Murphy's Law Rules NASA

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."

Comments

Mark my words

[zerdood]

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

Re:Mark my words

[j0yb0y]

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.

Good Point

[RAMMS EIN]

``Human error is an inevitable input to any complex endeavor. Either you manage and design around it or fail.''

This is a very good point, and I wish more people would realize it.

For software development, the application is: Just because you can write 200 lines of correct code does not mean you can write 2 * 200 lines of correct code. Always have someone verify your code (not yourself, because you read over your errors without noticing them).

where would we be without mistakes...

[woodsrunner]

If you compare the advances to Science and Knowledge due to mistakes rather than deliberate acts, it might come out that everything is a mistake.

Recently I took a class on AI (insemination, not intelligence) and apparently the two biggest breakthroughs by Dr. Polge, in preserving semen were due to mistakes. First, his lab mislabeled glycerol as fructose and they were able to find a good medium for suspension. Secondly, he blew off finishing freezing semen to go get a few pints and didn't make it back to the lab until the next day thus discovering that it was actually better to not freeze the stuff right away.

Mistakes are some of the best parts of science and life in general. It's best to try to make more mistakes (i.e. take risks) than it is to try and always be right. (unless you are obsessive compulsive).

Re:interesting but it's not really true

[Wizzy Wig]

...having people double check a project from the ground up will almost always find the problems...

Then you double check the checkers, and so on... that's the point of the article... humans will err... Like Demming said... "you can't inspect quality into a process."

Re:interesting but it's not really true

[Control Group]

No, it is true. It's the "almost always" in your statement that's the key. It's simple statistics, really. Assume that a well-trained, expert engineer has a 5% chance of making a material error. This implies that 5% of the things s/he designs have flaws.

Now suppose this output is double-checked by another engineer, who also has a 5% chance of error. 95% of the first engineer's errors will be caught, but that still leaves a .25% chance of an error getting through both engineers.

No matter what the percentages, no matter how many eyes are involved, the only way to guarantee perfection is to have someone with a zero percent chance of error...and the chances of that happening are zero percent. Any other numbers mean that mistakes will occur. Period.

I remember reading a story somewhere about a commercial jet liner that took off with almost no fuel. There are plenty of people whose job it is to check that every plane has fuel...but each of them has a probability of forgetting. Chain enough "I forgots" together, and you have a plane taking off without gas. At the level of complexity we're dealing with in our attempts to throw darts at objects xE7 kilometers away, it is guaranteed that mistakes will propagate all the way through the process.

armchair rocket science

[onion_breath]

I love how journalists and others like to sit back and criticize these engineers' efforts. They are human, and they will do stupid things. Having been trained as a mechanical engineer (although I mostly do software engineering now), I have some idea of how many calculations have to be made to design even one aspect of a project. I couldn't imagine the complexity of such a system, trying to account for every scenario, making sure agorithms and processes work as planned for ONE mission. No second chances. That we have individuals willing to dedicate the mental efforts to this cause at all is worthy of praise. These people have pride and passion in what they do, and I'm sure they will continue to do their best.

For anyone wanting to yack about poor performance... put your money where your mouth is. I just get sick of all the constant nagging.

The REAL REAL Reason for Errors!

[Ced_Ex]

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.'"