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Murphy's Law Rules NASA

Posted by michael on from the cat-lands-butter-side-down dept.

3x37 writes "James Oberg, former long-time NASA operations employee, now journalist, wrote an MSNBC article about the reality of Murphy's Law at NASA. Interesting that the incident that sparked Murphy's Law over 50 years ago had a nearly identical cause as the Genesis probe failure. The conclusion: Human error is an inevitable input to any complex endeavor. Either you manage and design around it or fail. NASA management still often chooses the latter."

3 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Mark my words by zerdood · · Score: 5, Funny

    Someday all decisions will be made by machines. We'll just sit back while they do all the work. Then, no more human error.

    --
    My sig would have been a lot cooler if /. didn't filter out HTML tags 0.o
    1. Re:Mark my words by j0yb0y · · Score: 5, Funny

      Let me restate what he said,

      Someday all errors will be made by machines. We'll just sit back while they do all the work. Then, no more human error.

  2. The REAL REAL Reason for Errors! by Ced_Ex · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's the real reason for NASA and their errors, as quoted by Gordon Cooper a former astronaut.

    "Well, you're sitting on top of this rocket, about to be flung into the most hostile environement know to man, and you keep thinking, 'Everything here was supplied by the lowest bidder.'"

    --
    Live forever, or die trying.