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Panel Challenges NASA Over Shuttle Safety
Uttini writes "NASA skipped some shuttle safety improvements as it tried to meet unrealistic launch dates for the first flight since the Columbia tragedy, some members of an oversight panel said in a scathing critique. Poor leadership also made shuttle Discovery's return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be."
They need to keep people thinking that their program is deserving of taxpayers' money. The best way to do that is to launch the shuttle, especially after something like columbia.
They did what they with what they had; the government keeps cutting nasa funding, and THAT is what lead to columbia -- too little money, too much to do.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
the suits are defensive and pinheaded there
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'd think private industry probably has a better system of checks&balances than most government agencies these days.
Gotta love it when the critics come out of the woodwork. Even if the mission was completely flawless, they would still find something to carp about.
All these spacecraft seem like such an awkward and impractical way of transporting things through space. Wouldn't it be much easier to develop teleporter technology like you see in the science fiction shows and just send objects and astronauts to other planets that way?
You can get all sorts of things over the wireless internet these days, music, movies, all kinds of software. Since dna is just information too, it seems to me that it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to broadcast people and things from one place to another. NASA should get to work on this instead of silly space shuttles.
What if that one chunk hadn't fallen off right in view of the camera?
The return-to-flight mission would have been declared an outstanding success. Regular launches would have resumed. We would be back on track again.
Now we have to wait another seven months or more because little pieces of crap still keep falling off the fuel tank.
This is so completely pathetic.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Maybe it is time for new management.
The cake is a pie
If we simply are 100% as perfectly careful as possible, fearing to tread anywhere but our exact previous footsteps, taking forever to inspect and re-inspect, we will never learn how to do it differently.
It is through our mistakes that we learn. Anybody willing to go up in a space shuttle knows they run a strong risk of death. Personally, I'd be excited to have the chance to risk my life in that noble work. Instead, for the sake of those who love me (okay, and for lack of ability or opportunity), I toil with my daily work, contributing my bit to the economy, so indirectly supporting the space program.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Well that's what Progess Prevention Officers are supposed to do isn't it?
The failure of Columbia was not a failure of engineering. Successful rocket launches occur often in Japan, Europe, and Florida.
The failure of Columbia was a failure of management. Managers wanting to show results to their superiors ignored the "grunt" engineers when they warned of a potential problem with tragic consequences for Columbia. The warnings became reality.
People seem to forget that space travel is freaking dangerous. The whole concept of a lit rocket attached to your ass is probably never going to be as safe as walking to the store.
At some point, NASA will do as much as can be reasonably be expected and allow a volunteer to climb in the shuttle and hope for the best.
People who can, do. People who can't, sit on committees and complain.
Those people need to get out of the way and let NASA do their job.
Didn't the new Nasa chief fire like 50 people? Most of them were just paper pushers and beacracy creators but my guess is the poor leadership group could be part of the group that got outcasted when Okeefe left.
Nasa is a mess
http://saveie6.com/
You want safe.. stay home. Buckle the seat-belts and light it up.
To think, the inherent problems with the shuttle have finally snowballed to the point where launching is next-to-impossible now that they are finally trying to hurry up and get something done (ISS).
Kinda makes you even angrier about the countless, 600 million dollar "We're growing some more fucking crystals, dammit" missions we've had for the past 20 years. Talk about time wasted. Let's not even get started on how the constant redesigns of the ISS have left it borderline useless (and how the costs of the redesigns and the station we have now equal the cost of the original proposal)
What exactly do these billions of taxpayer dollars toward Nasa really do for us? It just seems redicules to me.....these ancient 1960's shuttles that keep fucking breaking. I know that in the 60's it was the big "beat the Russian's" and excelerate technological research argument....but now? I mean, there are those that believe that the moon landing was filmed in hollywood.
I assume they're currently perfecting space weapons or some other very benificial technology.
Again, how is this shuttle program really benefiting american citizens? If they were ditchhing the shuttles and really investing in REAL space travel (think quantum mechanics) i might think differently.
Just my 2cents
How many of you drive old cars, trucks, vans, or SUV's that say they are a joy to drive and run like the day they were brand new? No one would say that. Why NASA is using a shuttle that is 20 years old is beyond me. When I was 16 my parents gave me the old family '81 Datsun 310. I was grateful and even a bit excited to have it. I even thought I was "the man" because I had a car and most of my friends didn't, but it was a 13 year old car by the time I got it and had plenty of quirks. It had more than 300K miles on it when I got it. It ran pretty well and didn't cause me any major malfunctions, (Other than a clutch) but as soon as I could afford it I got a newer car! The car made it a year or two for my brother before giving up. I think it finally died in '97 with well over 400K miles on it. Those Damn shuttles have TONS more miles on them than that stupid car. Plus they are in a tad more hostile condition than the local freeways and roads. It baffles me that they are still willing to send astronauts up in them? Beyond that, I'm just as perplexed by the fact that there are astronauts blinded by the "I'm going to be in a text book one day" mentality that they are willing to ride up in the damn thing! Just plain stupidity if you asked me. It's time to produce something new with new seals, gaskets, and gap filler, and maybe a satelite dish. (Weather shouldn't affect their picture up there being so close to the satelites themselves.) If they plan on putting a man on Mars they've got a long way to go with those shitty shuttles they're still nursing along.
I mean, how many of you would really rather be sitting at say a 20 year old computer right now versus the one you're on reading /. on at this moment? I mean c'mon, be honest with yourself!
-- My Rant is now over, we'll return you to your regularly scheduled blah.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
The problems that the most overcautious, paranoid organization on the entire planet is having with getting 99.999% safety instead of 100% safety will be fixed if we just throw it away and hope private industry starts doing stuff in its place.
I'm sure a for-profit company will be ecstatic about the ridiculous anal-retentive security procedures and public transparency, plus downtime of literally months every time there's hint of a problem, that has been the hallmark of NASA and is currently probably being taken so far overboard it's preventing NASA from doing any real work.
Oh, and of course what people tend to forget is that the NASA technology, good and bad, is generally being developed by private companies, companies with budgets which absolutely dwarf that of lockheed martin. Oh, but they're getting government money, so somehow that's different.
I am not oa rocket scientist but, looking at the present external tankdesign, it doesn't appear to be vacuum insulated.
I know it would add weight, but couldn't they have inner chambers to hold the fuel that are separated from the outer wall by a vacuum layer (like a thermos bottle)?
I think the weight difference would be offset by a safety factor -- namely less ice build up on the foam.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
In light of that, I can see no reason for NASA's own safety panel to NOT issue these kinds of complaints. That is what they are paid to do - look at what is going wrong and SAY something. They looked, and they spoke.
Now, as for anyone else - you've a point. Outsiders don't have the information needed to make the kinds of observations needed. Well, to an extent. There were several teams that had offered NASA solutions that would have guaranteed zero foam loss, but received no feedback from NASA. Those teams went public and I can understand that. Again, that's their area of expertise.
Now, do I think NASA should have chosen those solutions? I don't know. The safety panel didn't mention them, so maybe there were good reasons for declining. On the other hand, as a public organization, NASA might help themselves (and us) a lot by saying WHY those solutions were declined.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm sure Virgin has been exposed enough to a different culture, in which our government space agency is known as "nay-say," so they're not ready to absorb the system.
on the plus side, nasa made it possible, period.
on the negative side, we're kind of in "Perils of Pauline" mode with the present systems and support... AM news cycle, everything's fine. noon news cycle, "we have a problem." evening news cycle, folks are scurrying around like bugs chasing issues. lather, rinse, repeat throughout the flight of discovery in sts-114.
the characters who offed the future space vehicle program several years ago should be closely examined as prime examples of what the program should NOT be striving for, IMHO. the present bunch has to clean those water buckets before they can carry water to the project.
time will tell if they can.....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
companies with budgets which absolutely dwarf that of lockheed martin
Should have been
companies like Lockheed Martin with budgets which absolutely dwarf that of Virgin
Unavoidable risk: a rocket is an enormous explosive just barely controlled by exotic, expensive and difficult technology.
Avoidable risk: doing stupid things in your design to endanger lives.
The laws of physics, and many realities of engineering, are exactly the same today as they were in 1960.
For instance: what is the right place to locate the humans?
On the very top, because then they are the furthest away from the really dangerous bits. And delicate stuff needed for re-entry can be shielded and be far away from the immensely violent launch and debris and whatever is coming out of the ground and shaken off the rocket.
Corollary: where do you put the fuel tanks? On the rear end, dummy.
There's lots of reasons the Saturn V looked like it does. And how it looks like a whole lot of other rockets, except the shuttle. Ain't a coincidence.
These problems were known and solved, and the shuttle un-solved them.
Obviously, we need some more Nazi rocket scientists.
So a plane which can fly back is supposed to be 'cost effective'. But why does it have to be so big? You generally take big fat cargos up and then work on them. So take them in a big fucking can, which sits UNDER your small, human sized space plane which re-enters and holds the people, tools and control bits. You throw away the can. And under the cargo, you put the fat ass rockets.
You make them as cheap as possible, with metal-wrangling shipbuilding level technology, not ultra-high tech fancy pants stuff. That stuff is use 'once or twice', if it's still OK when you get it back off the ocean. Only the engines are the big monetary per-launch loss, but even now they have big solid rocket boosters which are one-use only.
They should make a big Saturn V style launcher with cheap ass solids strapped around the bottom for the initial heavy lift, like the Soyuz, then a cheap ass liquid booster module. Then a cargo can, and on top, the orbital and re-entry vehicle.
And also put that doohickey on the very top like with the Saturn V. What's it for? It's a little escape pod rocket and parachute to get the people the fuck away from the big explosive bits if something really bad happens.
If the Challenger worked like that, the crew might have been able to walk away, depending on circumstances.
NASA skipped some shuttle safety improvements as it tried to meet unrealistic launch dates for the first flight since the Columbia tragedy, some members of an oversight panel said in a scathing critique.
Oh, so they should have taken longer, right? And been more thorough?
Poor leadership also made shuttle Discovery's return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be."
Oh, so they did too much and spent too much money and it should have taken less time, right?
I'm confused -- it seems like the headline contradicted itself within the span of two sentences. Am I misreading this?
I keep hearing that if they used environmentally unfriendly foam (CFC's I would suppose). Does anyone know the veracity of this or shed any light on the situation with the foam?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
i have been saying it for years. and now, yet another example.
Alright, I've got a question that I haven't seen addressed, at all, anywhere.
We've spent God knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars trying to make the shuttle safe enough for human spaceflight. Maybe that just isn't going to happen. Not with the shuttle, not with the fact that we're looking at band-aids and not limb replacement solutions here.
So, what would it take to make the shuttle run on autopilot? Rockets fly to space all the time, Russian Progress vehicles even dock with the space station, although I'm not sure if they do it alone or via teleoperation.
Either way, why not invest a certain amount of money in an autopilot (or teleoperation) system so the shuttle could fly up, dock with the station, and then could be entered by ISS crew who could use the shuttle's robotic arm, etc., to set up the next component of the station. If manpower's an issue (and with 2 on board the station, it probably is) you could do it when there was a crew change and there were more people at the station, or you could really, really hurry with the CEV and wait until you could have enough people at the station to do the job.
Or, for that matter, you could just HOLD on station construction until the CEV was ready and you could squeeze enough people into the station to make this work.
This would solve the main issue: that the shuttle isn't safe for humans due primarily to reentry problems. In the future, you could even have the CEV dock with an in-space, unmanned shuttle and complete shuttle missions, such as a Hubble servicing mission, then undock, let the shuttle make its way home (or, in an unfortunate, but no longer life-threatening event, crash) and the CEV, with crew, would return to earth safely (as I can't recall a SINGLE EVENT where a capsule has burned up and people have died in reentry.)
Anybody know why this hasn't been suggested, at all? I think it may be cheaper and faster, certainly if we'd done this after the Columbia disaster, but even fi its not, it allows us to keep on using the shuttle for YEARS relatively cheaply.
Tim
All the Shuttle needs to fix all that is to write a new constitution. They've got a week to fix their budget, timeline and technical problems. No sweat - America's rooting for you!
--
make install -not war
sooner or later gives you shit... ;-)
Oh well, what the hell...
The Space Shuttle is fine in itself, the wings and it's nosecone were SEVERELY reinforced. Heck they took apart all 3 orbiters to do this. Of what I understand, Endeavour is still being refitted, which is why Discovery is Atlantis' backup whenever it goes up (tentatively March 4, 2006). This was done as a last resort should something fall off (make the shuttle key body parts stronger). The foam itself is the problem as most of you know. Whether their solutions worked or not they will never know, but are assuming that they did not for safety. For all NASA knows, it could have been a misapplication of the foam. The place where the foam came off was on a part of the tank that is difficult to uniformly apply so it could have been misapplied leading to it falling off. Another thing could have been during transport. The tank is made in Louisiana and is loaded onto a barge and sailed through the Gulf of Mexico to Florida to be used. It could have been bumped in just the right way to cause it to loosen just enough. Either way, NASA will never know so they're taking the "don't take any chances" approach which in the long run is probably the better idea. They need to fix the shuttle to complete the ISS. NASA's new vehichle is probably going to be a 3 man capsule similar to the old capsules, particularly Apollo. Finally, Spaceflight in itself is inherently dangerous. NASA knows it, the astronauts (who obviously are not forced to go up) know it. Tragedies happen (Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia) Not to make it sound like I don't care, they were indeed tragdies and horrible things to happen, and NASA has for the most part learned from its mistakes. I am confident that NASA will quickly lock down on the problem and will get the Shuttles back in full, safe operation.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
I'm afraid to even imagine a society where NASA exclusively produced cars and plublic transit.
Hey, I have a great idea. How about the government gives me $4 billion and in exchange I won't send anything into outer space.
Ok, I am being a bit sarcastic, but the point I am trying to get across is that Hindsight is 20/20. We all know that Government/NASA are inneficient, so let private companies take over.
Wouldn't it be much easier to develop teleporter technology like you see in the science fiction shows and just send objects and astronauts to other planets that way?
There are substantial problems with teleporter technology, ESPECIALLY when going from Earth's surface to low Earth orbit - that can create monster problems. I forget what story that was from (I enjoy Niven's hard SF, he takes into consideration a lot of things you might not think of), but I'd rather work on the foam problem than mess with stuff we know way too little about...
Tag lost or not installed.
Check thy wiki, foo!
is to sit on a panel and bitch and complain and nitpick and attack people who actually do work.
So what the hell have they been doing for the last 2 1/2 years? They're still using the non-freon based foam for environmental reasons even though they have an EPA exclusion to use freon. They should have just gone back to the old foam formula and been back up to flight status in 6 to 12 months. As it is they essentially did nothing to improve the problem in 2 1/2 years because for some reason I can't fathom they won't go back the formula they know works, but instead slap on a bunch of other remediation fixes that didn't work.
Seriously someone should loose their job over this, someone high up that should have known to go back to the old formula which they've know since 1999 worked better.
Am I missing something? It would seem like a no brainer to go back to the freon formula. Especially since they fleet is on the fast track to be retired anyway -- then no more freon anyway.
Letter To Iran
Many is the excuse that NASA simply isn't getting enough money. They need passionate scientists that can construct the program as something taxpayers are interested in and demanding more support. It doesn't start with money, it starts with a vision.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Natalie Portman and next shuttle launch: both postponed to March 2006. Coincidence?
People are saying that the shuttle is dangerous, and that may be so now, but the fact remains that it still has a success rate of ~99%. This is an extremely good record, especially considering the inherent risks in space travel.
(Disclaimer: I live in Houston, and may therefore be slightly biased.)
And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
If you are going to critize nasa to this extent lets look at the budget they are dealing with. For crying out loud they are creating masterpieces with peanuts. Of course there are going to be mistakes on a shoe string budget but hey who's to blame? That's for another story. For What nasa has accomplished i think everything that has happened wasn't in vein.
Most of this work was under O'Keefe. Griffin will take a while to get hold of all this and change it, but the shake up is occuring. Thank God. O'Keefe was a disaster as he appointed a bunch of managers/politicians (read PHBs) under him rather than engineers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=freon+s huttle+foam+nasa&btnG=Search+News
From the first site returned (and similar to several others)9 .htm
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAD0
If I'm misinformed, I'm not alone. Regardless of which exactly which formulas were used on which flights, we know that there are better formulas and we choose not to use them despite knowing how critical this is to a safe mission. Your facts have the stench of butt-covering and obviscation trying to deflect from the core fact that freon based foams should have been used when it was known they had suppior characteristics.
Letter To Iran
That's a laugh. Maybe you're forgetting that the ISS was a ruse from the get-go, and is only being built to give the shuttle a destination to fly to in the first place.
The scenario went something like this:
NASA Suit #1 - "Now that we've got the shuttle, what are we going to do with it?"
NASA Suit #2 - "Well, I suppose we'll have to create a space station for the shuttle to fly to. Besides, my brother-in-law's an engineer and he could use the job."
I hate to burst your bubble, but Wernher von Braun was one of many german scientists the Military wanted to "import" to the US who were initially refused immigration due to the stringent requirements of Operation Paperclip (as originally authorized by President Truman, who had expressly excluded anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Naziism or militarism.")
Nevertheless, the war department had already decided that this was an issue of National Security(TM), so they sidestepped the president: The scientists files were passed from hand to hand until all damning evidence had been whittled away. In this particular case:
A September 18, 1947, report on the German rocket scientist stated, "Subject is regarded as a potential security threat by the Military Governor."
The following February, a new security evaluation of Von Braun said, "No derogatory information is available on the subject...It is the opinion of the Military Governor that he may not constitute a security threat to the United States."
But then, nobody doubts the Ministry of Truth ...
If you look at how small the budget is, compared to the (illegitimate) war in Iraq is costing and how much it will cost in the future. I reckon that an 'economy' based on how Earth runs in StarTrek would be great. I know that managers would be bored, coz everyone else would tell them to get stuffed :D
It must be pretty irritating for NASA to watch the reds sending their old heap of scrap up into space without a glitch since 1971. The Souyz is like an old truck while the shuttle is like a Ferrari, great tech but very delicate and error prone.
HTTP/1.1 400
I wonder if the insulating foam could be designed to fall off in very small chunks that wouldn't cause problems. If things happen wouldn't make more sense to make them happen the way you want instead of trying to prevent them?
First of all, come on, this is space flight it is not like going out with your friends. Those astronauts know very well they risk their lives. But they are willing to do that for science,adventure and whatever you can think of.
"Poor leadership also made shuttle Discovery's return to space more complicated, expensive and prolonged than it needed to be."
I do not think that was a "poor leadership". We need such exercises to learn more freedom in space. I think they did a good job and probably helped to understand much more about spacewalk and fixing crafts in space for future flights. Experience is what counts.
NASA, good job and government shut up and give more money to fund space exploration because it is impossible to stay on this dirty filled with wars earth. Peace Out!
1. Because most "news sites" simply regurgitate (or flat-out copy) stories from other "news sites". The amount of real investigative journalism is approaching zero; rumor and hearsay become self-perpetuating.
That's an utterly useless generalization that in no way contradicts or otherwise addresses any of the points you're attempting to refute. It's merely an attempt to change the subject with a non-sequitor.
2. Because there is a major ideological incentive for environmental controls to be "the cause" of the Columbia disaster. There is a large consumer population that is eager to hear confirmation of what they already knew--that the big bad EPA causes more problems than it solves. Providing that population with the product they're looking for sells more papers and leads to a satisfied "told you so" and a happy consumer.
Was it coincidence that large chunks of foam started falling off after the switch to a "better" process that didn't use freon?
And just because "there is a major ideological incentive for environmental controls to be "the cause" of the Columbia disaster", we can't objectively look at the impacts of environmental controls?
Or do we have to bow to the major ideological incentives to never find that environmental controls can and do have negative as well as positive effects?
Not sure your evidence supports that. Compared to the 80s? Yes. Compared to the 90s? No. Also, total funding here would be less relevant than space shuttle funding, which got almost all the pie in the 80s.
by some mythical "astronauts hand-held cameras". The foam fell off between the shuttle and the external tank (ie, underneath the shuttle, where there are no windows), and all the Astronauts were strapped into their seats at the time, owing to the fact that the shuttle was at the time, accelerating through Mach 8 on it's way to orbit.
They will filter that out with the bio-scan in your teleporting module so don't worry ... ... only hope Microsoft is not the leader in this technology .. where do you want your dna today?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Everyone seems to have their own pet theory on how to improve Shuttles. ..." ..."
Most seem to start "If only they would
Or "Have they never heard of
Well I'm not sure, but I beleive that they do actually have some experts on the team.
And yes, it IS Rocket Science.
How many slashdotters out there (especially the ones with the pet theories) are rocket scientists?
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
Public Common Knowledge:
1. That Space Ship One can fall from 60 miles and not use tiles, but generic composits and land,(with M&M's on board floating around like a Skittles commerical).
2. The shuttle starts a "Phase 2 Descent" at 50 miles, its here that heat shielding and tiles are spoken of in the same sentence.
3. 6000 degrees heat is alot to ask of any material to endure.
Question:
Why does NASA still cling to a space launch model that is expensive, AND deadly; In the face of public common knowledge?
And don't even get me started on the wasteful use of the main fuel tank after launch.
>it tried to meet unrealistic launch dates
Yeah, there's no way they'd be able to launch and land that thing...
Oh wait, they did.. Seems pretty realistic to me..
What's wrong with NASA is not a "culture of wrecklessness".
The same culture of wrecklessness got American driving cars on the moon.
The same culture of wrecklessness ran about 100 Shuttle Flights with a 1 in 50 failure record.
NASA's manned space program had its genesis in the desert. These were men who flew aircraft that were plainly unsafe in a manner where death was a constant companion.
We have replaced those who wish to push the envelope with those who wish to push pencils and teach kindergarten. Where is the courage to stand up to these people?
Because now - that sense of adventure and acceptance of risk which is inherent when strapping yourself on the top of a chemical rocket has been replaced with some conception of space which has more to do with TV fantasy than it does with hard science.
Hubble will now be lost because of "the danger" associated with servicing it. What a complete pile of crap.
This is political hackery. There is no one left at NASA who has the balls to stand up to these pencil pushers and tell 'em straight up: this is inherently dangerous. "We lost astronuats before and guess what - we'll lose them again. It is a statistical certianty. That's reality."
Every astronuat who is part of that program and wants to get to space takes that risk. Virtually all of them will do so again if presented with that risk. The few astronauts who have joined the Cabal of the Criticizers have done so in a effort to exert administrative *control* over the US manned space program. This chorus of cowardice is just a means to an end.
To boldly go? What a laugh.
.Robert
The piece of foam that came off the external tank that was roughly the same weight as the one that brought down Columbia came off during lift-off, and could not have been seen by any hand-held cameras or astronauts (since it came off UNDER the shuttle, and passed between the wing and the External Tank, during a phase of flight in which they were all still in their seats.)
The external tank is released at ME-CO (Main Engine Cut Off), and the astronauts are still firmly strapped into their seats at the time.
I have been for some years out on the edge of the NASA back to flight process. It has been years since I even played a minor part in a manned spaceflight mission. That being said, I am sorry to report the CAIB response effort at NASA has occurred to me as a powerful stone wall against innovation and meaningful change.
One good example is the BSA contract. This $30m effort was intended to generate cultural change at NASA. It contained bad science. It is simple as that, the science was 40 years out of date. I pointed this out a few weeks after the contract was let (there were no public discussion before the contract was let), but I met with a stone wall of refusal to even discuss the problem. An important book was available on this subject from a major university, so they could not say my point was groundless. It took a year of hard work, but the BSA contract was finally cancelled after a $10m expenditure. No reason was given, but the primary reason was probably simply cost.
Unfortunately a similar problem has again reared its ugly head. The risk management process now used by NASA contains bad mathematics. Specifically, it includes a multiplication of two numbers with large error bars without any consideration of the inflated error bar of the result. The local people responsible for implementing this process do not want to talk about it because I was rude (In private, I said the program was cr...p. In public I said it was rubbish.). I now have to find the intelectural strength to spend another year pounding away at the stone wall. The trick is to make enough noise to be heard over the stone wall, but not so much as to be acturally fired (that is RIFed).
At the very least, NASA processes should not contain bad science or bad mathematics.
Wish me luck.
There was a recent article about electric fields being able to divert electrically charged particles protecting people under the electric field, on the moon for example. Being that this concept is still in its infancy, I would suspect it is just a matter of time till they have some kind of field to divert cosmic and gamma radiation from space vehicles with only a small incremental increase in mass.
I thought it was a reasoned, logical statement of position. Apparently not.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself