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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
I'd think private industry probably has a better system of checks&balances than most government agencies these days.
I was contracting for a Rockwell division the day the Challenger blew up, and 20 minutes after it went down, we had an office pool going: "How long will it take them to figure out that it was caused by some middle-manager (somewhere in the supply chain) screaming "Whaddaya mean I can't ship on schedule??!!??""
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
>>> What if that one chunk hadn't fallen off
>>>right in view of the camera?
Dude.... they are using HUNDREDS of cameras now.
It didn't fall right in view of '*the* camera'. They just relesed the best view to show what happened.
>>The return-to-flight mission would have been
>>declared an outstanding success. Regular
>>launches would have resumed. We would be back
>>on track again.
So if you don't see the problem it doesn't exist? Sounds like you're NASA material!
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.
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)
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 heard a news report that said that gap fillers had been known to come loose in the past and no one worried about it too much. We're now hyper-sensitive to any damage to the tile system, probably way beyond what we should be. The fact that it took them so long to decide whether to go out and fix the problem shows that the associated risk was low, especially when compared to the risk of screwing something up if they accidentally pulled off a tile during the repair.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
No, it isn't. It's a direct reply to your question, which was, "why do so many news sources report the theory". That's the question I replied to, not the question about the foam. The fact that something is written up in a news story doesn't make it true.
[snip further rant]
You obviously still haven't read the CAIB report. I didn't bother to respond to your original message because it would be a waste of time until you've read the authoritative source already linked in a previous post. The issue of whether changes to the foam composition somehow made worse foam is completely moot, as you'll see if you ever actually read the CAIB report, because the foam that fell off columbia's ET was attached prior to the reformulation. The question of bad foam is worth studying, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Columbia disaster. Tying the two together is nothing but junk science.
Your post is a rant about the evil EPA that makes a lot of assertions utterly without regard to the facts of the case. You ask leading questions like "do we have to bow to the...incentives to never find that environmental controls...do have negative...effects" which are pointless (the answer is obviously no) but which are intended to cast doubt on any conclusion that the columbia tragedy simply doesn't fall into that category.