominal vrs emergency use as much as simple can't get there from here.
Perhaps the engineers would correct me and I certainly am not a rocket scientist but I am pretty sure Orbital mechanics and liquid fuel rocket limitations mean its not doeable for Soyuz. 5% payload to orbit is a fantastic margin from a launch platform ( shuttle gets 2.5% counting the entire mass of the orbiter/engines/payload which is about as good as it gets among current systems). To get to shuttle inclination from Russia's launch facility or to Soyuz inclination from Kennedy requires you to take the scenic route to orbit and no system currently has that much performance margin. If your still not sure why get a globe and connect the dots between KSC and the Russian launch facility, that determines the inclination both can launch to equally well. Then go find Columbia's orbital inclination and draw that circle. Now to get to that inclination you have to turn taking a longer path. THe problem becomes one of fuel capacity. There is not much spare capability in ANY launch system today. To take a longer path to orbit means a longer burn which means more fuel. For Soyuz/Shuttle etc... its not like a typical launch is with 3/4's of a tank but even if you could stuff enough more fuel to make it you then change the equation regarding the engines, agains its not like they run them at 3/4's power. Launch systems work on a margin that IS emergency levels by most any other standard. Most systems have to work at 99% of their possible capacity just to lift ANY cargo at all to orbit. IF launching to shuttle inclination was possible the extra fuel weight would have to be gained by subtracting the margin allowed for cargo and the amount needed would have to be withen the cargo capacity. IE for shuttle 2.5% more fuel would mean no orbiter/engines ( kinda necesarry ) or payload. so likely you would only be able to increment Soyuz fuel by 1% ( given you could even squeeze 1% more in the tanks ) at the expense of cargo and that would have to be enough added capacity to reach the needed orbital inclination. Thats not a debate about nominal vrs emergency, its a question of can you pack enough energy in the system to even think about it.

Also SS as an abriviation in space discussions generally stands for Space Shuttle, ISS is used for the international space station so I apologise for that misunderstanding on my part. That is inventive however you have the same orbital inclination change problem only to a greater degree. Shuttle can reach more inclinations from launch and change more once on orbit than Soyuz but both are very limited once on orbit. Pretty much all Soyuz can do once on orbit is a de-orbit burn and again its not a question of putting more gas in the tank as it is needing a larger tank.

I agree the impossible is sometimes possible but I think references to Apollo 13 are a little misleading. True enough they used the lunar module for a life boat but essentially they used it for its designed purpose.. IE a sustained life support in a vacume environment. The only odd part of its use was housing all three astronaughts and burning the engine for a return burn instead of a d

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[hughk]

Read the report, especially Chapter 6. Rescue or repair options did exist. In the case of knowing that Columbia couldn't reenter, these options could have been tried as otherwise they knew they could have lost the crew.

According to the report, they could conceivably be able to wait up to mission+31 for rescue/spare parts. Even if Atlantis couldn't be launched for safety reasons, there were repair options that were better than the zero option.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[Alomex]

To get to shuttle inclination from Russia's launch facility or to Soyuz inclination from Kennedy requires you to take the scenic route to orbit and no system currently has that much performance margin.

As I say the options are too many to rule them out. Here is yet another example: perhaps they can get rid of the Soyuz re-entry gear (heat shield, parachute, the works) and instead have a larger tank, which would allow a Soyuz to (a) reach a different orbit and (b) have enough fuel to reach the ISS after recovering the astronauts.

Is that really possible? I don't know, and in all likelihood not even the Russian engineers know right now as why would they ever consider not taking the parachute and heat shield up?

When Apollo 13 happened, NASA had to call the guys who actually built the things to determine how far could the hardware actually go. For example, many life pod circuits were not required to perform at subzero temperatures, and it was a question if they would power back up after a deep freeze and thaw cycle. They had to call up the designers and manufacturers to find out. Can the fuel tank in the Soyuz be enlarged if the parachute is taken out? We would have to ask the people who built the thing to know for sure. You see my point?

I was just pointing out the realsitic options where a lot fewer than you seemed to be indicating and had more problems than you seem to want to admit.

Sometimes all the naysayers see is the problems when an alternative is staring at them right in the face. There is this movie where some bad guys riding through the desert reach an unmanned toll gate. They wait for hours for somebody to show up and charge the fee, when they could have easily ridden around the gate. The scene illustrates our natural ability to focus on the obstacle while ignoring the alternatives.

I have no doubt that the rescue was by all means non-trivial, and that the attempts to rescue could well have failed, but based on my intuition and experience I believe there was enough time and options to make at least two attempts at a rescue, one of them being, of course, the Atlantis.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[tmortn]

Blazing Saddles was a fine movie and I understand your point. Just think your going a bit far afield.

Re:Columbia was lost no matter what

[snooo53]

Section 6.4 page 173 more specifically (it's a looooong chapter)

Re:Once again NASA engineering comes through...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did I claim to be a world-renowned organization with a multi-billion dollar budget run by (supposedly) some of the brightest people in the U.S.?

No, but being a slashdot reader, you are probably tech-savvy enough to download the free software and maybe even install it yourself on whatever OS you are running.

What are you complaining about exactly?

Nice abuse of statistics

[Spamalamadingdong]

Now recompute them as fatalities per hour, or per departure.

Reminds me of sports fans

[ianscot]

Thank you.

This reminds me of sports fans, only obviously it's much more serious and real and consequential with NASA.

A guy across the cube divide from me here rants about his favorite Major League team not trying hard, having bad morale, being a bunch of overpaid, soft millionaires, and so on. He's a Red Sox fan. From back in the day, when I followed baseball, I could suggest six or seven much more curious opinions about what's ailed them over the years -- Fenway and the "Devil's Theory of Park Effects" being one of my favorites -- but he'd much rather blather on about how the whole team just doesn't care. Sure, guy. How many people who made it to the highest level in professional sports have you met? They just don't want to compete, huh? No fire in the belly, I guess.

God, what a barge of cliches people trot out to explain complex systems and events. They used to have the right stuff, but now they don't -- we just need to encourage that can-do attitude. And so on. You'd think curiosity would be more appealing than this sleepwalker's version of things, but I guess attributing laziness and self-interest to others can be pretty reassuring to your average Joe.

Slipstream is fast, foam is light

[Spamalamadingdong]

Granted, the foam would have slowed due to friction with the air, but why hundreds of miles per hour? Can someone explain?

Because the slipstream in the neighborhood of the bipod ramp was transsonic or even supersonic, and the foam had a huge amount of surface area for its mass. The combination of high velocity air and high area made the force quite high, while the low mass increased the acceleration (a = F/m, by Newton). If I understand correctly, the size of the foam piece and its speed were measured more or less directly from the film; the mass of the foam was computed based on the calculated area, which determined the drag force on it.

Re:Slipstream is fast, foam is light

[phidipides]

Thanks, the idea that it would be caught in the slipstream makes a lot more sense. If you just assume that acceleration due to gravity and the shuttle were to blame then we'd see craters on the ground anytime someone dropped a piece of foam from a tall building :-P

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this line a million times over the years, the old "space flight is dangerous, so what are ya gonna do" nonsense. It's enough to make me sick, because it's the lazy, ignorant way out of the problem. We're better than that.

What we can do is make a serious effort, including adequate funding, to make sure we take all appropriate safeguards regarding human life. This means only using human space flight where it's absolutely necessary, and even then making sure we have the right culture and people behind the scenes.

What's *right* with NASA.

[Unknown Kadath]

For my senior thesis, I helped design a proposed Mars mission. I was working at Johnson when Columbia broke up, but I've since graduated and am no longer associated with NASA, and can speak freely.

I'm not sure to start on what's wrong with NASA. Many other posters have covered that in detail, and I think many of them are spot on.

But there is one thing very, very right--the people. From janitors and groundskeepers, all the way to the directors of the various centers, NASA employees are passionately devoted to the job they do. Losing Columbia hurt like losing members of their families, hurt their professional pride, hurt that part of their souls where they keep their their dedication and hope. They will continue because there is still work to be done, because the journey is still unfinished, because that's what their fallen comrades wanted. This spark is fundamental to NASA--the institutional culture cannot extinguish it, but I fear that it may become impotent.

Space travel is costly and risky. It will be centuries before we can consider it routine. The people of NASA have the expertise and the will to carry on, but will they be permitted to do so? I say, Stand aside and let your scientists and engineers work. Let your astronauts fly. They may greatly fail, but it will be because they have greatly dared.

We've forgotten courage, I think.

-Carolyn

Re:What's *right* with NASA.

[ChaoticCoyote]

Beautifully said.

The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[Shadowmist]

1. Bush tried the inpiring goal bit with his announcement of a "Mission to Mars." Which lasted until he was presented with the price tag on the order of $450 billion dollars. The Mission to Mars did not survive the ongoing crusade of "Tax Freedom", not to mention the expense of the war of Iraq and new military adventures in a "War on Terrorism" which has no forseeable end.

2. NASA's separation from the military is nothing more than a relic of Cold-War propaganda. If you check much of the pre-60's literature, you'll notice a prevailing assumption that the first craft on the moon would bear a USAF emblazon. (all of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo commanders were Air Force.) For a long time there was government sentiment to simply fold NASA into the Air Force and be done with it. The main reason this was not done was as a PR counter to the Soviets' space program which made no pretense about it being anything but an arm of it's military.

3.What's adequate? The big question is what are you willing to pay for and what do cut? The Apollo and Shuttle programs are chump change compared to the kind of bill a Manned Mars program will run up. And contrary to popular belief, the orginal space program did not return it's monetary value in spinoffs. It paid for itself in delivering our greatest symbolic victory over the Soviets, but not much beyond that. The United States is awash in red ink, trade deficits and social and physical infrastructures which are going to pot, and we have severe energy and economic issues which continue to be deferred. Can you honestly tell the American people that we have a half trillion dollars to throw away on a Mars program with no expectation of significant return?

4.One of the best comments I ever heard about the moon shot was one describing it as a "21st century feat done with 20th century technology." The Shuttle is very much like that. The problem with the Shuttle is very much that of the International Space Station, both very high tech expensive projects looking for missions to solve. ISS was fought by critics that new it would become an orbital White Elephant. What does the Shuttle do that an expendable rocket can't? Ferry large parts up for ISS assembly. What does the ISS do? No one really seems to have come up with an answer that justifies the price tag.

In the end, NASA's mission needs to be defined, or better yet, redefined in today's terms, in realistic manageable goals, based on the pot we're willing to bring to the table. Where we can, we should take advantage of the work of other parties to avoid needless duplication. Invite the China, Japan, and India to participate as partners as we already have with the Russians and the European Space Agency. And maybe recognise that some goals should be left to our children or grand children and devote the resources and leadership to ensure that they have the means to work on their aspirations when they inherit what we leave behind.

Our foremost responsibility as a civilisation and a species is to leave an inheritance worthy of the future. The scorn that we otherwise deserve shall not lighten the consequences if we come up short in this.

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. Bush tried the inpiring goal bit with his announcement of a "Mission to Mars." Which lasted until he was presented with the price tag on the order of $450 billion dollars. The Mission to Mars did not survive the ongoing crusade of "Tax Freedom", not to mention the expense of the war of Iraq and new military adventures in a "War on Terrorism" which has no forseeable end.

This is the solution. Let's have a "War on Mars". We'll get all the needed funding...

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[fmaxwell]

1. Bush tried the inpiring goal bit with his announcement of a "Mission to Mars." Which lasted until he was presented with the price tag on the order of $450 billion dollars. The Mission to Mars did not survive the ongoing crusade of "Tax Freedom", not to mention the expense of the war of Iraq and new military adventures in a "War on Terrorism" which has no forseeable end.

I wasn't one of the minority who put Bush into office, so don't blame me for that. It's easy to say "Mission to Mars" and quite another to inspire a nation to strive for it. Bush couldn't inspire me to wipe ketchup off of my shirt. The tax cuts were grossly irresponsible. The war on Iraq was not justified. The "War on Terror" is just a power grab by right-wing law-and-order types like Ashcroft.

3.What's adequate? The big question is what are you willing to pay for and what do cut?

I'm willing to forego Bush's tax gifts to the rich. There's about a trillion dollars there -- before we start considering the interest on the debt.

The United States is awash in red ink,

Sort of argues against big tax cuts for the rich and spending billions on military agression and "nation building", doesn't it?

trade deficits and social and physical infrastructures which are going to pot, and we have severe energy and economic issues which continue to be deferred.

When Bush took office, we had a budget surplus. Instead of using that to pay down the debt and pay for much-needed infrastructure improvements, he made good on his promise of a tax bribe to be paid if he became President. He went around the country spouting the it's-your-money bull**** throughout the campaign. Well, it's not your money but what he's spending is your debt and will be your children's and their children's too.

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[0111 1110]

Sort of argues against big tax cuts for the rich

Agreed. How about some big tax cuts for the poor? While we're at it lets eliminate social security and medicare taxes, which are totally regressive. Maybe then the "working man" will actually have some money left over at the end of the week.

To solve the NASA budget problems we could simply allow taxpayers to choose where their money goes based on categories. That way the most popular categories would get the most funds. I would put a check next to NASA to recieve all of my tax dollars. So let's just vote Libertarian (but one's that are space program friendly) and forget about those other ones.

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[fmaxwell]

Agreed. How about some big tax cuts for the poor? While we're at it lets eliminate social security and medicare taxes, which are totally regressive.

No. Americans have proven that they will spend money that they don't have and I don't want to end up paying your medical bills because you decided that you'd rather have a new car every year than put money into a retirement account.

Maybe then the "working man" will actually have some money left over at the end of the week.

Given that the average U.S. "working man" has luxuries that working people in other countries can only dream of, it seems that they have money left over at the end of the week. I know that I do. My girlfriend does. My friends do.

To solve the NASA budget problems we could simply allow taxpayers to choose where their money goes based on categories. That way the most popular categories would get the most funds.

You don't fund government based on a popularity contest. You don't let taxpayers direct billions of tax dollars to saving baby harp seals while allowing a non-mammalian species to be wiped out -- just because the latter aren't cute, furry, and round. That's the kind of stupidity that would take place with extremist Libertarians in charge.

The value of a government program is not based on its popularity.

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[0111 1110]

No. Americans have proven that they will spend money that they don't have and I don't want to end up paying your medical bills because you decided that you'd rather have a new car every year than put money into a retirement account.

That's a false dichotomy. If I choose not to buy medical insurance then I would have to rely on charity, either an organized one or just the kindness of doctors/nurses to treat me without pay at a free clinic or something. No one would be forcing you to pay. In any case, you're paying anyway through medicare taxes. Your argument makes no sense.

You don't fund government based on a popularity contest.

So you are against democracy then? Perhaps you would prefer a King to decide these things for us.

You don't let taxpayers direct billions of tax dollars to saving baby harp seals while allowing a non-mammalian species to be wiped out -- just because the latter aren't cute, furry, and round.

And just who are you to decide what people should do with their own money. You're not the one who had to mop floors all week late into the night for that money. Let them decide for themselves what's "worthy" and what isn't.

That's the kind of stupidity that would take place with extremist Libertarians in charge.

An "extreme" Libertarian is a bit redundant. To the mainstream all Libertarians are extreme. For instance, a Libertarian would not need to think about where to direct funds from tax dollars because there wouldn't be any, just voluntary donations. So I guess baby harp seals would be sitting pretty.

Re:The wrong solutions to the wrong problems

[fmaxwell]

That's a false dichotomy. If I choose not to buy medical insurance then I would have to rely on charity, either an organized one or just the kindness of doctors/nurses to treat me without pay at a free clinic or something. No one would be forcing you to pay.

I could just wait until I succumbed to some airborne bacterial infection from the innumerable rotting corpses of those who spent their money on cigarettes, lottery tickets, and beer rather than on retirement savings.

So you are against democracy then? Perhaps you would prefer a King to decide these things for us.

A democracy does not mean that each and every citizen votes on every piece of legislation.

In any case, you're paying anyway through medicare taxes. Your argument makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense. You are paying taxes to cover your Medicare costs. You're contributing to the system. And if some guy who mopped floors for a living can't afford his medical care, then the Medicare fund means that we live like civilized human beings rather than leaving him to die like an injured pack animal.

And just who are you to decide what people should do with their own money.

I shouldn't. I wasn't elected to office to represent them.

You're not the one who had to mop floors all week late into the night for that money. Let them decide for themselves what's "worthy" and what isn't.

That's why we have elected representatives and why they have staffs. The average voter lacks the time, knowledge, and often the intelligence, to make an enlightened decision about what should and should not be funded. Is the guy "who had to mop floors all week late into the night" supposed to hire a staff of people and experts to advise him on everything from the value of eradication of non-native insect species to the need for funding a new fighter aircraft?

Under the Libertarian view of how the world should be, there would be a monetary incentive to withold funding and help. Those who chose to be self-serving, greedy bastards would, in effect, be paid to behave that way while the compassionate would end up funding everything. I much prefer a system where taxes are collected and where those who allocate them don't do so at a great personal expense.

Re:Once again NASA engineering comes through...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but being a slashdot reader, you are probably tech-savvy enough to download the free software and maybe even install it yourself on whatever OS you are running.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention trying that... Here's how that went (this is just trying to start it, not displaying the PDF):

[bash bin]$ ./acroread Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1". Aborted

Neat, huh? (Plus, it was only Acrobat 5, as opposed to "version 6" recommended for the report).

My point (which was meant to be presented in a humorous way - perhaps those smileys do have their place) was that NASA didn't choose a very smart way to distribute a report that will doubtless have very wide readership. I'm also skeptical that all those images were necessary.

Why Complex Systems Fail

[ChaoticCoyote]

I wasn't surprised by much of the CAIB report said; it serves as an excellent history of how we came to be where we are, and it states what needs to be done for a successful future. There's a lot of "good stuff" in the report, applicable to anyone involved in creating complex systems.

I found two paragraphs particularly apropos to any engineering endeavour (including computer programming):

Many accident investigations do not go far enough. They identify the technical cause of the accident, and then connect it to a variant of operator error -- the line worker who forgot to insert the bolt, the engineer who miscalculated the stress, or the manager who made the wrong decision. But this is seldom the entire issue. When the determinations of the causal chain are limited to the technical flaw and individual failure, typically the actions taken to prevent a similar event in the future are also limited: fix the technical problem and replace or retrain the individual responsible. Putting these corrections in place leads to another mistake the belief that the problem is solved.

The Board did not want to make these errors. Attempting to manage high-risk technologies while minimizing failures is an extraordinary challenge. By their nature, these complex technologies are intricate, with many interrelated parts. Standing alone, the components may be well understood and have failure modes that can be anticipated. Yet when these components are integrated into a larger system, unanticipated interactions can occur that lead to catastrophic outcomes. The risk of these complex systems is increased when they are produced and operated by complex organizations that also break down in unanticipated ways.

In those words lie the roots of most technical failures.

Re:Oh, you work for SCO then?

[RetiredMidn]

Surely you don't think that SCO is unique in this regard?

Reagan, hell. The problems started with LBJ

[alispguru]

Starting with Reagan, NASA has increasingly been viewed as a way to orbit and service military payloads.

Starting with Lyndon Baines Johnson, NASA has been increasingly viewed as a source of federal pork dollars. Can you think of any other reason why manned spacecraft are launched in Florida, but manned mission control and operational support are all in Houston?

Things will get better when NASA is seen by Congress as something more than a cash cow for high-tech jobs.

Sure -- but corporations do run risks

[ianscot]

most large organizations are not funded by the government, and do not strap men and women to tons of explosives and try to get them back without any danger to the astronauts or the people of Earth.

No -- but they do manufacture and distribute pharmaceuticals, run power plants, build and maintain power grids, contract security out for our airlines, build the cars we all use, and so on, with all the safety (and environmental) implications of how they go about doing so affecting basically everyone, US citizen or not.

If a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.

Not to dismiss your point -- the physics of a NASA launch are a heck of a lot more demanding than the physics of puffing rice for a breakfast cereal. But anyone who's worked in a corporation will recognize something here.

Re:Sure -- but corporations do run risks

[gte910h]

a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.


This is the most sailient point I have seen on slashdot in awhile. Mod it up.

Bullshit

[Andy Dodd]

IIRC, the astronauts have units with manuevering thrusters that allow them to move at will near the Shuttle. They simply could have moved below the wing.

Worst case scenario - Let someone out on a tether, give it some slack, gently fire the thrusters in a way that causes the shuttle to flip over slowly. No need to manuever below the wing when you can flip the wing over.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

No, those backpacks with the nitrogen gas thrusters are no longer available for use.

Re:Bullshit

[cosmo7]

Columbia didn't have any EVA suits aboard because no EVA was planned, let alone a 'SAFER' backpack, which is what you're thinking of.

Even if there had been a suit, the astronauts would not have been able to go outside because the only airlock was used by the mission laboratory.

The Cullt of Bob

[da' WINS pimp]

Yes, NASA has said the trip to Mars will cost $200-400 billion. It was published in what has become known as "The 90 Day Report". The truth is that for a sustanable program of Mars exploration the inital outlay is actually more on the order of $20-30 billion. And we can do it NOW.

Over five years this is only a fraction of NASA's yearly budget, which is less than 1% of the overall federal budget. Compared to medical research and defense spending the ammount we spend on space is inconsequential and imminently affordable when you consider the payoff at the end in terms of the future.

For more information and to find out how you can help see: The Mars Society

I see other problems with the report as well, but I'll stop for now.

"long-term benefit"

[Anonymous Coward]

I hazzard a guess that the long-term benefit to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan of the recent US intervention

And what exactly are the long-term benefits to a country of having cities bombed flat, infrastructure destroyed, lots of civilans killed and the countryside reverting to banditry and warlordism?

but you ascribe the benefit to the wrong people...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. it is the long-term benefit to the people of US. Remember the US intervention was about WMD. Who really cares about the people of Iraq or Afghanistan?

Or better yet...

[MickLinux]

... I, as an aerospace engineer by training (not by job, sadly... I graduated with terrible timing... or maybe happily) will champion the cause of zeroing their budget.

As any good engineer will tell you, if there isn't the budget to do it right, then don't do it. Following some rather terrible logic, I might conclude that Nasa, therefore, typically does not have good engineers.

I'd much rather slow down, let the economy sort itself out, and sort the space issue out, as well.

And if it doesn't sort itself out, then what? Well, then some other nation succeeds that *has* figured out how to maintain an economy with integrity. Call me an optimist, but I actually think that that's likely.

Re:Or better yet...

[Moofie]

When did you graduate? I just got out in May.

I feel your pain. : )

NASA has good engineers. The bean counters just beat them with sticks and make them do bad engineering.

Re:Or better yet...

[MickLinux]

I graduated in 1992. I was the structural designer for the team that came up with the winning G/A 4-seat design in the AIAA design contest.

So I can say "I was good."

But it isn't exactly pain by now. It's just half "oh well, look what could've been", combined with "wow, if that hadn't happened, my life would have been normal. I would've been moderately wealthy, deskbound, and quietly desperate. Thank goodness it didn't."

Boeing engineers

[Andy Dodd]

Those people are incredibly conservative when it comes to safety.

It seems to be an assumption in Boeing design: If it CAN fail, it will fail completely. Therefore, make sure it can't bring down the jet if it does fail. You probably know that the flight control computers on most passenger jets are triply redundant or more - Did you know that each of the 2-3 backups for a jet's flight control computer are made by different manufacturers with software developed independently?

Nice sentiments but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stand aside and let your scientists and engineers work."

This is part of the problem, a lack of oversight. When people stood aside things got sloppy.

Lose the poetry, this is a business with human lives and billions of dollars at stake. Don't wave off difficult cultural changes with pretty words.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

"ONE of the reasons why the US likes the Army is because it generates jobs"

It is funny how people complain about welfare for individuals but approve of it for bureaucracies.

Re:Reduced Engineering Staff at NASA and Contracto

[pmz]

They are attempting to shift a lot of the day to day operations over to contractors and alleviate the need for in-house staff to handle the load.

And contractors don't care whether their projects succeed or fail as long as they can successfully manhandle the system to get paid over and over. Seeing contracting first-hand has taught me that some things just need to be done in-house.

Re:No turbo pumps have been harmed in the making o

[Paulrothrock]

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, I envision a heavy-lift booster that, unlike the Saturn V rocket, seperates the expensive rocket engines from the craft and reuses them. That would drop the cost to orbit dramatically.

PowerPoint is to blame...

[Howard Roark]

There is a discussion on page 191 of the report (with comments from Dr. Edward Tufte) of how the use of PowerPoint slides instead of technical reports may have lead to miscommunication about the seriousness of the foam impact. They conclude:

"At many points during its investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officals in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint presentation slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA."

Re:PowerPoint is to blame...

[hughk]

Very good point. Yes, I saw that too.

PowerPoint is an excellent obfuscation for pitching bad business plans to venture capitalists. Having played with it for technical presentations with quite moderate formulas - it isn't good.

The trouble is, that whatever tools we have in the open source arena, we still need good templates.

Funny quote from the report.

[Snags]

On page 47, near the end of Chapter 2, the report states:

So eager was the general public to turn in pieces of potential debris that NASA received reports from 37 U.S. states that Columbia's re-entry ground track did not cross, as well as from Canada, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.

The ground track did cross 7 states (including LA), so that leaves only 6 states where everyone was smart enough to keep quiet.

Texas, Jamaica, they're close, right?

More than just NASA

[pudknocker]

I was actually fortunate enought to work at KSC for the Shuttle prime contractor (UnitedSpaceAlliance)in the late 90's.

After seeing the way they did software development--no formal testing, no design reviews, some groups didn't even use configuration management! This was on the system that stored and distributed the Shuttle telemetry. I actually worked up the nerve to take advantage of an opportunity to speak with a top level manager about my concerns.

Now, maybe I'm not the most persuasive speaker. I was just a guy in the trenches with some experience from the "real world" that new how to do some things better. It took all the gumption I had to pursue the issues for as long as I did, speaking with various people in all of the levels of management. Since no one else saw things as I did, I was just the guy "crying wolf".

Most people don't realize that most of the people working in the Shuttle program are not NASA employees, but contractors--most working for USA. So it's more than just a NASA culture issue, it's also the NASA contractors and their management.

Here's a question on a related topic: How many times has NASA tried and failed to replaced the launch control system and failed. (Hint: the last one was called CLCS!). Here's some info

Answer: 2 (that I know of)

Re:More than just NASA

[Simkin1]

... read some of my other comments on this subject... because right now I'm '...just the guy "crying wolf"'... banging my head against the walls of mgmt hurts... I can only take so much of it before giving up.

See the Langley prototype

[blitz487]

Can anyone imagine what airplanes would look like today if the early pioneers had had to answer to Congress?

Yes. Check out the Langley "aerodrome", a government financed ($60,000) project to build the first airplane. It promptly fell into the Potomac "like a handful of mortar." It was rebuilt, and another try done, with similar disastrous results. The Langley aerodrome project did not contribute a single innovation, idea, configuration, principle or technique to aviation. Compare that with Langley's contemporaries, the Wright Brothers, who solved the problems of powered flight for $1500 and who's ideas, innovations, etc., can still be found in modern aircraft.

Recommendation: Machine-Gun the Management,. .....

[smcdow]

... and let the engineers do their jobs.

Just read through the report. Once again, management gets it wrong when the engineers (at least those that hadn't been brainwashed by mgmt) had it right.

I swear, if someone had explained to me (when I was an engineering undergraduate student) that most of my career would consist of having to deal with PHBs, I would have majored in music. Or something. Too bad Dilbert wasn't around in the early '80s.

Re:Oh, you work for SCO then?

[mike77]

oh surely not, it was simply an infantile attempt at humor which obviusly failed horribly.

Organizational culture collides with shuttle?

[j3110]

The article says, "that the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with the accident as the foam that struck the Orbiter on ascent."

So... aparantly the "organizational culture" struck the side of the shuttle as well. I fail to see the logic. I guess they are using the results of last years budget cuts to justify this years.

Re:Organizational culture collides with shuttle?

[applemasker]

It was the "groupthink" that made the collective efforts of otherwise well-trained and intelligent people fail to ask the important and hard questions about the foam debris issue. Instead of asking whether the damage caused by the foam was insignificant, they asked whether any damage at all occurred. Management put the people with the slide rules and grave concerns on the defensive, asking THEM to justify the safety concerns when they should have assumed "worse case" until proven otherwise.

Even then, it's not clear that anything could have been done once Columbia reached orbit (as the imagery of the debris strike was not reviewed until after ascent), but it would have, at least, given the crew a chance. As it was, they died more because of wholly preventible human failings than a flaw in the design of the system.

Re:Organizational culture collides with shuttle?

[j3110]

It's still utterly silly. It's dangerous to drive to work, and you can't prove otherwise. Every astronaut knows the risks, and they still fight like hell for the opportunity. When statistics catch up with you, someone always has to say "the risks were too great!" despite the simple fact that more people are going to die from flu tomorrow. This is like crying over a flake of skin falling off when you have leprosy. We have bigger issues than 4-5 people every 20 years dieing from a space shuttle "tragedy". It's political BS, and people should know better than to bite into this media diversion fodder. 139 more people have died in Iraq since the war, no news on Saddam or Osama, Afghanistan has been left out to dry, record high unemployment, yet 4-5 people dieing on a space craft is still news 6 months later. Bullsh*t!

Re:Organizational culture collides with shuttle?

[applemasker]

The analogy between "driving to work" and coordinating a series of simultaneous controlled explosions to accellerate from zero to 17,500 mph is a little over 8 minutes is a little weak, they simply are not equivalent in terms of complexity.

Moreover, I'm not sure I understand the "body count" analysis in your post. By that reasoning, we should just fly first, worry later until a sufficient number of people have died.

In any event, look at it this way - if you drive down an unpaved gravel road every day, it's not unforeseeable that someday, sooner or later, there will be a rock that kicks up and destroys your windshield. It's a risk, you accept it by driving the road. The flaw is never thinking that the rock will fly up and hit your windshield or that if it did hit, the glass would be fine, just like the managers never thought the foam that they knew was hitting the Shuttles was a danger - they even spoke of it with quasi-harmless description for the damage, "popcorning."

Instead, they act denser than any substance known to man. In fact, safety margins were so eroded that controller were unaware of mortal damage to the ship for over two weeks as it circled overhead. In my mind, such negligence is inexcusable.

While Challenger was attributable in part to NASA's pressure to launch and maintain a schedule (so called "Go Fever"), this time, everyone just crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. Dropping the ball in such an obvious way is worse, as it's omniously indicative of a dysfunctional institution.

Re:Organizational culture collides with shuttle?

[j3110]

If you want to hide under a rock until all the variables of the outside world are calculated, then you go ahead, but you won't make it to mars for another two centuries with that attitude. The men and women of NASA want to go up and see for themselves. They chose that route, and they don't need anyones prying eyes to tell them that it is a dangerous job. It's about risk vs reward. We've gained enough knowledge from the last 20 years I think to justify a few deaths. Countless numbers of lives have probably been saved with technology that has been improved or created by the space program.

You can't say my analogy about the dangers of driving to work don't apply, then create one yourself. (You could, but you loose a lot of respect.) I'm merely pointing out that deaths happen all the time because every last one of us make a risk vs. reward analysis, and a lot of people die. It's a statistical fact, and you have no right to complain about another person's choices nor do you have a right to complain when statistics catch up with you and someone you love dies because of a risk you run.

I also was pointing out that you people that cry over 5 lives in 20 years would be better served by complaining for more spending on medical research than NASA.

So, what then is your reason for complaining? It's not human compassion because you ignore the thousands of people dieing every day of starvation, disease, and wreckless driving.

Most people crying over this are holier-than-thou hippocrits that think that the whole world should be run their way. Maybe a few of you will wake up someday to realize that people have the right to take risks, and some of them will die, and they don't need you blaming their friends for their deaths.

Read chapter 6

[Animats]

Much of the report is background, filled out with huge glossy pictures from the NASA PR department. Read chapter 6, though, for what actually went wrong in the organization. The whole process of organizational denial is laid out in detail.

The basic problem, of course, is that the Shuttle's foam insulation flakes off and the thermal protection tiles are too fragile. Both of those problems have been known for decades, but not fixed. The only reason this didn't happen earlier is that a big piece of foam hadn't happened to hit a weak tile in a vulnerable spot. Big pieces of foam have fallen off before, they've hit tiles before, and they've caused damage before. Twenty years ago, foam caused serious tile damage. The damaged tile just happened to be covering an antenna mounting plate, so there was extra metal there to protect the structure. So that shuttle survived.

Buran, the USSR space shuttle, had a better tile design. (Buy surplus Buran tiles here.) The designers of Buran had the advantage of doing it after the US, and Buran has some advantages over the US shuttle. It's sad that Buran was retired so early.

Look at the bright side...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the crew got to die over the great state of Texas. They should count themselves lucky for that. They could have died over some God forsaken place like Oklahoma.

Moderator! Meta-moderator!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post is just plain wrong. It probably merits a "Troll" moderation (and if I get to meta-mod this "Interesting", it's going to get an unfair rating from me.)

Re:Moderator! Meta-moderator!

[Alomex]

How would you know? Are you privy to the actual design specs of a Progress to assert that it cannot have reached the shuttle under any circumstances?

Do you have a direct line to the Chinese space program to know exactly how many capsules they have in ready-to-launch mode and the exact limits of their reach on an emergency basis (as opposed to day-to-day) use?

Say, if you ask me how long it takes me to design you a web site, I'd say a couple of months. But if your life depended on it, I could have it ready in two days. That is a ratio of 30 in performance between day-to-day and emergency use.

Another example, I would never ride my expensive racing bike more than 100 yards on a dirt road, but if your life depended on it, I'm sure it can take 100 miles on it even though the carbon alloy rims would likely be untrue by the end of the day and would have to be replaced. That is over a factor of 1000 between day-to-day use and emergency use.

To recap, there are too many alternatives, each of whose, the limits of performance are much beyond day to day use (see Apollo 13, which operated using less than 10% of the normal power consumption).

Re:Moderator! Meta-moderator!

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you know? Are you privy to the actual design specs of a Progress to assert that it cannot have reached the shuttle under any circumstances?

I'm privy to the fact that the Progress is an unmanned freighter, with neither seating for a crew nor a heat shield and recovery system for landing anything safely. I'm also privy to the fact that all the Progresses and Soyuzes in the pipeline are spoken for, and that Columbia was not carrying a docking adapter so people could be transferred.

Do you have a direct line to the Chinese space program to know exactly how many capsules they have in ready-to-launch mode and the exact limits of their reach on an emergency basis (as opposed to day-to-day) use?

You're the one asserting a positive. You back it up.

Your nonsense about recycling an Apollo capsule is just that, nonsense. After thirty years of exposure to moisture (several of the museum pieces are falling apart from corrosion!) it is doubtful that any of them could be made spaceworthy even with a year to refurbish just one. You would need four to retrieve 7 people from orbit (you need to launch one person aboard as the pilot). Then you have to build a service module for each one, and come up with a launch vehicle, and somehow build all the required adapters and write the flight-control software to make the whole thing get to orbit and come down again safely, and train all the pilots on vehicles none of them have ever even considered flying in because they did not exist... in a week, tops.

It could not be done. Only someone with an idiot's grasp of reality would think so, and only a troll would post as much on Slashdot.

Re:Moderator! Meta-moderator!

[Alomex]

I'm also privy to the fact that all the Progresses and Soyuzes in the pipeline are spoken for

Boy! I'm amazed by the depth of your thought. I would had never considered such an unsurmountable technical difficulty! And of course none of the proposed users of the Soyuz and Progress would willingly delay their launch to save the lives of seven astrounats whose plight has captured the world's attention.

with neither seating for a crew nor a heat shield and recovery system for landing anything safely.

And of course, using the progress to ferry to the ISS is not an option, they must reenter. Why? because AC here cannot come up with the alternative, sorry folks you are SOL up there.

that Columbia was not carrying a docking adapter so people could be transferred.

and without a docking adapter nothing could have possibly been rigged to make the connection. you are right again!

Your nonsense about recycling an Apollo capsule is just that, nonsense.

I was just throwing one more possibility on the table, not suggesting that an Apollo rescue was a done deal. The point is to illustrate that there are so many options, whose performance can be stretched to such an extent, that its idiotic to state that a rescue was impossible.

Furthermore, from the number of available choices chances are, at least one could have been made to work.

We have ten different choices to attempt a resupply the shuttle: ariadne, progress, soyuz, ISS scape pod, titan, atlas, long march and brazilean rocket and the shuttle atlantis.

Of those, six could have been used to attempt a rescue, either by reentry of by transfer to the ISS.

The number of options is sufficiently large, that the odds were in favout of a rescue.

Collaboration?

[emil]

I understand that the ESA is testing a new orbiter. Why is there no broad collaboration by NASA in this effort?

Could it be that Boeing and other major contractors behind the shuttle continually flex their political muscle to keep the shuttle program alive because of the large maintenance contracts?

NASA should find a way to shove the contractors in the closet and fund only the best possible technologies and solutions. When Boeing runs to congress and cuts NASA's funding for new orbiter research, they do good for no one.

Re:Collaboration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same reason ESA is putting up the Galileo constellation rather than relying on GPS.

Same reason ESA developed Ariane rather than rely on the shuttle for satellite launchers.

Because Europe (with good reason, especially under this US government) doesn't trust the US with monopolies on strategic technologies.

Offtopic vs. Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

How come the parent to this is "off-topic" but the message s/he responded to is "interesting"? Both of them commented on Bush's policies and funding the space program. I think that the moderator is just some conservative asshole who gets his panties in a twist when anyone says anything mean about old AWOL Bush.

Re:Offtopic vs. Interesting

[swillden]

Maybe it's because the "interesting" comment actually said something about the space program and the "offtopic" one did not?

Re:Offtopic vs. Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that is not it. The one called off-topic said that Bush didn't inspire about the space program and that the entire cost of a mission to mars could be payed for by getting rid of tax cuts. thats on-topic in as far as I can see.

Good Point - Apollo 13

[hughk]

was a good example of NASA improvisation at work. They were aware that things were pretty bad (although they didn't know the real state of the service module until it was jettisoned just before reentry). They bodged things getting an emergency CO2 scrubber working and saving power.

I know that NASA has problems, but had they discovered the 'ding' on the leading edge, I agree with you and I'm sure something could have been done.

engineers acting like scared children

[tychoS]

As I read the part of the report starting at page 140, that chronicles the obtain wing photos or not story, this is what happened:

The request for photo-help from the military was denied by management because such help is very expensive and the managers had not received the impression that not obtaining these photos could very well lead to the loss of the orbiter.

Instead of explaining the urgency of the matter to the relevant management, the engineers appealed to other managers, aparently including their own high level line managers instead of the STS-107 mission project managers, and through these unofficial channels got the military to look into obtaining the images for them.

When the project managers discovered these unoffocial egnineers to military contacts they stopped it due to the unofficial nature of the contacts. This is chronicled on and around page 153

The engineers then curled up in fetal position under their tables, figuratively speaking that is, and dared not press the issue further with management. See, among other places, the "unsent email" on page 157

Now isn't that just a little bit i-responsible?

Knowing with all your engineering heart and knowledge that something terrible is likely to happen to somebody else very soon, but not daring to voice your concern to upper management in a sufficiently assertive and aggressive way as to get their attention and get them to do what has to be done to prevent the likely disaster, just because they are upper management and you are a lowly engineer, and your first feeble attempts to get something done has come to nothing, because you did it in such a low-key and sneaky way that your actions was mistaken for mere childish misbehaviour.

Re:engineers acting like scared children

[Simkin1]

The answer to your question is no. The reality is that there was no way the engineers could have known ahead of time that this would happen. On top of that what is often found at NASA is that people who try to rock the boat because of concerns, are often shot down, both in their own fields and professions. What NASA more than likely did to those folks that thought there might be a mishap, is reject them on the basis that the supposed or potential mishap wouldn't occur using all the previous shuttle liftoffs as evidence. Or to put it more bluntly, if I were to start screaming that something isn't right, I'd be told to shutup because I don't have the experience that others do. To base your entire career on what you think "MIGHT" happen, when it hasn't happened before, is purely stupid. About the equivalent of saying that my car MIGHT explode, and then requiring that no one go near it simply because it has a gas tank and igniters... (a little off topic I know...)

The biggest bitch about working with/for NASA is the politics. Often times the experts are only experts in a small area, and generally they are not allowed complete control over their own area of expertise. This is ingrained early on in most civil servants and contractors, and eventually causes people to give up trying 'to fight the good fight'. It's sad, but also the truth.

There are a lot of really good scientists out there working very hard to do the best job they can. More often than not, the biggest problem is that instead of the scientists and engineers leading the decision making process, we have beurocrats and people who should not be in a position to make decisions effecting the decision making process. What's worse is when you know the person making a decision is not competent in the field, but has the support of officials above you. (equivalent to you knowing more than your boss, but your boss making all the decisions without consulting you)... This happens ALL the time in the NASA heirarchy... This is also sad, but the truth.

So the question we're left with is, what can you do about the problem? To put this as bluntly as possible, nothing. There is nothing that civil servants or contractors can do about this. For contractors more so than civil servants, their hands are almost literally tied behind their backs... At NASA there is a saying. We got to the moon in spite of NASA.

How funny

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something funny about reading a safety report that critizes NASA's culture, while at the same time, the report comes out on MS IIS. This is the same MS IIS that the whitehouse and MS run, but have had to inject Linux in there so as they are somewhat secured.

Linux is better Re:The "Culture of NASA"????

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Not using other's work? Not a problem Linux has.

You see, with Linux we just rip off other people's work (hi SCO).

;-)

Pah!

[PHAEDRU5]

Landing men on Mars? Like the Moon, just more of the same. Been there, sort of, done that, sort of. That won't inspire anyone.

Stop all use of NASA for military work? Well, it is the National AERONAUTICS and Space Administration. Besides, how much of NASA's work is military? Damn little, I'd guess.

Fund NASA adequately? NASA has spent the last few decades fucking over anyone who might challenge its stranglehold on space. They can't hack it? Well fuck 'em, and let someone better do the job.

Scrap the Space Shuttle? Finally, you're speaking some sense. Even NASA's own figures indicate its uselessness, yet they went ahead with it. Typical. Just like they never saw the O-rings coming, nor the insulating foam.

NASA lost the right stuff long ago. The Saturn V was a machine designed by a hero, and a total winner. The Space Shuttle was a machine designed by a committee that destroyed all the Saturn V plans, and has been a constant disappointment.

Shut NASA down. Let someone better do the work.

Re:Pah!

[fmaxwell]

Landing men on Mars? Like the Moon, just more of the same. Been there, sort of, done that, sort of. That won't inspire anyone.

Actually, it will inspire many intelligent people. It's our best near-term chance for finding exobiological lifeforms or the fossils from primitive life. It's damned challenging and exciting.

Stop all use of NASA for military work? Well, it is the National AERONAUTICS and Space Administration. Besides, how much of NASA's work is military? Damn little, I'd guess.

So what does "AERONAUTICS" have to do with the military? That's like saying "Stop using HUD for military work? Well, it is Housing and URBAN Development." And your guess would be wrong. Many of the shuttle missions had military payloads and objectives.

Fund NASA adequately? NASA has spent the last few decades fucking over anyone who might challenge its stranglehold on space. They can't hack it? Well fuck 'em, and let someone better do the job.

What a load of shit. If you knew anything about orbital mechanics, you'd realize that the prime launch sites are near the equator, and I don't think that NASA has anything to do with countries at the equator. NASA comprises the best and the brightest and you should be proud to even be allowed to live in the same country with the likes of Gene Kranz, Chris Craft, and Neil Armstrong.

NASA lost the right stuff long ago. The Saturn V was a machine designed by a hero, and a total winner. The Space Shuttle was a machine designed by a committee that destroyed all the Saturn V plans, and has been a constant disappointment.

The Space Shuttle was a machine designed after an evil Republican President killed off the funding for Apollo and left NASA struggling for a politically expedient way to get back into space. To do it, they had to convince the brass that the Shuttle would be useful for military work -- a space truck if you will.

Shut NASA down. Let someone better do the work.

No, do what I said. Fund NASA, get rid of the military ties, set up a lofty goal, and make America proud again. And impeach that lying sack of shit Bush for a start.

I have this belief

[Cyno]

that there are no excuses.

But how does this relate to NASA?

I don't know. I don't work there and my opinion won't change a thing.

Columbia Fuel Tank video?

[Perl-bot]

Since initial findings indicated a severe problem and onboard fuel tank video was available, but never shown, I smell cover-up!

Nuclear rockets from earth to orbit, right....

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoohoo... Reality check time...

Do you seriously think NASA (or anyone else) has a snowball's chance in hell of firing a nuclear rocket (presumably nuclear-thermal a la NERVA) *within the atmosphere*? At best there would be a world-wide political uproar and radioactive pollution from the exhaust.

At worst, if the thing with the reactor critical came down in another nation all hell would break loose. It would not be pretty. And I can't see you using a normal break-up system on a nuclear rocket if it goes wrong.

By all means, use nuclear thermal for interplanetary upper stages, where the reactor is inert during ascent and (as per NASA plans) is only fired in a c. 1,000 mile orbit so if it screws up it's not going anywhere, but forget about using this technology to get *into* orbit. This isn't scare-mongering a la Cassini; the environmental and political constraints are very real.

Or you could be talking about an Orion. Which IMHO is even crazier... ("Hi folks, we just want to launch a thousand-tonne spacecraft with a couple of hundred nukes on board. Yes we know it breaks the test ban treaty and will spew large amounts of fission products along its path. Yes we know it breaks the nuclear-weapons-in-space treaty. Yes we know even ignoring the nuke side if it hit a city at Mach 9 the result would be a disaster ('coz it's too big to break up into small pieces). Yes we know you might see it as a cover for building the ultimate nuclear bomber. But we're sure you'll all agree with it's worth it to get us into space.")

For getting into orbit at lower costs over the same development time-frame and technical risk, air-breathing lower stages are a far saner alternative.

That's actually wrong.

[AzrealAO]

Two space suits are always carried on board any shuttle mission in which the Cargo Bay doors are to be opened. They must be there should there be a problem latching/locking the cargo bay doors before re-entry, as re-entry would be impossible if the doors aren't sealed correctly.

MMU's (Manned Maneuvering Units) however are not carried, and have not been carried for a long time.

Re:Recommendation: Machine-Gun the Management,. ..

[Simkin1]

I'd love to meet you and shake your hand.
Unfortunately I'm well on my way to becoming one of the brainwashed... it happens once you get past the honeymoon phase (about 6 months), and then past the pure frustration phase (about 2 years of trying to fight the good fight and get your job done)... after that... there's only one phase left... you say screw it all, and do what's in your own best interest. After awhile even the best of us get tired of banging our heads against the walls of mgmt.

No you jackass...

[Simkin1]

No, this is the kind of response I would expect from NASA mgmt. The reality is that those people who want 'oversight' generally lack the competence to make decisions properly. Your arguement is bullshit at best, and the engineers and scientists at NASA are anything but sloppy... Keep that crap to yourself, because it's the oversight that's the biggest problem. The reality is that the scientists should be making the decisions... not you mgmt jackasses...

"GO Fever"

[n5vb]

.. was what Wally Schirra called it when the Apollo 1 fire woke everybody up. I believe the same phrase was resurrected for STS-51L. And if it hasn't been brought out again for STS-107, it should be.

It's contagious. It leads you to accept things you wouldn't if you were thinking straight. Most insidiously, it leads you to try something marginally dangerous, not get burned by it the first time, and be slightly more comfortable trying it again in the future.

The story is right there in the report .. the -Y bipod ramp, the chunk of foam that they're pretty sure punched the fatal hole in the RCC cap, had broken off on other launches. The first several times it happened it was ruled an In-Flight Anomaly and the program was put on hold until it was looked at. After about a half dozen of these, someone decided they'd been getting away with it for that long and it hadn't killed anyone, so it must not be as big a deal as they thought, and they stopped treating it as an IFA. This was so ingrained in the process by STS-107 that they didn't think much of it when the film showed the chunk from the bipod ramp hitting the wing leading edge .. someone even made the statement that the RCC was pretty much impervious to such a foam impact.

The chilling thing is .. when I first saw the now-famous thermogram that showed the anomalous bright spot on the left wing leading edge, I told everyone I knew that they had probably had a dislodged or penetrated section of RCC around panel 8 or 9 followed by a main spar burn through. The hairs came up on the back of my neck when I saw the CAIB's findings .. some days it's fun to be right, but today wasn't one of them ..

... random...

[Simkin1]

sentiments of Plato on democracy...

The fallicy of democracy is that it's always dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

Danger, real-time battle management

[hughk]

The US military went through this kind of transition in the early 1980s. More and more command and control was moved lower and lower in the hierarchy. Tactics were left to the people on the scene

Actually with the advent of real-time situation reporting, the Pentagon can already monitor where mobile units are and their condition. There is a very real danger of someone in the Pentagon trying to micromanage a military action (even worse, perhaps with a politician looking on, offering suggestions). The technology is almost there now to make a soldier feel like an astronaut - monitored and micromanaged every second with almost no capability to use initiative.

Good, cheap, fast - pick any two....

[hughk]

This is standard project engineers lore. It seems that NASA chose cheap and fast - we know what the tradeoff was. The thing is that sometimes it is reasonable to short cut on quality, as long as it is acceptable that something will fail from time to time. However, a rocket is a semi-controlled bomb and even unmanned, can be very dangerous (ask the Brazilians). Knowing when a shortcut means a risk, and understanding that risk needs a good engineering manager - I have met very few in recent years.

This rule is so fundemental to good engineering and the management of engineering projects from bridges through software - including space shuttles.

Re:Reduced Engineering Staff at NASA and Contracto

[LoneStarGeek]

You are right on target with this statement. It probably has been that way though since the US government started hiring contractors.

You beg more questions with each post

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also privy to the fact that all the Progresses and Soyuzes in the pipeline are spoken for

Boy! I'm amazed by the depth of your thought. I would had never considered such an unsurmountable technical difficulty! And of course none of the proposed users of the Soyuz and Progress would willingly delay their launch to save the lives of seven astrounats whose plight has captured the world's attention.

When those same spacecraft were required to sustain the lives of the Russian crew already aboard the ISS?

with neither seating for a crew nor a heat shield and recovery system for landing anything safely.

And of course, using the progress to ferry to the ISS is not an option, they must reenter. Why? because AC here cannot come up with the alternative, sorry folks you are SOL up there.

It's not my job to provide the alternative, it's yours. Merely waving your hands is no substitute for facts. Since you are bringing Progress into this, it's up to you to demonstrate that it was a realistic possibility by:

1. Proving that the launch vehicle and Progress freighter could have reached Columbia in the first place. (Columbia's orbit was not in the 57 degree inclination favored for the Baikonur launch site.)
2. Proving that the Progress, having reached Columbia, could have then ferried the 7 occupants through the necessary change-of-plane burn and altitude increase required to get to the ISS. (I will let you calculate the delta-V requirements, and do not forget to allow at least 60 kg per occupant plus life support.)
3. Proving that the occupants would have been alive when they got there (thermal control, yadda yadda).
4. Proving that the occupants could stay alive on the ISS long enough to be rescued, given the ISS's limited reserves of water and oxygen.

Again, you are asserting a positive. It is up to you to support it. You have the same burden for proposals involving any other launch vehicle; if none of them could have been readied before Columbia's life support ran out, your claim is worthless. Yes, it would be good to have space vehicles in reserve for rescue missions, should one be required. No, we were not sufficiently forward-thinking to budget for them, build them and maintain them in a state of readiness. Those are the facts.

Another fact is that it is a simple matter to get another seven astronauts. People will still volunteer to fly Shuttles; the thing in short supply is Shuttles themselves, and the loss of Columbia was essentially a done deal once the wing TPS was hit. The crew and the nation probably were better off not knowing, and not wasting the effort on a rescue doomed to fruitlessness.

Your "cannot fail" mindset is similar to that of many managers I've seen while they were busy overseeing major fiascos. I hope that your future employers get a chance to read your posts in this thread (which will remain for years, unless they get moderated down to zero very soon - fat chance) if they are thinking of you for any kind of leadership post. Yes, that is why I have been posting.

what a shocker!

[Anonymous Coward]

having worked (losely applied term) with the government I can tell you that this attitude is paramount to their very existence.

Picture the stereotypical government organization.

Picture some naive fool who is obviously not a "team player" that actually can manage and brings about a more efficient year resulting in that organization saving money and improving some aspect that will save more money later. The reward will be that departments budget being cut since as the reasoning goes... "they can work with less." Sounds logical enough. (assuming one doesn't apply too much thought) Next we have a situation where a crisis arises and the current budget plan will not cover it (meaning they either need more money now or just need more overall). Sorry, we can't process your forms until you fill out the appropriate DS_507-a, WW_85, FORM_43, DS_34 (a and b), and the appropriate "usual" forms (numbering in the 100's). Then you have to push them all through since we all know the work ethic of the goverment decision maker.

Oops! Your deadline is just around the corner. Now we will chastise that manager for somehow not foreseeing these problems as if he had anything to do with budget cuts. Soon we will solve the problem in the usual government way. Hire some incompetent contracting organization to slap some crap together and call it a system.

However, needing some scapegoat to blame it all on we will just say it was the original organizations fault for not "proactively leveraging the synergy of Java."

much like governments, vigilance is the key

[Anonymous Coward]

there will never be the perfect business model, vision statement, hiring policy, CEO, or "system" for a business. What is needed is the human and unwritten virtue of vigilance. A good leader who is driven will ensure a good operation stays that way... his interest is in sucess. A good leader will therefore carefully screen his minions in a way that disregards superficial coatings like buzz compliance, credentials and claims of expertese and actually gets a human feel (not to mention follows up on every claim and requires testing and/or proof)

ummm, you must not be in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

or you have the extreme luck to be in a worthy Military organization.

In a military environment the management team at NASA would be courtmarshalled for negligence.

Indeed that is the way it SHOULD be... however it is not exactly the rule today.

well said

[Anonymous Coward]

however I should point out that the typical bureuacratic response of "throwing money at it" is not the answer. It is the situation like with Military cutbacks and base shutdowns. Often the decisions were based upon very political considerations (who can get the support of which sentator representing the area about to die from the base closing) while others start like this but are floundered about until the 11th hour. At this time they hastily make a decision that doesn't even have the benefit of reducing pain in some area (regardless of the lack of ethics in those, the former, decisions).

The analogy of trimming fat is perfect. You can carefully take the time to cut fat or just take a very oversized axe and cut large chunks away. This results in less meat and often with proportinately more fat. The solution is precision and care; which when translated up the chain of command means competent and logical decision making and rationale.

There is no perfect solution, there is just the stop being put to endless excuses and bureaucracy. When big events happen it is amazing how there is such a quick burst of vitality, direction, and dedication. Look at the weeks just after 9-11. However humans, and it seems especially Americans, suffer from exceptionally short memories. What was dedication becomes policy 1105, what was direction becomes Vision Statement #81, and what was vitality becomes a call for people with degrees in "this particular very small subset of problem" and other superficial nonsense. Morale is never questioned and leadership is very rarely demanded or checked.

At the end it is a matter of ethics. Unethical people in leadership positions cause many problems... more proportionally than would people further down the chain. This is basically the "Burden of Command" that is now just a cliche and not understood or even desired to be learned and followed. It is a team effort... have competent technical folks, knowledgable and responsible managers and respected and ethical leaders. The good leaders will be more interested in doing the right thing than in advancing their career. RHIR

...impeach that lying sack of shit Bush...

[PHAEDRU5]

Where were you when Billy was spraying cum on interns and ignoring al Qaeda?

Oh, sucking his dick? Sorry. I'll get back to my regularly-scheduled programs.

Oh, and BTW, Homer Hickam despises people like you

[PHAEDRU5]

"I don't believe there's a NASA culture. There is, however, a Shuttle cult. It is practiced like a religion by space policy makers who simply cannot imagine an American space agency without the Shuttle. Well, I can, and it's a space agency which can actually fly people and cargoes into orbit without everybody involved being terrified of imminent destruction every time there's lift-off. With some reservations, written in the politest language, the CAIB recommended to keep Shuttles flying but with more inspections, more bureaucracy (an outside safety agency), and more money. But piling on more inspections, people and dollars won't make the Shuttle safer. Neither will the safety sensitivity training that will probably be dumped on top of the overworked, disillusioned NASA engineers. My God, they've already dedicated their very souls to keep the Shuttle flying safely! The truth is, no amount of arm-waving about "culture" can fix a flawed design."

Now, go fuck yourself.

Thanks for the exact reference...

[hughk]

this does rather stomp on the people who said that first the spacewalk was impossible and then repair or rescue would have been impossible.