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Satellite Tip-Over Mishap Due to Missing Bolts
cradle writes "On September 6th, the $239 Million Dollar NOAA N-Prime Satellite toppled over and crashed to the floor of Lockheed Martin Space Systems' factory in Sunnyvale, CA, as it was being repositioned to replace an instrument. Today NASA released their report on the cause of the accident. It seems somebody forgot to check whether it was bolted down: '... during an operation that required repositioning (rotating) the
TIROS NOAA N-PRIME spacecraft from a vertical to a horizontal position, the spacecraft
slipped from the Turn-Over Cart (TOC) and fell to the floor. The spacecraft fell because the
TIROS adapter plate to which it was mounted was not bolted to the TOC adapter plate with the
required 24 bolts. The bolts were removed from the TOC by another project while the cart was
in a common staging area, an activity which was not communicated to the NOAA project team.'"
I bet the wise guy who decided to do that is 'bolting' right now. ;D
That's exactly what they said had happened right after the accident. A detailed study of the cause is always in order, but I'm surprised that it took a year to verify what they apparently knew at that outset.
I can't be expected to show up for school every day. So I get the flu and miss one day.
Who knew "Lug nut day" would be soo important?
Yeah that sucks but these things happen. Whether you're working on a 100K toy or a $300 million dollar one, every once and awhile there's going to be a mishap. Still, it sounds like there's a management problem here if people are going around removing bolts and the project team isn't even aware of it. If there's literally so few nuts and bolts handy for the various projects going on that they feel the need to cannabalize other projects, that's a disaster waiting to happen. I hope my neighbour doesn't decide to remove my brakes without letting me know.
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Science -- Sealed, Delivered.
Its a multi-million dollar project.
... anyone know what sort of repair is required, and what state the project is now in, a year later?
Of course they're going to take their time to publish the full results of the mis-hap. Since its millions of dollars of tax-payer money, the report must be complete, accurate, and fully account for the entire mis-hap.
Would you want to have to do such a report in a day? A week? I think a year is fine for this sort of event; assuming, of course, that in the meantime repair work was being done
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If I was "repositioning" a $239,000,000.00 piece of hardware, I would visually check the bolts before starting the rotation. I would also check every other piece of safety equipment... twice. If the bolts were there, I would probably check the torque on them, if I hadn't tightened them myself.
Jeeeez, people, this isn't rocket science. Well actually it is rocket science, but that's the difference between rocket science and stuff that blows up on the pad.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
You're inside or outside. Stop running through the door. We're not trying to air condition the whole street.
Rinse off your dishes when you're done eating.
Don't sass back to your teacher.
Brush your teeth before bed.
Put things back where you found them.
JUMPIN' JESUS, PUT THE FUCKING BOLTS BACK IN THE 230 MILLION DOLLAR SATELLITE!!!
As somebody who has personally watched stuff fall off of test tables as they rotate to vertical I can definitively say that that the sinking feeling in your stomache as the equipment slowly topples off the stand is exceeded only by the sinking feeling in your bowels when it shatters on the ground.
I can only imagine the multiplicative factor involved when it's a $240M satellite instead of a $20K prototype.
As for why they took a year to report out on the cause...the thing cost 240 million frickin' dollars! I'm sure the managers wanted more of an answer as to why it's in pieces on the ground than "Uh...we dropped it". Maybe they wanted to know "why it was dropped" and "how it was dropped" and "what is the likelyhood that a thing will be dropped again" and "where does that tech who dropped it live?"
-Pinkoir
Not breaking a quarter billion dollar piece of equipment make your day?
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I agree with you, but good process doesn't bore me at all. But I know I'm the exception. The truth is Managagment just wants to get the job done with the least resources, so they pressure the techs with increasing workload and tend to look the other way when people cut corners to get the job done. Techs know they are supposed to do process 100%, but they don't want to be the guy who takes twice as long to do stuff because of following procss. So whenever I see major screw ups like this, I blame management and ops equally.
Engineers, BTW, write processes but never follow their own process. Thus, they leave messes for the techs to sort out.
The report covers much more than just the proximate cause of the accident. It focuses on the organizational and procedural failures that led to a situation where nobody checked the bolts. Whoever posted this story should have mentioned, that, too.