Audit Finds Problems with ISS Management

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Audit Finds Problems with ISS Management

Posted by michael on Saturday February 28, 2004 @08:15PM from the nothing-but-borscht-to-eat dept.

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 This includes missing, inconsistent, or outdated technical drawings; inadequately trained staff, and analysis of failure trends that is 'severely lacking'.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."

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You know... by Bobdoer · 2004-02-28 20:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

For something so complicated as rocket science, they really need to work at double checking their work.
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.

--
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Duct tape anyone by dncsky1530 · 2004-02-28 20:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

So its the budget crisis that casued the Mire to be patched with duct tape, will the ISS suffer the same fate?
NASA has lost its soul by mcrbids · 2004-02-28 20:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

Not all of NASA, mind you. But, if I may criticize, (and I may, it's my right to do so) it seems that NASA has been blowing it for a full generation.

Ever since the shuttle boondoggle, where we were promised all manner of stuff, and instead, ended up with *that* thing... A wasteful, expensive, heavy, obsolete white elephant of a space craft that tried to be everything to everybody and ended up doing nothing well.

Who's gonna get excited by a space program that perpetuates a lie? We've spend billions to keep 30-year-old rust-bucket space technology working that should have been scrapped before it was ever completed.

Now, other countries (China, India, etc) are moving in to fill the vacuum left behind by 30 years of neglect on the part of NASA. The best thing we could do is to disband it, and rebuild a *real* space program, and one that allowed (encouraged?) private enterprise participation.

There's money to be made on space, if our benevolent govt will allow it.

-Ben

--
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Surprising? No. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-28 20:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

A lot of sectors of NASA are poorly managed, look at how they purchase equipment through purchasing agents.

A store I worked at had NASA employees purchase 10 Creative Nomad Jukeboxes as marked the LPO as 'mobile hard-disk". Many instances like this had taken place. Blatent missuse of budgeted money.

Ever wonder why we haven't had a manned mission to Mars? Partly because their purchasing policies are flawed. Partly because emlpoyees are allowed to spend $4000 on MP3 players, slip it through the system, and listen to Jungle Boogie instead of doing real science.

Opportunity makes a theif...
1. Re:Surprising? No. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-28 21:25 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I worked there for 25 years and never saw anything like that. All of our office furniture was World War II surplus. If we wanted technical books, we usually had to pay for them out of our own pockets. Most of our PCs were built from scrounged and excess parts. If I needed office supplies, like paper and pens, I usually ended up paying for them out of my own pocket, since they weren't available from our supply office. I couldn't even get postage stamps. Somebody decided they were too prone to pilferage to be given to ordinary employees. Sometimes I used surplus parts from my home computers to repair and upgrade my work computer. Installed with my own personal tools, since simple tools like screwdrivers were difficult to get from the supply system. The way I see it, the government owes me a sizable chunk of money for all of the things that they should have provided, but didn't.
2. Re:Surprising? No. by anubi · 2004-02-29 00:47 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Yes.. the aerospace contractor I worked for quite a while operated like this... and you know what? It was very efficient. We knew exactly how our stuff worked. If something broke, we fixed it. Yes, a lot of us brought tools from home to work. It was that kind of place. Most of us were older amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists having the time of our lives. It was our company, and our efforts made a difference.
  Then big company came in and bought us out. Money from venture capitalists flooded our organization. Highly paid management professionals were brought in to optimize our operations. Pride in workmanship flew out the window, to be replaced by whatever got the immediate job at hand done cheapest. We no longer fixed our stuff - we had support contracts. Who cared if we even knew how it worked? But now we had dress codes. Oooh, didn't we look all pretty with our suits and ties! Well, we did get paid better, and dressing the part went with the privilege of being kept on the payroll. But who cared if you spent day and night working on some little quirk you didn't thoroughly understand? Or if you knew how to build something you needed - when you could just throw cash at the problem and gloss it over with some powerpoint presentations? With the mass infusions of cash, technical knowledge seemed to become much less important than management skills. It seemed everybody wanted the latest presentation software, and no-one wanted a thing to do with the old circuit analysis software we had used for years. Having the snazziest system on your desk and office decor seemed to be what everyone wanted. It flat was not fun to work there anymore. It seemed it became dog-eat-dog. They moved us out of the lab and into cubicles. The took our coffee machine away and gave us "secretarial services". Dammit, I was just about born with a soldering iron in my hand...not a Franklin Day Planner!
  Everytime I have seen a mass infusion of money into something, it seems to ruin it. The first time I noted this effect, it was in a school system, where when a lot of money was granted into the system, the first thing they did was buy a bunch of unnecessary stuff which then mandated substantial resources to maintain it. Not only that, it completely showed all of us that were volunteering our efforts just how insignificant we were. Just think, who needs to know how to build an oscilloscope from scratch in an electronics class when you could just tweak the knobs on the latest models? I still remember the joys of going into my old EICO and fixing whatever I smoked when I misused the thing ( usually the FET on the frontend differential amp when I got a nasty inductive kickback from a relay coil. )
  Answer me this: If a college has an assortment of older oscilloscopes ( some are in need of repair ), and the students not only learn to use the scopes that work, they also learn to fix the broken ones, do you think they got a better education than the ones who only got to use later scopes, but have no idea what's actually in them?
  At the college I am attending right now, I am taking some automotive courses. I am doing a "special studies" program... you see, they have an old infrared exhaust analyzer that is no longer functional. I am having a helluva time taking that old thing apart, figuring out how the infrared chopper worked, and will hopefully build an interface so I can send the signals through a A/D converter so I can drop it into a computer. When I get through with that thing, I expect not only to have a helluva good idea of how NonDispersive Infrared analyzers ( CO, CO2, HC ) work, but also how the UV analyzers ( NO, NO2 ), and oxygen sensors work. Not only will I know when a machine is giving me funny readings I can't trust, I will know how to go into the machine, locate the funny and fix it.
  Here's the crux of the problem... If I do not know how the machine works and how it arrives at its answers, I probably won't know if the machine is malfunction
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Whoa! Big Surprise! by LooseChanj · 2004-02-28 21:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

NASA is a big lumbering bureaucracy all by itself. Add in a few dozen other countries/space agencies, it'd be a bloody miracle if it ran well. Hell, it's a bloody miracle they get anything done at all.

--
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Russian Welfare by Detritus · 2004-02-28 21:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

The federal government, not NASA, decided that it would be a good idea to keep all of those Russian rocket scientists employed, rather than designing and building ICBMs for our enemies. So the Space Station became, in large part, a make-work project for Russian scientists and engineers.

--
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
1. Re:Russian Welfare by mvdwege · 2004-02-28 23:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  Given that these Russian rocket scientists:
  
  Are masters at making cheap efficient booster rockets to get stuff into orbit.
  
  Have tons of experience on how to support long-term missions in low orbit space stations,
  
  I'd say that this is more a question of NASA and the US government not wanting to waste billions in reinventing the wheel.
  Mart
  --
  "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
2. Re:Russian Welfare by igny · 2004-02-29 06:10 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Russian Space Agency didn't need NASA's help with providing jobs to russian scientists. They are actively invlolved in Chinese space program now, a very lucrative business, and soon will help India to develop their own space program. Russia also works together with ESA on many common projects, including the planned use of russian boosters in French Guinea.
  Without participation in the ISS, Russia would still be taking space tourists to Mir.
  
  --
  In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
$$$_ by iamacat · 2004-02-28 21:43 · Score: 4, Interesting

For something as complicated as rocket science, they really need proper funding. Ever worked on a project with unrealistic schedule for an understuffed (say no QA), underpayed group? Was it real high quality when released?

And let people really doing the stuff cut through red tape when approporiate to save money for important things. If a component is not safety-critical and available cheaply off the shelf (say a notebook to check e-mail), let the engineer pick it up in Fry's and expense it rather than going through government bidding, approval and so on. Save that for things like ceramic tiles.
1. Re:$$$_ by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-29 05:02 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Let's see. Open source software. Understaffed? Mostly. Underpayed? Many don't get payed at all. High Quality? Surprise: sometimes yes.
Prelude to killing ISS? by printman · 2004-02-28 23:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wonder if this will be used as ammo to kill the ISS...

--
I print, therefore I am.
Re:This really burns me by M1FCJ · 2004-02-29 02:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

Effectively flying to ISS is not more dangerous than flying to Hubble. Either way if something happens, 7 people will die. Flying into orbit or descent to earth is no riskier if you are flying from ISS. Even more, ISS' infrastructure will not allow having 7 additional people on board for a medium to long period. Apollo 13 used LM as a lifeboat but they endured pretty harsh conditions for three days. Also usually there aren't enough space suits in a shuttle flight for 7. What if the docking is not possible? In early Salyut flights docking failures were common occurences. One Spacelab mission was cancelled because of a docking problem.
Killing Hubble is a political decision, nothing more. It pleases Bush&Co because it shows NASA's dedication to Bush's crazy Mars plan, frees up resources and makes it clear to all tech-savvy people that Shuttle is a white elephant and it is nothing what was promised in late 70s and early 80s. I'm not saying Shuttle was a while elephant from the start but just because it existed no replacement was properly funded.
About one basket and eggs scenario, unless you send a good amount of mixed-gender people to ISS nothing good will happen if something happens to Earth. I really don't care about some useless seeds of a cocky Astronaut if there are no eggs to fertilise. They can whack themselves to no end in free fall.
Re:Redhat by M1FCJ · 2004-02-29 02:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's not they didn't think about it or haven't tried it. Even in 80's there used to be a nice autonomous vehicle which you could strap on and go for a ride around the shuttle. It doesn't need very very high-tech either. It's fairly easy to design something uses compressed air to whiz around and uses gyroes for attitute. It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be expensive.
The problem is, NASA is very conservative. They like experiments but Astronauts really hate change. Nothing has changed since 1970s and they like it that way.
Soon, we will give up on manned space by Animats · 2004-02-29 06:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

Back in the 1960s, the US had a national commitment to undersea exploration. Men went to the deepest part of the ocean and came back. Small undersea bases were built, and larger ones were planned.
All that ended decades ago. No manned submersible in operation today can go to the deepest part of the ocean. All the undersea habitats are defunct except for Aquarius, which the University of North Carolina now owns and struggles to fund. It's over.
Manned operations in the deep ocean never became cheaper or safer. They're possible, but not useful. Deep ocean work belongs to robots today.
Much the same thing has happened to space. All remaining manned space operations are ego trips for governments. All useful work is unmanned.
Someday this may change, but it won't be done using chemically fueled rockets.