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Spacecraft Crashes Into Satellite
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "A robotic NASA spacecraft designed to rendezvous with an orbiting satellite instead crashed into its target. Unbeknownst to engineers at the time, DART's main sensor mistakenly believed it was flying away from the satellite when it was actually moving 5 feet per second toward it, investigators found."
So that's where the minus sign should have gone, I knew I dropped it somewhere!
..., these figures can't be right!`
and an Obligatory Pratchett Quote:
Hex's pen was scratching across the paper.
Ponder glanced at the figures.
`
Ridcully grinned again. `You mean either the whole world has gone wrong or your machine is wrong?`
`Yes!`
`Then I'd imagine the answer is pretty easy, wouldn't you?` said Ridcully.
`Yes, it certainly is. Hex gets thoroughly tested every day` said Ponder Stibbons
`Good point, that man,` Said Ridcully.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Well, we answered that question. Mission accomplished!
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
it's a successfull hit, now let's build that missile defense system.
Well... Maybe they shouldn't have painted a giant bullseye on the side of the satellite.
DART: 50 points
NASA: -110 million dollars
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Isaac Asimov
No, but seriously, this is sad. It takes us farther away from what I'd like to see in a car, namely a self-steering one. I'd prefer one that detects an oncoming truck as oncoming and tries to get out of the way.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
From Challenger:
"Engineers at Morton Thiokol (manufacturer of the solid rocket boosters) knew that the temperatures were outside of the design range of the O-rings. They strongly objected to the launch, but were overruled by senior Thiokol management."
From Columbia:
"In a risk-management scenario similar to the Challenger disaster, NASA management failed to recognize the relevance of engineering concerns for safety. Two examples of this were failure to honor engineer requests for imaging to inspect possible damage, and failure to respond to engineer requests about status of astronaut inspection of the left wing."
From DART:
"Investigators also raised issues with the mission's management style, saying that lack of training and experience caused the DART design team to shun expert advice. They also found that internal checks and balances were inadequate in uncovering the mission's shortcomings."
Is this a Anti-Sat Weapon Test?
~AC
this rendezvous was a sort of "blind date".
Not hampered by engineering degree, can tell difference between "toward" and "away from" - will work for same 6 figure salary previous position holder was receiving...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Offical NASA writeup available here: http://patriot.net/~cary/slashdot/dart_mishap.html
e rview.pdf
Made from original PDF available here: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/148072main_DART_mishap_ov
(I hate PDF's for simple text things like this)
--
NoFluffNews.com - Currently in development but seeking journalists and editors
DART's main sensor mistakenly believed it was flying away from the satellite when it was actually moving 5 feet per second toward it, investigators found.
Yeah, but did it find Sarah Connor?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
... they should not have ignored those "compare of signed with unsigned" warnings ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
How crushed would you feel watching all that happen from so far away, and being utterly helpless?
It's bad enough with regular software, but someone somewhere is having a huge Homer "DOH!" moment..
I feel for ya..
It is actually Google's plan to kill Dilbert.
In a subsequent news conference, DART claimed it did not remember hitting on the target after being spaced out on AMBIEN, a method it used to help it sleep(500s) before its launch from Kennedy Space Center. DART claimed that it got several bytes to eat before drinking a cup of Java and collecting its garbage. Upon introspection DART agreed that, despite its name, hitting on the target showed little Class despite the size of its Package.
...NASA has finally set aside a portion of its budget for the hiring of a trombone player to lighten the mood after each disasterous miscalculation with a well-timed "waaah WAAAAAAAAH."
This is space man, where up is down and inches are metric. You just know it'll end in tears.
Task Mangler
I support NASA, but they have had a run of stupid mistakes lately. For example the whole meters to feet conversion problem. Yes everyone makes mistakes, I know, but NASA is supposed to be the best and the brightest. You would think that when dealing with such expensive equiptment they woulod check and re-check, and even methemtically prove the correctness of their programs. Sloppy programming from me or you on some spreadsheet app is bad, but not unexpected, but I have higher standards for NASA.
Philosophy.
I know it is fashionable to highlight the usual NASA-related budget cuts but a quote from TFA This to me sounds like an underfunded team rushing to meet deadlines. Or were they just simply unlucky/inept?
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Oops! I took down email servers down on three contintents due to a DNS error back in the day. Oops! For the curious it was a contract job for for a division of a large Japanese company, and there was some confusion on resposibilities for the DNS servers However, they like real apologies when someone screws up. They were actually planning to have me go on a corporate jet to Japan to apologize profusely to the company CEO. My boss told them to go do something very difficult to themselves. American arrogance at its best!
Are you sure? Is that 5 feet per second or 5 metres per second?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Queue the obligatory unit conversion jokes.
Being an ignorant Imperialist on this subject, I have to ask: are SI units in the opposite direction? I mean, when you convert from feet to meters, does it switch directions?
Or does, like, SI seconds = negative Imperial seconds?
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
DART Seeks its Target
NASA launches a DART to target an orbiting bull's-eye.
Given the objective, I don't see the problem here. Way to go, guys!
That after having pushed the orbiting satellite at 5 feet per second,
investigators found that the robotic shover space probe is heading toward earth to protect your grandmother from the Terrible Secret of Space.
Last message recieved from the robotic space probe was :
" Please go stand by the stairs, so I can protect you... "
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Same thing happened to me and the garage door when I was 14 years old backing my dad's Buick out of the driveway.
He didn't let me drive it again until I was 18.
As long as scientists and engineers are cogs in an organizational structure in which management tells them what to do, they will often produce crap, no matter how many PhDs there are in their midst. This is the case even when those managers were once brilliant technical engineers and scientists, because perceptions and priorities change when you switch into a management role.
This little episode was just another in a long line of screwups, and it won't be the last under current organizational models. Doing technical things can't be done properly unless insightful scientists and engineers are free of constraints on their insight, allowed to bypass the directional controls that management so loves, uninhibited from pointing our core problems in fear of their careers, and totally unshackled from the demands of time management.
Yes, I know that most managers would call this "anarchy", but therein lies the problem: by eliminating that alleged anarchy, you are also sacrificing the best that people can offer, just to make your life easier. Well, perhaps it's stating the blindingly obvious, but making management's life easy is not central to exploring the stars.
NASA's problem is the same one that permeates all technical industries, but in NASA's case the mishaps are just very public. I don't expect anything to change, but there is no doubting what the general problem is.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Oh - it's meant to be less than zero.
"Reply to: "That's no moon..." "...that's a (boink!)"
Scientific progress goes boink??
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
We've got a history established where people taught -> new math -> students who taught -> new math -> students ->
Launch an astronaut (no monkeys or dogs), watch soomething happen, splashdown. It sounds like waste, but when someone's life is at stake, it seems to force them to keep their eye on the ballgame (not just the ball). Otherwise, they try to maneuver hardware as though it's a mechanical erector set-based gaming system shown at E3 with no consequences...they can just hit the [reset] button when they smurf up (aka "give us some more money so we can practice some more"). When it's just hardware, success amounts to lots of geeks & nerds jumping up & down, toastinig with double-strength kool-aid, then taking turns to run to the bathroom to stroke off. Besides, there are lots of people looking to hit space, and there'd be no dearth of volunteers to keep NA$A honest. When there's a risk (which there wasn't in this case), they'll be careful (not more careful). Think of it as akin to packing your own parachute. If you have something at stake, really at stake, you tend to be a bit more paranoid about your work.
"A robotic NASA spacecraft designed to rendezvous with an orbiting satellite instead crashed into its target."
NASA was able to extract the satellite that was deeply embedded into the ship's hull using the M.A.N.O.S. manipulator system. The extraction appeared successful until the M.A.N.O.S. manipulators let the satellite go free. In a Bugs Bunny'esque fashion, the satellite hovered for a moment before it suddenly plummeted into the Earth's atmosphere. NASA wouldn't reveal any details about which satellite had burned up in the atmosphere, but insiders have hinted that it was a powerful telescope.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
From the Feynman report:
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
To summarize a satelite targeting robot called DART designed to intercept satelites, launched from Vandenberg Air Force base (un?)successfully knocket out the satelite it was targetting, and they wont release the investigative report because of international traffic in arms regulations. Hmm, sounds like a good result for the star wars weapons team.
Have *you* got $110 million in spare cash to throw at space research?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity." - Anonymous
Unless there was only one variable at fault, the odds of a collision in space would be (for lack of a better pun) astronomical. So while they might have wasted money, at the end of the day the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack collision is well worth bragging about.
... that the project name for the orbiting satellite was Balanced Orbit Autonomous Rondezvous Drone.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
This all happened on April 15 2005. A better write-up here: http://www.space.com/news/060516_dart_mishap_updat e.html. And here's the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DART_(spacecraft)
The satellite it crashed into was defunct. From Wikipedia: "The goal was to develop and demonstrate an automated navigation and rendezvous capability in a NASA spacecraft. Currently, only the Russian Space Agency and JAXA have autonomous space craft navigation.".
Interesting snippet: "NASA has said the official 70-page report will not be publicly released because it contains sensitive material protected by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)".
This was planned as a "high-risk*, low-budget" mission and I'm sure they learned a lot. (* I suppose high-risk in terms of likelihood of meeting up with the target, not of collateral damage.)
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=2060
Some gems:
Ah, only the best and brightest in software engineering for our tax dollars...
- jonathan.
Taking a look at list of bugs for space exploration and particuallry things like Mars Climate Orbiter I wonder how NASA could make so many mistakes in their software. It seems that no mission actually goes as planned without a computer glitch that is mission-threatning.
... and the likes of. Or someone forgetting the metric conversion, I mean, hello, that should be checked! The software should have run first inside a simulator run! Only then should it be deployed onto the device.
In contrast to, for example, the Shuttle, which has had only a few computer failures, and none of them fatal, it's hard for me to understand why they pay so little attention to testing these systems. I mean, maybe there are no lives at stake, but that doesn't give them the right to forget about testing it and probably letting some junior programmer write the algorithm. Then we get stupidities like:
String s = new String("");
if(a == "some text comparison")
"The inaccurate perception of its distance and speed ... prevented DART from taking effective action to avoid a collision," the summary said.
Next time, DUCK!!!1!
DART: "Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology"
---
ARROW: "Automated Ruination of Rather Old Warbird"
JAVELIN: "Just Another Very Expensive Lesson In Navigation"
BULLET: "Bravado is an Unfortunate Liability, Limiting Effective Targeting"
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
This is actually year old happening. News is that Nasa finally made public report about it.
Unfortunately, the faulty design was due to the screw ups of a private contractor, so there goes your "private sector" argument.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Always wondered what happened to the original batch. perhaps now we know ....
Snore. And out come the free enterprise loonies. The only trouble with your argument is that free enterprise is already perfectly able to indulge in space exploration and, well, hasn't. You can rent time on a launch pad, you can rent space in a rocket. There are many excellent engineering companies who can build more or less any satellite or other space craft you want. But there's no return on doing anything more ambitious than communications satellite. What exactly is the private sector going to do with a Mars probe, say? Sell ad hoardings on the side? (Didn't Beagle II do this?) It's better to regard what NASA and ESA do as a public infrastructure project rather than as competition for private enterprise. The work NASA is doing (mostly competently) is more like building the channel tunnel than a profit-based business. We tried building the tunnel through the private sector, but Eurotunnel has been bailed out by the giovernment and the banks so many times that it's actually ended up costing us far more than it would have done if we'd done it the old fashioned way, even assuming the usual obscene project over-run costs of a public project.
Low-budget
Assembly
Without
Navigaion...
Scientific progress goes boink??
It took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to replace "clunk". You don't think we can achieve Star Wars grade sound effect technology in space overnight, surely?
Blank until
Glad to see the Hekawi tribe has entered the space age.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Bull's Eye!
How is DART different from Progress (the Soyus based supply ship)? I thought Progress carried out automated docking to the ISS?
With no structure, they would never convince congress to give them any money. It's good when unstructured research happens, but structured, result-oriented research is always going to be ablt to get more funding.
NASA is clearly poorly managed, but it seems to me that the solution is good management, not no management at all. Of course, I have no idea how to actually implement good management.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
a) It had a crush ...?
b) It shouted "stop", but sound doesnt travel in space
c)
But since it was a $110 million project anyway, couldn't the software have been tested in simulation first?
I understand the article says:
"Unbeknownst to engineers at the time, DART's main sensor mistakenly believed it was flying away from the satellite when it was actually moving 5 feet per second toward it, investigators found."
1. Is this just sloppy writing blaming a piece of hardware for a software problem?
2. If the sensor contained significant logic, would it have been that hard to test whether it correctly registered retreat and advancement?
3. Or an interface screwup between the main program and the sensor logic like confusing yards and meters? (And no test of the complete system?)
In any case it might well demonstrate the results when you shoot something up and see what happens without development adequate to the complexity.
Standard progression. Starts off mechanical (clunk), goes to functional (silence), goes to asthetically pleasing (boink). It'll finish with some kind of futuristic lasery noise (pew?), you mark my words.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Trolls should be put down or sterilized.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sort of true. The real issue is that the return on investment is: A) long-term and B) not easy to monopolize. Without the Apollo program, our computers might still be room-sized behemoths. Unfortunately, corporate America is not interested in any return on investment that is going to take more than a few quarters to be realized. And if the benefits of basic research also accrue to a companies' competitors, the company is unlikely to fund the research.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
The satellite was actually shot by a CIA agent standing on a grassy knoll.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Detritus:
Trolls should be put down or sterilized.
Does anyone else find that funny? Or do I read too much Pratchett? (as if)
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
man - someone's insurance premiums are going to be scary after paying for this fender bender!
The report was just released, how long ago did the crash occur? Also, think we could use this technique to get the ISS back into a higher orbit?
Ack, i can only say that my experience with robotics tells me that it's hopeless to trust just one sensor, when dealing with a robot.
I far too well remember spending countless of hours before realizing, that when i got too close, or too far away, the sensor would start reporting its result wrongly; it couldn't tell the difference between 2 cm, 30 cm, and 4 m. creating a function to help it realize what it had done, based on previous measurements helped, but was still a bad solution. getting extra sensors, that had different range problems solved it. The point being, ARRRR ROBOTS! don't trust anything they tell you, and don't trust their programming, especially if you coded it yourself. That being said, working with robots is fun, and if you haven't tried it, you should.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Anyway, on a big scary program, here's how these sorts of problems are spotted :
Step #3 is about as important as step #1, because you absolutely cannot fix every problem. There's neither the time, nor the money.
Something else to keep in mind : if I spotted a problem that would surely doom my project, and can't get engineering leadership/management to agree with me, I should share some of the blame.
And yes, I had the box checked so it would be considered for posting.
It's a curse being ahead of the curve.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More like nudged.
5 (feet per second) = 3.4 miles per hour
Yes, Yawn. I'm all for the X-Prize and private endeavors into spaceflight, but really, what's been acomplished? They are decades behind. Last I heard, Space Ship One barely managed to reach a sub-orbital altitude and return safely. This is comporable to what the X-15 did in 1960 and is so far removed from the complexety of a single shuttle mission (not to mention Apollo) that it's totally outragous to think the private sector is somehow doing better because they didn't screw it up.. Actually, they did screw it up, just not enough to kill anyone. Besides Rutan, everyone else is still doing test fire's or has had their unmanned rocket explode on the launch pad. It will be a long while before they can reach orbit relatively safely and repeatadly. Will they make less mistakes on their way there? No but that's ok because space is really hard. Meanwhile, NASA has contributed an enourmous amount to planatary scinece and space exploration in the past decades despite seemingly wary public support and a dimished budget. It really is amazing what they've accomplished. Their paradigm has been rightly adjusted to focus on science and exploration. They pursue one of the noblest of human endeavors (and if you don't understand why science and understanding the universe is noble, well..) and in my mind are pretty detached from political and corporate bullshit and burracracy. To bad some of you don't want to pay attention.
NASA mission control say they now regret ordering the craft to extend its robotic arms over its sensors and turn in complete circles 3 times.
If you think Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed are merely private contractors, you've not been paying attention. They are as integrated into the current system as they can be while still retaining the title of "corporation". This is part of what Eisenhower was warning us about - when the private sector controls and influences the public sector in an industry, they become intermingled in ways that do not inspire greatness. And it becomes dangerous for the autonomy of the state from private control.
NASA, while purportedly a civilian agency, is obviously tremendously influenced by not only the military but also those private contractors. It's pretty amazing that Scaled Composited was able to even get a bid in on the recent manned capsule designs - and they almost didn't. Notice that their proposal wasn't accepted, though. Whether it wasn't as good (doubtful) or whether there are other barriers to entry (probable) is up for debate.
***
I guess the name fits.
In DART's case, the MIB determined that the first cause for its premature retirement occurred when the estimated and measured positions differed to such a degree that the software executed a computational "reset." By design, this reset caused DART to discard its estimated position and speed and restart those estimates using measurements from the primary GPS receiver.
Careful examination of the software code revealed that upon reset, the velocity measurement from the primary GPS receiver was introduced back into the software's calculations of the spacecraft's estimated position and speed. If the measured velocity had been sufficiently accurate, the calculations would have converged and resulted in correct navigational solutions. However, DART's primary GPS receiver consistently produced a measured velocity that was offset or "biased" about 0.6 meters per second from what it should have been. This had the unfortunate effect of causing the calculations, which were being performed autonomously, to once again diverge until the difference became unacceptable to the pre-programmed computer logic. Once the limit as to how much the calculations could differ was reached, the software executed another reset. As a result, this cycle of diverging calculations followed by a software reset occurred about once every three minutes throughout the mission. These continual resets caused the incorrect navigational data that prompted excessive thruster firings and the higher than expected fuel usage.
Too many pre-programmed resets to the wrong data. Oops. I guess one small thing can cause a whole mission to fail! If you read the report though the rest of the mission was pretty succesful. You would have though they would build in some sort of fail safe ground control method though when there's millions of dollars worth of equipment at stake?
Anybody else notice that it was only moving 3.4mph (5.5km/h).
That doesn't sound very fast to me.
I'll admit I don't know how space craft are built,
but I wouldn't think that would do terrible damage.
Or am I missing something?
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
"Well, it looked good in the prints and the computer sim went flawless.." Strange how things get lost in translation.
Doing technical things can't be done properly unless insightful scientists and engineers are free of constraints on their insight, allowed to bypass the directional controls that management so loves, uninhibited from pointing our core problems in fear of their careers, and totally unshackled from the demands of time management.
Right, because management by committee and fistfight works so much better. We're not talking about one-man research projects, here. We're talking about things that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and require thousands of people to execute. Do you really know enough brilliant engineers that will all work together on Mars-sized projects while "totally unshackled from the demands of time management" to create anything on a schedule that will actually line up with unforgiving orbital mechanics?
These projects have to be designed and built in a (typical) evironment where people die, get married, get sick, and otherwise come and go from projects. Which Alpha Nerd are you going to point to in order to keep things moving along? How will you actually demonstrate any sort of accountability to the citizens that actually PAY for this stuff if there's no management to string up? Do you really mean that you'd rather the brilliant engineers lose their jobs when something flames out? Because it is going to happen, whether an engineer manages the project or a manager manages the project. It's for sure going to happen if no one manages the project. On the other hand, unshackling people from any time management constraints will actually ensure that nothing ever gets done, so at least that way nothing will ever crash and burn... except for what's left of public support for the space program.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Yet again NASA prove that they should no longer be in charge of the western worlds space exploration. This is another example of why the private sector should be allowed prosper with it's own plans and designs. As the X-prize has shown, NASA is a dinosaur and should either be put down or evolve by embrace privately funded initiatives.
So you trust private corporations with safety more than an elected government? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying either is any good, but I was under the impression that mega-corps were evil and the government is the answer all our problems. Just trying to stay on the same page as everyone else.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Guess they hired this guy:
(source)
There are a lot of posts concerning NASA, management, the Military-Industrial complex. As someone who has watched the decay of spacecraft operations, I can confidently tell you that much of it has to do with contracting and paychecks.
Quick review: Spacecraft programs contain a number of stages, e.g. design, integration and test, launch, etc. The last stage is Operations. There used to be a day when all stages were properly funded and for Operations, this meant 24/7 console staffing, dynamic simulators, on-site engineers, spacecraft design manuals and lots of legitimate training.
But here's the problem. Prior to the mid 90s, NASA and other agencies used cost plus contracting, and the big contractors settled into a mode where the initial mission budget would be exhausted by about launch minus 1 or 2 years. This is when they would run back to the government organization and ask for more money and after some hand-wringing more money was allocated. Then all of a sudden - poof it's gone. Fixed cost contracting had arrived.
The problem, the big gorilla contractors only know one way to build a spacecraft and as no one likes to change, both contractors and NASA started coming up with inventive ways to defund Operation so they come in close to budget. Buzz-words like "automation" and "lights out operations" reduced console staffing to only the day shift. On-site engineers are never hired - instead "factory" design engineers are dug up IF there is a problem. Without on-site engineering, there's no need for good spacraft docs and simulators and no one to construct legitimate practice exercises. Combine this with upper management's desire to meet schedule, the already rounded corners are shaved even more.
Once formal Operations had evaporated, launch and early orbit was solely in the hands of design engineers, who are not Operations engineers. There's a different mindset between the two. There used to be a day when operation screw ups could be avoided and design flaws caught in advance through legitimate simulation, but that's gone now. Why? NO ONE PAYS FOR IT ANYMORE!
Pity the story didn't come out yesterday:
b ert-20060517.html
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dil
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
They pursue one of the noblest of human endeavors ... and in my mind are pretty detached from political and corporate bullshit and burracracy (sic).
If they are so noble and high of mind, why haven't they opened up their data and research to SC and the rest of them, so they aren't "decades behind"? Vested interests you say? Military funding, I hear? Say it ain't so! And if you think that NASA is in any way detached from politics and beaurocracy, you have a whole other think coming to you...
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
In Swedish the word 'mot' (pronounced like english moot) means both towards and against. Therefore our government never has to lie when they send soldiers to other countries. However criminal, their actions is always 'mot' peace.
"And then the thing, with the sensors, and the oops, and the failing, and the crashing, and the CRYYYY-INNGGG!"
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Yeesh, what a joke. I don't think I'd put my life in these idiots' hands willingly.
...most engineers DON'T make 6-figure salaries ...
Sure they do... It's just that the first few figures are zeros.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I disagree categorically with the perception that leaving technical people unfettered by management or time pressure will result in better designs, products or concepts. After RTFA, one notes that one reason provided for the failure is that the teams disregarded expert input - a characteristic that I have witnessed time and again within groups of bright technical people. Call it an adjunct of NIH - not invented here.
Another example is the cowboy coder, writing without specifications or testing. For some development methodologies, this may be an efficient way to rapidly prototype a UI or system, but for the most part it generates sh*t for quality. But, it's fun.
Every technical person would love to work in a Xerox- or Bell Labs-style environment of pure research with a virtually unlimited budget. Very innovative ideas are bred from such environments, but they rarely produce market-ready concepts. I think you need to differentiate between science and engineering, and pure research vs. development. NASA is both a research and a development organization. Engineering is all about trade-offs between time, budgetary and technical constraints. Science is about uncovering new knowledge. Science in the absence of constraints is marvelous. Engineering in the absence of constraints and experience is a disaster. Ask any contractor.
The mission failed due to poor engineering and a lack of oversight (no process to detect and correct technical errors). The only way humans can deal with such issues is through management and process. It sucks, but it's all we have.
Metric: Negatory - do not advance.
English: No don't stop. [oooooh]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
They must have been using metric feet per second.
The ______ Agenda
Sort of true. The real issue is that the return on investment is: A) long-term and B) not easy to monopolize.
The first point you make is indeed true. Space is a long term investment that most companies are leery of. It isn't so much that companies are afraid of long term investment, they do it all the time in many industries. The real issue is that it is a very expensive and uncertain investment. Investing in space is massively expensive with absolutely no prospect of success. It is a highly risky, massively expensive, long term investment which is of course the worst kind, and so most companies avoid making it. The number of failed space ventures is a complete list of all space ventures outside of big companies doing massive government contracts.
All of that said, there are a handful of smaller companies just starting to get support from larger companies that are doing some innovative things in space. The challenge to companies investing in space is the great expense and the massive technological leaps it would take to reap a real return. Near earth asteroids might have trillions of dollars of resources, but the prospect of mining such an asteroid is daunting, extraordinarily expensive, and technologically very difficult. The rising interest in space tourism combined with some new innovative techniques of getting into space on a budget is starting to open up some possibilities though. Space tourism looks like a truly viable industry if the price can be brought under a few million to get someone into space. Hence, we see the small handful of space tourist startup companies racing shoot people into space.
The second reason you give is laughably silly. First, you don't need to monopolize space. If you could (relatively) cheaply mine in space, you wouldn't need a monopoly. There is enough minerals in space to keep everyone happy for a pretty damn long time. Further, the idea that a monopoly in space is hard is silly. The first people up would have a monopoly because no on else is up there except governments. There is a massive barrier to entry into space (both economic and physical) that puts whoever gets there first a pretty damn secure position. The issue is getting there. No company has ever seen a clear path to space and then done an about face because they were afraid of competition.
Without the Apollo program, our computers might still be room-sized behemoths.
This is just stupid and vaguely insulting to the pioneers of semiconducting. You do realize why they call Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley, right? Silicon Valley didn't get its name from the dot com boom/bust. It got its name from the semiconducting foundries that started up there and resulted in the boom in semiconducting. In the 1960's Fairchild gave birth to the industry. The founding members of Fairchild then went on to build a handful of other semiconducting foundries in the area. The government played almost no role in the size reduction of computers. The industry didn't need to be spurred on to develop smaller computers. The industry has been on Moore's law since the dawn of the solid state transistor in early 50's. To argue that the Apollo program had anything to do with solid state transistors is stupid, ignorant, and flatly untrue. Do some historical research before making stupid claims that sound right.
It is almost too obvious of a conclusion, which may make this the most ingenious way to hide a live fire test...
Name me another large agency in the US goverment that has fewer alterior motives. Sure the military has incentive to contract certain NASA projects. That's no secret. I'd rather have Lockeed Marting building moon landers than building bombs. NASA doesn't make bombs. And about public disclosure of all their technology. I'd bet that Iran, N. Korea etc.. might like to know how to deliver a small payload on a rocket with a sub-orbital tragectory.
I guess thats what happens when you name a spacecraft DART.
The equipment was never at stake, it was lost the second the launch started.
The survival of both S/C may have been increased by the failure as their orbit was increased by the collision.
c) It was older and had better insurance.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I'm not faulting the engineers. I'm just saying that if these predicted problems were really as some people painted them (inevitable), then engineers would surely share some of the blame for not communicating properly if it was not fixed.
I don't think they were seen by engineers as inevitable, so I don't think that engineers are necessarily to blame. But likewise, if the engineers didn't see a problem as inevitable, it's hard to lay all the blame at management's feet, as is the slashdot style.
It has lived up to its name, DART.
Our industry has experienced a profound transformation. In the 1960's, when the semiconductor industry first emerged from anonymity, the key driver of the industry was the government and aerospace sector. Major applications were the Apollo space program and weapons systems such as the Minute Man intercontinental ballistic missile.
With the end of the Apollo program and the cuts in the defense budget after the Vietnam War, the key driver of the industry shifted in the early 1970's to the corporate Information Technology (IT) sector. The introduction of the IBM 360 (the first use of integrated circuits in a computer) and the mini-computer initiated the first IT boom in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
For some more spinoffs: link
Feel free to hurl insults at yourself; it's not my specialty.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Don't drink and orbit.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Pondering - Douglas Adams should have thought of this. Space insurance! Get in on the ground floor before anyone else. SpaceShipOne has already made it and thermosphere travel is going to be the norm in the near future, you better start now. Think IPO and huge venture capital. Give the stock market something interesting to bite on. Wait a minute, who gets to go up and settle the claim? Will Earl Scheib open an orbiting body shop?? Time will tell.
The profits from space exploration that I am talking about, are not about successful space ventures. When I say 'long-term investment', the returns that I am talking about are: velcro, semiconductors, advanced ceramics, advanced plastics, aerogel, etc. I am not suggesting that any space venture is going to give a positive ROI directly.
First, you don't need to monopolize space.
You are thinking short-term again. I was not talking about monopolizing space. I was talking about monopolizing the profits from the advancements that come from space projects. IBM isn't going to fund a space project, when it is 3M that is going to reap the profits from velcro. Microsoft isn't going to fund a space project, when many of the advances will benefit Google and Amazon.com.
In the 1960's Fairchild gave birth to the industry. ... The government played almost no role in the size reduction of computers.
Check out link: The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was built by Raytheon and used approximately 4000 discrete integrated circuits from Fairchild Semiconductor. Spanning nearly a decade of project development, the AGC began as a research project at the MIT Instrumentation Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... However, until Apollo, all computations for the equations of motion in these systems were performed by analog computers. In April 1961, NASA contracted with MIT to study the feasibility of a digital control system for the Apollo program. ... The speed, power, and size requirements for the AGC drove an entire industry that was just taking its first steps along the breathtaking curve of Moore's Law.
Where do you people dredge-up this insistence that industry rather than government drove these advances?
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
There goes NASA's no-claims bonus.
~The TwoTailedFox posts again....
the faulty design was due to the screw ups of a private contractor
And just how much of the space programs hardware isn't made by private contractors?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Wow, they take in a negative value and get out a positive one??? Never in my life have I heard of a unit conversion which utilized a sign change, except for maybe converting between US and European fuel economies--I think that involves an exponent of e and multiplying by your astrological sign.
NASA's first anti-satellite weapon was a resounding success. Unfortunately, it wasn't designed as an anti-satellite weapon.
"Mike broke the Hubble!" - Crow and Tom Servo
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
Name me another large agency in the US goverment that has fewer alterior (sic) motives.
Thats like saying tuberculosis is better than aids, so we should all speak out in favour of TB...
I'd rather have Lockeed Marting(sic) building moon landers than building bombs
Yes but they use the moon lander technology to build better bombs. Therein lies the problem.
I'd bet that Iran, N. Korea etc.. might like to know how to deliver a small payload on a rocket with a sub-orbital tragectory(sic).
Well maybe if you stop fucking with their governments and let them sort it out themselves they might not have an incentive to lob bombs at you. Ever thought of that? And before responding, do me a favour and google saddam citizen detroit and us interference in iran. You made your own bed, buddy.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Very appropiate name for the spacecraft.... and was the satellite named bullseye?
Check out Website development, maintenance and accesibility cons
I'm stunned at the hate. Relax. I'm pretty leftist and do not advocate war. NASA did not invade Iraq. Who exactally do you think the astronomers and engineers at NASA are? Warmongers? Think Carl Sagan. He did a lot of work for and with NASA. Every read any of his books? That's all I'm saying.
This illustrates why military aviators always believe there will be a role for aircraft actually flown by onboard pilots.
You're the one that brought up Iran and Korea, not me. As for hate, you're entitled to read what you want into my comments. Doesn't neccessarily make it an accurate interpretation, however. I merely present the facts in response to your comments.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
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...or about the speed of a parking lot fender bender. So if both craft had bumbers they wouldn't be spening so much at the body shop.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
A simple pneumonic: "It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas."
So the simulation does not actually simulate reality... another sign of total incompetence. Your tax dollars at work.
- jonathan.
I guess that robot never watched Sesame Street so it did not know the difference between NEAR and far.
-Lazn
The word you're looking for is "cue," not "queue."
It must have had a flux capacitor because I read this story a few days ago.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It is very sad that the Russian Space agency has had automated systems working for decades. Apart from the Soyuz with rendez-vous abilities, may I remind you of the Buran (the Soviet space shuttle equivalent), which could launch, deploy satellites and land without a pilot. All that in the 80's.
It is certain that NASA is underfunded. The military budjet skyrockets, the space science one goes down and is currently at 3% of the military budget (but only if we exclude war spending, just the basic military budjet!).
Oh well... No Apollo for our generation, I guess!
>> - the teams disregarded expert input
That implies that those experts had to report to someone else in their area of expertise who had the freedom to ignore them! In other words, some rather myopic manager set up a hierarchical reporting structure in which expert opinion COULD be disregarded. Why weren't those experts working within those teams or at the same level as those teams? See, this was a problem created by management in the first place.
Reconciling the conflicting opinions of experts is almost child's play, you can practically set up a program to do it, with full cognizance of probabilities, degree of expertise of participants, etc etc. What's the role of management here that you seem to think is so important? Management is an inherently unreliable contributor to this weighted decision making.
>> - Another example is the cowboy coder, writing without specifications or testing.
Be serious, we're talking about science and engineering experts, not cowboy coders.
>> - Every technical person would love to work [...] with a virtually unlimited budget.
That's a straw man, it wasn't even suggested. Good science and engineering doesn't cost more than poor science and engineering. It's merely the same general amount of effort but done properly, no corners cut and brushed under the carpet for managerial expediency. But yes, I'm sure that this would more often return a verdict of "Sorry, no go", but that would be accurate. You criticize it at your peril.
>> - Engineering is all about trade-offs between time, budgetary and technical constraints.
Yes, it is about tradeoffs, but management always trades off too much and technical soundness suffers. A professional engineer knows when something is "good enough" for the job in hand, not just from experience but because it's largely objective, a matter of probability computations. He doesn't need a manager to override his professional judgement. In so doing, a manager contributes nothing, but can be very damaging indeed. Plenty of examples of that at NASA.
>> - Engineering in the absence of constraints and experience is a disaster.
Regarding experience, that's a straw man again --- what would engineers without deep experience be doing working on a space probe? As for constraints, they're simply input to the engineer's working tradeoff set. No need for managers to impose other ones at all, the professional engineer is vastly experienced at doing it himself while understanding the technical side of what's being traded off.
>> - The mission failed due to poor engineering and a lack of oversight (no process to detect and correct technical errors).
Exactly, and that's purely a direct consequence of management being decoupled from the very concrete engineering process. No professional engineer needs oversight to implement those checks --- only working to management's directions produces that kind of rubbish. Peer review ensures that perfectly adequately by itself. If one engineer or one team misses something crucial, the peer engineers or peer teams pick it up. A manager with oversight is a very poor substitute for this process of peers checking each others' work.
You seem to have no idea what real professional engineering entails. It's inherently a self-management process, and requires no oversight other than that of peers. Certainly NEVER management oversight.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Thats a very interesting world you live in. 20% of workers can manage themselves.
Do you think the local restaurant could implement this strategy?
Do you think government agencies could implement this strategy?
Again, please cite EXAMPLES of organizations that operate without management. I am very curious to see if you can find any. If not, why not?
B
I prefer this explanation
as it was a "missle".
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Washington, D.C. 2:00 PM - The Department of Homeland Security is pleased to announce the successful test of an anti-satellite missile, designed to destroy terrorist communications satellites and space-based platforms for weapons of mass destruction.
The DART missile located and destroyed a mock terrorist satellite, disguised as an experimental communications satellite.
For national security purposes, the test was not announced until after the DART crashed into the satellite. Spokespeople did not answer questions about why NASA long described this as an attempt to harmlessly rendezvous with the satellite, referring instead to "Democrats who want America to be attacked by terrorists instead of supporting our troops".
This may seem like a long-term investment that is way too long-term. But there is a payoff with manifest destiny. Since the major powers on Earth decided that no government should own extra-terrestrial property (and signed a treaty to make it official) it's quite fair game for any private entity. Mining, colonization, production in zero-G (where it benefits, if it does) could all be ROI.
I guess no one else got the Calvin & Hobbes reference...
You mean mnemonic. pneumonic has to do with lungs M for memory, P for panting :P
My bad, the lesson learned: Never rely on Spell Checker when a dictionary is close at hand.
I manage a subcontract to a small company struggling with an "unfettered technical genius" problem. We make exceptions for their genius when we can, but if we just pay them to do whatever they think is best, then we often wind up with a result that doesn't fulfill the intended purpose, but some other purpose the genius perceived.
There's a discipline in the aerospace biz called "Systems Engineering." It's about documenting mission requirements as quantitatively as possible, breaking those requirements down into solveable problems for the specific engineering disciplines, and then verifying that the problems are solved in a way that meets the mission requirements, and proving it.
The "unfettered geniuses" resent us because they don't get to do whatever the heck they please. But they generally enjoy solving problems enough to get the job done right.
Then there's the "inept," "incompetent," and "corrupt," who absolutely hate us because when we systems engineers do our jobs, their ineptitude, corruption and incompetence are revealed. They can be design engineers, managers, or customers.
Or even systems engineers.
Sounds like the latter problem is what occured on DART. And as a former Orbital employee, I am not suprised in the slightest.
I can see the fnords!
I'm kinda depressed by that.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Oh for heavens sake - the russians have been doing this for decades with their KURS automated docking system on the Progress and Soyuz vehicles. Has worked very reliably. The only time they've had a collision was when they tried to fly a manual remote-control docking, rather than use the automated system. Buy one, pull it apart, learn something.
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Duhrr... Head Managers work without managers over them... so I guess 100% of businesses in the USA are run by someone who is influenced - at most - only by peers to their position.
However, I'm sure you see the word "Worker" and automatically assume a room-temperature IQ, a namebadge with "employee of the week" star on it, working for minimum wage -- not a room full of MIT grads whose combined IQ is higher than your yearly salary. With the attitude you show toward the word "work" I wouldn't be surprised to hear that you yourself are a manager.
And the "Cite your source!" argument on slashdot is getting old. If you really want sources, you can google them for yourself and not blabber on it. If you don't really care for sources but are just throwing it around as an argument, don't bother typing it out. You may just end up getting wrecked.
Unbeknownst to engineers at the time, but beknownst to us...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Grounds for optimism. :)
They simply had the sensors mounted back to front ..... again.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Hehe cheers.
I can picture Hobbes saying "I got my wish."
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
My only question is how you would execute this plan without it failing. Then you'd have to test it in a company. Perhaps within a small project team first and then expand as success occur.
I did an undergraduate design competition where we pretty much had free reign to do what we wanted for the design but had a mid-term and a final review where we got feedback. The deadlines were set and we had no funding since this was academic. I enjoyed that management style from up top even though the program manager wasn't all there. Perhaps this is the system you are suggesting?
I'm not a fan of completely removing management from the picture and giving free reign. But at the same time, overbearing management isn't a great solution either.
From a later post: Why weren't those experts working within those teams or at the same level as those teams?
Is it not likely that these experts have their own projects to run and work on as well? The people I work with all have multiple projects they are on. Even our graduate advisors (the role of expert) had more important things for them to work on. Sure, they could have been on our team and done the work for us but then, it's their design and they have the knowledge and don't share why things are that way. This might not be completely what happened at NASA but it could be. Granted, ignoring expert opinions completely isn't something we did. I wonder who gets hit with the "you fucked up stick".
From what I have seen and heard about how NASA does things, I would say that budget constraints probably played a role in this accident. I have also noticed that the older, more experienced NASA scientists and engineers often seem reluctant to help the younger scientists and engineers get the training and experience they will eventually need when it is their turn to lead a mission. I think a lot of older scientists and engineers are afraid they will be forced to retire when funding gets tight, so they prevent the younger people from being involved in mission development/operations as long as they can. The older scientists and engineers love their jobs so much that they just can't let go when it is time. I've seen older scientists who were within a year or two of retirement take on a new satellite hardware project even though the mission would not be launched until several years after they retired. Due to retirements and the deaths of 50+ year-old scientists, younger scientists may suddenly find that they are a critical part of a spacecraft instrument team, even though they have little or no experience with this sort of thing. NASA is just not encouraging the older, more experienced principal investigators to pass on their knowledge to the younger scientists and engineers. There doesn't seem to be a clear path to train and advance the younger people, with gradually increasing mission responsibilities as they gain experience. In my opinion, this is one of NASA's biggest problems right now.
d) PROFIT!
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.