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Audit Finds Problems with ISS Management
SuperBanana writes "According to an AP story carried by the Boston Globe, an internal audit released yesterday by NASA found numerous problems with management of the station, in some ways similar to the problems in the shuttle program. This includes missing, inconsistent, or outdated technical drawings; inadequately trained staff, and analysis of failure trends that is 'severely lacking'. Despite the report's length(172 pages) no specifics are cited. The report is not yet available in the press section of NASA's site."
I was an IT technical auditor for a big 5 a few years back. I also did some (boring) process work to map out IT areas of audit weaknesses / risk.
The job of an auditor is to find weaknesses. Like any profession its their job to satisify their existance and to find issues, no matter how big or how small.
I havent read the article (in true Slashdot style - I'm actually writing up some design docs right now!) but I'd say what they have found is typical of any normal IT / technology company where their process is never updated to the standards of their documentation.
On the other hand, we're cancelling the Hubble servicing mission because of safety concerns - which are very real concerns, but unfixable only because of a political decision that we'd rather go to Mars.
I'm all for the ISS, actually - I love the idea that humanity will not have all its eggs in one basket ever again. Even if the other basket is in a very low orbit around the first one for now, it's a start! But it's sad to watch the old pioneering spirit reduced to election campaign sound bites and random mismanagement, while we shortchange the real science.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
172 pages yet says nothing.
Sounds like a prime example of a typical auditor's chickenshit-mentality.
Any project - not to mention a project of this size - is bound to have holes in the documentation, inventory or accounting. Documents get misplaced, tools and materials get stolen/wasted/lost and some spending cannot be accounted for.
The owls are not what they seem
With pretty much anything that goes wrong (including 9-11), post-incident audits always seem to find a pile of organizational problems. It's interesting to see how often organizations evolve almost exclusively because of such findings. Perhaps a lot of governmental programs would benefit from regular audits that would look not just at things like how much cash is spent and where, but rather at the procedures themselves.
There's nothing wrong with 30-year-old rust-bucket space technology as long as it does its work cheap and reliable.
The old (ancient?) Soyuz launcher is a nice example: Nearly 1700 launches up until now, most of them sucessfull. It is in fact so cost effective, that Arianespace is planing to use Soyuz at Guiana Space Center from 2006 on (as well continuing to use them in Baikonur).
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
And no specifics. Sounds like the result of too many English classes where professors and teachers insist on X number of pages instead of papers where you get your point across as succintly as possible.
...that the budget crisis that casued the Mir was the mainly result of the collapse of communism, and Russia realising it actually had no money left.
Security? Paaaah.
The problem is not that process audits aren't done they are. Both private and personal organizations have regular audits performed and reports like this generated. The real problem is that, in many cases, those with the power to make substantive changes (management) simply don't want to do so because it's too expensive, whether in terms of time, money, or other resources, and it requires some disaster to really motivate them.
So what you get are organizations that are always fixing the previous generation of problems. Challenges morph over time, and if you're fixing the problems you should have fixed ten years ago, and as cheaply as possible, then you're probably not fixing the problems you need to fix now, looking ahead to the challenges you'll be facing over the next few years.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
How would trekking to Mars be reinventing the wheel? It hasn't been done yet.
The unofficial
If it is, then there is ammo for killing a lot of government programs.
A few weeks ago, I made a post somewhere else about running independent audits on the government by an outside firm (or two). My guess was that in the course of a given year, something like $100 billion could be picked out as inefficiencies, waste, fraud, or abuse. Following a report last week about the Secret Service -- hardly the biggest agency -- unable to account for a few billion on its own, I wonder if my guess was far too low.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
There's nothing wrong with 30-year-old rust-bucket space technology as long as it does its work cheap and reliable.
And the Shuttle is none of these.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Doesn't surprise me a bit, when funding gets trimmed 'quality' suffers. 'Finishing Touches', things like making sure you have all the as-built diagrams and other documentation up-to-date, all tech docs are readily accessible etc. etc. These are the first things to go.
As far as government spending goes, the US government could save billions by paying its suppliers and contractors on time. Usually they pay 30 to 120 days late and pay interest on those late payments!
I print, therefore I am.
Heck, in the last while we've heard of Challenger breaking apart, a space suit malfunction and a faulty file system on the Mars probe.
However, it must be noted that they almost always figure out the problem, afterwards.
I'd hate to burst your bubble but both the Challenger and Columbia incidents were issues that the engineers had foreseen. Unfortunately in both cases, engineers had warned their supervisors of dire consequences and were largely ignored. In these cases, it was not the technical skill but management interference that caused the failures. In the others, Murphy's law may have played a part along with shrinking budgets and short timelines.
In the Challenger case, an engineer at Morton Thiokol (the company that made the boosters) came forward at a Presidential Commission to tell how his company knew of the danger a year before the Challenger exploded. They knew because he had pleaded with his supervisors to change the O-ring design because it was faulty. For coming forward, he was fired and blacklisted.
In the Columbia case, NASA engineers reviewing the takeoff footage had seen the foam strike the wing. To investigate the problem further they wanted ground-based or space-based cameras to take more detailed footage of the left wing or even a space walk to verify any missing tiles. These suggestions were quashed by supervisors as too costly. They highly recommended the Columbia delay the landing until they could gather more data. That was nixed too as it would present the wrong PR image. The damage to the wing was minimal they were told.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Cost, Quality, Speed, pick 2.
The "sometimes yes" projects you mention probably picked cost and quality over speed. That is all.