Hmmm... I'm not sure Von Braun's ghost is the best entity to summon here. Von Braun had more than a little to do with putting the shuttle on NASA's technology roadmap. Mars Direct is called Direct partly because it deliberately abandons a big chunk of the Von Braun architecture, which is that you have a space station, serviced by shuttles, where you assemble your outward bound spaceships. Even when you take out the station, Von Braun's 1969/1970 Mars architecture relies on shuttles to cover the gap between LEO and the ground. This article entitled The Von Braun Master Plan: National Dream or National Nightmare? sums up the objections to Von Braun's architecture -- and NASA's long term adherence to it -- concisely.
NASA hasn't blown the fuck out of that many people, when you get right down to it...Seventeen deaths in over thirty years.
You are of course, as is normal in these discussions, forgetting the people who weren't astronauts but who also died because of their jobs. Look under Ground Staff Fatalities, for the US the total comes to 8 people who also died in space-related industrial accidents, but who didn't get buried in Arlington. You could make an argument that several of these individuals died in generic construction snfaus, but on the other hand, the list doesn't include the people who died of heart attacks from sheer over work and stress during the Apollo crash program.
So far, the only memorial these people have is a small statue stashed in the visitor's center beside JSC, and they only got that after legendary pad leader Guenter Wendt kicked up a fuss. I think that's uncool.
Very true, and while the article doesn't focus on them we did try to tell readers how significant their roles were.
ESA was orignally pushing for an all electrical engineering approach that would leave the trajectory unchanged but just pre-heat the probe's crystal....
Now, you've really tickled my professional interest. It was my understanding that (because of the physics) changing the angle of incidence was a big contender for the solution from the get-go... Anyhoo, seriously, if you want to continue this conversation off/., (my email addy is s[dot]cass[at]ieee[dot]org), I'd really like to follow up with you about this.
we don't get sabbaticals... we're lucky to get weekends
Well, I was trying to come up with something a little friendlier than a heart attack:)
there was still a lot of doubt - with good reason - that this could happen
Actually the CAIB was pretty convinced, on the basis of its own analysis, an analysis that should have taken place at NASA years before that the foam could cause massive damage. The test had as much to do with finally getting NASA people to accept that reality - I can't find a direct link, but this is described in William Langewiesche's award winning article in The Atlantic Monthly about the investigation. That NASA personnel believed foam was safe based on nothing more than a collective hunch is exactly the kind of problem that I, Oberg, the CAIB, sexylicious and a dozen other task groups and reports are all railing against.
Yeah, it really sucked when TW went from the equivalent of Scientific American or New Scientist to a product launch show: the episode they did in real time in th '80s on what would happen during a nuclear missile exchange still gives me chills...
Actually keeping track of every last document is exactly what I expect management to do. Apollo was famous for its ability to manage documentation in a time before ubiquitous computer-aided IT. And I expect an independant safety organization to keep on top of anomalies and sort the wheat from the chaff so that exactly these issues bubble to the top during launch prep.
I'm not alone in that expectation, nor is it unreasonable.
You're pointing out problems that are known, and therefore tesst can be performed to empirically characterize the siutation and educated judgements can be made about the risks involved.
It's in consciously or unconciously believing the problems don't exist or are insignificant without any supporting evidence (as happened with the foam and O-rings) that you end up on the Dark Side. We don't require a Theory of Everything to do rocketry, but we can't bury our heads in the sand when faced with anomalies either.
Here's another way of thinking about it. I'm the Administrator of Blobia's Space Agency:
Case One:
My engineers come to me and say: we'd like to launch a manned rocket. We think the chance of fatal failure is about 1 in 500, but the astronauts are okay with that. We came up with the figure by considering the following risks: the chance of the main LOX tanks bursting is XX%, the chance of a total computer failure is XX%. (and so on). I turn the list of risks over my independant safety team who go over the list to make the calculations are okay, but who also checks previous flight and ground test records to make sure nothing's been left off the risk. Nothing has and I okay the launch. The next day the rocket takes off and kills the astronaut onboard.
Case Two:
The engineers come to me and present their list. Unbeknowst to me, a number of things have been left off the list for varous reasons, but I don't bother getting anyone to double check the list: if they did, they would have told me the calculabe risk of failure should be pegged at 1 in 50. I give the okay, the rocket takes off and the mission is a total success.
Case One is an example of good management and how it should go. That the astronuat happened to be killed is sheer bad luck, but I'd sleep well authorizing another dozen such missions under the same circumstances. Case Two (which is closer to the NASA described in the CAIB report) is an example of bad management. That the astronaut happened to survive is sheer good luck.Not a single additional mission should be okayed until the circumstances are changed.
True unknown unknowns are part and parcel of every flght. This is the irreducible risk that must be accepted.
But when an unknown unknown becomes a known unknown, i.e. you spot something (such as foam shedding or O-ring charring) that you either didn't expect, don't fully understand why its happening, how dangerous it is, or what the implications are then you are grounded, until you demonstrate you have at least characterized the problem.
Understanding that distinction between risk and recklessness is to understand how to manage high-risk enterprises.
As I've stated in an another thread, when it comes to risking lives, the burden is to prove that something is safe, not that it is unsafe.
This is the fundamental point that makes management of high-risk enteprises different from low-risk management.
If the vibrational load problem has not been proven to be safe, or the risks quantitatively characterised, then the shuttle should be grounded until such a demonstration can made. The thinking behind "here's something we haven't checked out 100%, but nothing bad has happened so far, so it's okay"is exactly the thinking that killed the seven astronauts on board Challenger and the seven astronauts onboard Columbia.
The point is not to eliminate all risks -- but if the risk is known and characterized, all concerned can make informed decisions about it. Risk is part of spaceflight, and no-one is saying there should be no spaceflight until the risk of failure is zero. But to allow anomolies to persist without fully investigating what was going on, without understanding the modes and consequences of failure and without establishing quantitatively whether or not the risk involved is acceptable is bad management. It killed Challenger and it killed Columbia, and if NASA can't snap out of thinking that way, it'll kill another vehicle and her crew.
Part of the problem is that frequently management now demands consensus (I'm sure you'll remember the discussion of that point in the CAIB report). Minority reports and formal dissent became a thing of the past.
In NASA what was happening was that that the onus was placed on dissenting engineers to prove that a situation was unsafe before action was taken. While that might seem like a perfectly reasonable approach in normal life it is lethal in a high risk enterprise like spaceflight. There, once a risk is identified, the onus is those who must prove the situation is safe.
To quote the CAIB, specifically, p 190:
When managers in the Shuttle Program denied the team?s request for imagery, the Debris Assessment Team was put in the untenable position of having to prove that a safety-of-flight issue existed without the very images that would permit such a determination. This is precisely the opposite of how an effective safety culture would act. Organizations that deal with high-risk operations must always have a healthy fear of failure - operations must be proved safe, rather than the other way around. NASA inverted this burden of proof.
Before the launch, the foam issue was pretty thoroughly discounted as being irrelevant.
Sigh. You just don't get it do you? The fact that the foam issue was "thoroughly discounted" is exactly what we're talking about when say there was a management failure. Foam shedding was an occurance that was outside the safety envelope of the shuttle from Day 1. Yet, over time, it became seen as less and less of a problem simply because nothing awful had happened (yet). This is an example of what is meant by "normalization" and is an example of bad management.
The exact same thing happened with Challenger, where O-Ring charring similary went from a serious problem to something everyone "discounted as irrelevant".
No, you haven't presented evidence, merely whined about the absence of specifics in my posts, despite the fact that I have refered you to the relavant portions of a generally accepted report, something which should be a problem dealing with as you claim to have already read the report.
Debating evidence means debating the evidence detailed in the CAIB report -- which you have failed to do, despite me asking you to start by detailing your objections to just one finding and its suppporting evidence.
And tens of thousands of people whose work you're smearing without discussing.
I'm smearing no-one. I haven't mentioned blame, beyond managerial failures. But there is (or at least was at time of the Columbia disaster) a dysfunctional culture in NASA, and if it causes anyone in NASA offence to hear that, tough shit. NASA's defensiveness in dealing with external criticism was also cited by the CAIB as a contributing factor to the whole ball of wax that killed Columbia and her crew. And Challenger and hers.
Bluntly: NASA employees who won't accept the message of the Columbia report (in defiance of the general consensus amongst O'Keefe's administration, the White House, Congress, the aerospace industry and academia that it paints a fair portrait of the agency and the causes of the Columbia disaster) should be fired. Because otherwise the Roger's Report and the CAIB report will be joined by a third in time to come.
I agree the recovery was a team effort, but the fact remains that what Smeds did was a rarity: a singular individual effort that, if it hadn't occured, would have resulted in disaster. Thus we felt he deserved some serious kudos and so the article focused on him.
I'm in no way deingrating the amazing and creative work that the trajectory guys did. But think of it like this: If any one of those guys were absent from the project, because of a sabbatical, or, God forbid, an accident, chances are that the mission still would have been salvaged.
The same cannot be said about Smeds during the period between being told to do a test and coming back to ESA with the results -- it's fair to say that many, if not most, engineers would have just developed a carrier wave only test as originally planned, or wouldn't have bothered to persist with the more complex test after being turned down (after all, who's looking to get into trouble to do extra work?), or might not have had the insight required to modify the test on-the-fly when the downlink started showing problems.
The situation is analogous to Apollo in some ways: a lot of people helped design and build the LEM (Tom Kelly is one of my personal engineering heroes), but John Houbolt deserves his place in history for pushing NASA onto the LOR architecture path in the first place.
As for what we said about NASA and the NDA, I'll just have to say we stand by Oberg's reporting. But if you have something that shows we really did get it wrong, I'd be more than happy to look at it and print a correction if warranted.
Really? Then why do you keep demanding specifics, as if they don't exist, when you know they're a few pages away in the CAIB report? I've quoted directly from the report -- why haven't you?
Debates don't occur in vacuums, otherwise they're meaningless symbolic manipulations. You must introduce some real evidence, as actual debators do all the time: it's not just about rhetorical flourishes.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In this case, this means that disagreeing with the almost universally accepted findings and judgements of the CAIB requires you to bear the burden of evidence.
So let's hear it. Let's start slow. Pick one specific finding with it's supporting evidence as presented in the CAIB report and tell me, precisely, why it's wrong. Bear in mind, I will expect you to either have examined the source material the CAIB relied on (also available online), or to have the results of an independant investigation of equal quality, otherwise you're asking me to accept a he-said she-said, and given the qualifications of the CAIB, I'll go with what they-said.
This isn't a game. There are no debate points. Just actual lives.
You *don't* tell a person to debate with a publication that they don't think backs up your point.
Here's the point: you don't know if the CAIB report does or not back up my point, because you haven't bothered to read it, despite it being excellently written and presented and freely available. You don't get to have an opinion, or a debate, about something you know nothing about. You're like someone commenting about long division who still hasn't got past the counting on their fingers stage.
I'm not going to debate to entire CIAB report with you (which backs up the summary statements I quoted in great detail). If you want specifics, they're right there. I'm sorry this topic is too complex to be reduced down to what I can summarize into a/. comment box, but that's just they way the real world is sometimes.
Now, if you seriously believe the CAIB is has made errors of fact and judgement as you claim, you have a duty to a) read the report and b) issue a rebuttal. The paper can't talk back, but the CAIB report wasn't handed down on tablets to Moses. All the board members are real walking people, and a huge community of professionals are out there who are really interested in meaningful commentary on the CAIB report, including myself.
In the meantime, given your obvious igorance of even secondary source material, such as the CAIB, I'll take the board's recommendations and judgements over yours: I would note as well that NASA accepted these findings, as did nearly everyone else on the planet qualified to evaluate it.
Re:Dont Bother Reading Long Article
on
Saving Huygens
·
· Score: 1
1. Thanks for taking the time 2. Thank you - although Jim Oberg, the article's author deserves much of the credit. 3. Thank you, but see (2) re: Oberg 4. I know, I know, and I should be used to it by now, but when it's your own work, one's skin is just that little bit thinner. 5. See (4). (Actually one of my favorite/. experiences was when some slashgit was ragging on an article I edited on the history of id software, when Carmack himself roused himself to reply saying the article was "quiet good." Boo-yah!)
Christ almighty -- are you really so lazy that you can't take it upon yourself to read the analysis of NASA, despite getting worked up enough about to spout off on/.?
Fine, sluggo, here you go (I've highlighted the extra-relavent bits for those who require spoonfeeding):
P. 195 CAIB report Vol 1.
The Board began its investigation with two central questions about NASA decisions. Why did NASA continue to fly with known foam debris problems in the years preceding the Columbia launch, and why did NASA managers conclude that the foam debris strike 81.9 seconds into Columbia?s flight was not a threat to the safety of the mission, despite the concerns of their engineers?
As the investigation progressed, Board member Dr. Sally Ride, who also served on the Rogers Commission, observed that there were "echoes" of Challenger in Columbia. Ironically, the Rogers Commission investigation into Challenger started with two remarkably similar central questions: Why did NASA continue to fly with known O-ring erosion problems in the years before the Challenger launch, and why, on the eve of the Challenger launch, did NASA managers decide that launching the mission in such cold temperatures was an acceptable risk, despite the concerns of their engineers? The echoes did not stop there. The foam debris hit was not the single cause of the Columbia accident, just as the failure of the joint seal that permitted O-ring erosion was not the single cause of Challenger. Both Columbia and Challenger were lost also because of the failure of NASA?s organizational system. Part Two of this report cites failures of the three parts of NASA?s organizational system. This chapter shows how previous political, budgetary, and policy decisions by leaders at the White House, Congress, and NASA (Chapter 5) impacted the Space Shuttle Program?s structure, culture, and safety system (Chapter 7), and how these in turn resulted in flawed decision-making (Chapter 6) for both accidents. The explanation is about system effects: how actions taken in one layer of NASA?s organizational system impact other layers. History is not just a backdrop or a scene-setter. History is cause. History set the Columbia and Challenger accidents in motion. Although Part Two is separated into chapters and sections to make clear what happened in the political environment, the organization, and managers? and engineers? decision-making, the three worked together. Each is a critical link in the causal chain. This chapter shows that both accidents were "failures of foresight" in which history played a prominent role.1 First, the history of engineering decisions on foam and O-ring incidents had identical trajectories that "normalized" these anomalies, so that flying with these flaws became routine and acceptable. Second, NASA history had an effect. In response to White House and Congressional mandates, NASA leaders took actions that created systemic organizational flaws at the time of Challenger that were also present for Columbia. The final section compares the two critical decision sequences immediately before the loss of both Orbiters - the pre-launch teleconference for Challenger and the post-launch foam strike discussions for Columbia. It shows history again at work: how past definitions of risk combined with systemic problems in the NASA organization caused both accidents. Connecting the parts of NASA?s organizational system and drawing the parallels with Challenger demonstrate three things. First, despite all the post-Challenger changes at NASA and the agency?s notable achievements since, the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed. Second, the Board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident. Therefore, the recommendations for change are not only for fixing the Shuttle?s technical system, but also for fixing each part of the organiz
just because he worked in mission control doesn't make him an expert in every aspect of engineering or spacecraft design
Nobody is an expert on "every aspect of engineering or spacecraft design." If we took your position to its logical conclusion there could be no oversight or criticism of any problem more complex than what a single engineer could reasonably tackle.
To say good oversight is hard to do is true, but it doesn't invalidate someone reporting demonstrably bad oversight.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you Ghost of Wernher von Braun!
Hmmm... I'm not sure Von Braun's ghost is the best entity to summon here. Von Braun had more than a little to do with putting the shuttle on NASA's technology roadmap. Mars Direct is called Direct partly because it deliberately abandons a big chunk of the Von Braun architecture, which is that you have a space station, serviced by shuttles, where you assemble your outward bound spaceships. Even when you take out the station, Von Braun's 1969/1970 Mars architecture relies on shuttles to cover the gap between LEO and the ground. This article entitled The Von Braun Master Plan: National Dream or National Nightmare? sums up the objections to Von Braun's architecture -- and NASA's long term adherence to it -- concisely.
BTW, Here's Von Braun's 1950's vision
NASA hasn't blown the fuck out of that many people, when you get right down to it...Seventeen deaths in over thirty years.
You are of course, as is normal in these discussions, forgetting the people who weren't astronauts but who also died because of their jobs. Look under Ground Staff Fatalities, for the US the total comes to 8 people who also died in space-related industrial accidents, but who didn't get buried in Arlington. You could make an argument that several of these individuals died in generic construction snfaus, but on the other hand, the list doesn't include the people who died of heart attacks from sheer over work and stress during the Apollo crash program.
So far, the only memorial these people have is a small statue stashed in the visitor's center beside JSC, and they only got that after legendary pad leader Guenter Wendt kicked up a fuss. I think that's uncool.
Sorry for the long delay in response!
/., (my email addy is s[dot]cass[at]ieee[dot]org), I'd really like to follow up with you about this.
:)
as were Claudio and Jean-Pierre.
Very true, and while the article doesn't focus on them we did try to tell readers how significant their roles were.
ESA was orignally pushing for an all electrical engineering approach that would leave the trajectory unchanged but just pre-heat the probe's crystal....
Now, you've really tickled my professional interest. It was my understanding that (because of the physics) changing the angle of incidence was a big contender for the solution from the get-go... Anyhoo, seriously, if you want to continue this conversation off
we don't get sabbaticals... we're lucky to get weekends
Well, I was trying to come up with something a little friendlier than a heart attack
there was still a lot of doubt - with good reason - that this could happen
Actually the CAIB was pretty convinced, on the basis of its own analysis, an analysis that should have taken place at NASA years before that the foam could cause massive damage. The test had as much to do with finally getting NASA people to accept that reality - I can't find a direct link, but this is described in William Langewiesche's award winning article in The Atlantic Monthly about the investigation. That NASA personnel believed foam was safe based on nothing more than a collective hunch is exactly the kind of problem that I, Oberg, the CAIB, sexylicious and a dozen other task groups and reports are all railing against.
Yeah, it really sucked when TW went from the equivalent of Scientific American or New Scientist to a product launch show: the episode they did in real time in th '80s on what would happen during a nuclear missile exchange still gives me chills...
Actually keeping track of every last document is exactly what I expect management to do. Apollo was famous for its ability to manage documentation in a time before ubiquitous computer-aided IT. And I expect an independant safety organization to keep on top of anomalies and sort the wheat from the chaff so that exactly these issues bubble to the top during launch prep.
I'm not alone in that expectation, nor is it unreasonable.
You're pointing out problems that are known, and therefore tesst can be performed to empirically characterize the siutation and educated judgements can be made about the risks involved.
It's in consciously or unconciously believing the problems don't exist or are insignificant without any supporting evidence (as happened with the foam and O-rings) that you end up on the Dark Side. We don't require a Theory of Everything to do rocketry, but we can't bury our heads in the sand when faced with anomalies either.
Here's another way of thinking about it. I'm the Administrator of Blobia's Space Agency:
Case One:
My engineers come to me and say: we'd like to launch a manned rocket. We think the chance of fatal failure is about 1 in 500, but the astronauts are okay with that. We came up with the figure by considering the following risks: the chance of the main LOX tanks bursting is XX%, the chance of a total computer failure is XX%. (and so on). I turn the list of risks over my independant safety team who go over the list to make the calculations are okay, but who also checks previous flight and ground test records to make sure nothing's been left off the risk. Nothing has and I okay the launch. The next day the rocket takes off and kills the astronaut onboard.
Case Two:
The engineers come to me and present their list. Unbeknowst to me, a number of things have been left off the list for varous reasons, but I don't bother getting anyone to double check the list: if they did, they would have told me the calculabe risk of failure should be pegged at 1 in 50. I give the okay, the rocket takes off and the mission is a total success.
Case One is an example of good management and how it should go. That the astronuat happened to be killed is sheer bad luck, but I'd sleep well authorizing another dozen such missions under the same circumstances. Case Two (which is closer to the NASA described in the CAIB report) is an example of bad management. That the astronaut happened to survive is sheer good luck.Not a single additional mission should be okayed until the circumstances are changed.
See?
True unknown unknowns are part and parcel of every flght. This is the irreducible risk that must be accepted.
But when an unknown unknown becomes a known unknown, i.e. you spot something (such as foam shedding or O-ring charring) that you either didn't expect, don't fully understand why its happening, how dangerous it is, or what the implications are then you are grounded, until you demonstrate you have at least characterized the problem.
Understanding that distinction between risk and recklessness is to understand how to manage high-risk enterprises.
As I've stated in an another thread, when it comes to risking lives, the burden is to prove that something is safe, not that it is unsafe.
This is the fundamental point that makes management of high-risk enteprises different from low-risk management.
If the vibrational load problem has not been proven to be safe, or the risks quantitatively characterised, then the shuttle should be grounded until such a demonstration can made. The thinking behind "here's something we haven't checked out 100%, but nothing bad has happened so far, so it's okay"is exactly the thinking that killed the seven astronauts on board Challenger and the seven astronauts onboard Columbia.
The point is not to eliminate all risks -- but if the risk is known and characterized, all concerned can make informed decisions about it. Risk is part of spaceflight, and no-one is saying there should be no spaceflight until the risk of failure is zero. But to allow anomolies to persist without fully investigating what was going on, without understanding the modes and consequences of failure and without establishing quantitatively whether or not the risk involved is acceptable is bad management. It killed Challenger and it killed Columbia, and if NASA can't snap out of thinking that way, it'll kill another vehicle and her crew.
Part of the problem is that frequently management now demands consensus (I'm sure you'll remember the discussion of that point in the CAIB report). Minority reports and formal dissent became a thing of the past.
In NASA what was happening was that that the onus was placed on dissenting engineers to prove that a situation was unsafe before action was taken. While that might seem like a perfectly reasonable approach in normal life it is lethal in a high risk enterprise like spaceflight. There, once a risk is identified, the onus is those who must prove the situation is safe.
To quote the CAIB, specifically, p 190:
When managers in the Shuttle Program denied the team?s request for imagery, the Debris Assessment Team was put in the untenable position of having to prove that a safety-of-flight issue existed without the very images that would permit such a determination. This is precisely the opposite of how an effective safety culture would act. Organizations that deal with high-risk operations must always have a healthy fear of failure - operations must be proved safe, rather than the other way around. NASA inverted this burden of proof.
Before the launch, the foam issue was pretty thoroughly discounted as being irrelevant.
Sigh. You just don't get it do you? The fact that the foam issue was "thoroughly discounted" is exactly what we're talking about when say there was a management failure. Foam shedding was an occurance that was outside the safety envelope of the shuttle from Day 1. Yet, over time, it became seen as less and less of a problem simply because nothing awful had happened (yet). This is an example of what is meant by "normalization" and is an example of bad management.
The exact same thing happened with Challenger, where O-Ring charring similary went from a serious problem to something everyone "discounted as irrelevant".
Two vehicles, one root cause.
No, you haven't presented evidence, merely whined about the absence of specifics in my posts, despite the fact that I have refered you to the relavant portions of a generally accepted report, something which should be a problem dealing with as you claim to have already read the report.
Debating evidence means debating the evidence detailed in the CAIB report -- which you have failed to do, despite me asking you to start by detailing your objections to just one finding and its suppporting evidence.
And tens of thousands of people whose work you're smearing without discussing.
I'm smearing no-one. I haven't mentioned blame, beyond managerial failures. But there is (or at least was at time of the Columbia disaster) a dysfunctional culture in NASA, and if it causes anyone in NASA offence to hear that, tough shit. NASA's defensiveness in dealing with external criticism was also cited by the CAIB as a contributing factor to the whole ball of wax that killed Columbia and her crew. And Challenger and hers.
Bluntly: NASA employees who won't accept the message of the Columbia report (in defiance of the general consensus amongst O'Keefe's administration, the White House, Congress, the aerospace industry and academia that it paints a fair portrait of the agency and the causes of the Columbia disaster) should be fired. Because otherwise the Roger's Report and the CAIB report will be joined by a third in time to come.
What sexylicious said. (Damn work for interfering with /.!)
I agree the recovery was a team effort, but the fact remains that what Smeds did was a rarity: a singular individual effort that, if it hadn't occured, would have resulted in disaster. Thus we felt he deserved some serious kudos and so the article focused on him.
I'm in no way deingrating the amazing and creative work that the trajectory guys did. But think of it like this: If any one of those guys were absent from the project, because of a sabbatical, or, God forbid, an accident, chances are that the mission still would have been salvaged.
The same cannot be said about Smeds during the period between being told to do a test and coming back to ESA with the results -- it's fair to say that many, if not most, engineers would have just developed a carrier wave only test as originally planned, or wouldn't have bothered to persist with the more complex test after being turned down (after all, who's looking to get into trouble to do extra work?), or might not have had the insight required to modify the test on-the-fly when the downlink started showing problems.
The situation is analogous to Apollo in some ways: a lot of people helped design and build the LEM (Tom Kelly is one of my personal engineering heroes), but John Houbolt deserves his place in history for pushing NASA onto the LOR architecture path in the first place.
As for what we said about NASA and the NDA, I'll just have to say we stand by Oberg's reporting. But if you have something that shows we really did get it wrong, I'd be more than happy to look at it and print a correction if warranted.
Cheers.
Yes, I *have* read it
Really? Then why do you keep demanding specifics, as if they don't exist, when you know they're a few pages away in the CAIB report? I've quoted directly from the report -- why haven't you?
Debates don't occur in vacuums, otherwise they're meaningless symbolic manipulations. You must introduce some real evidence, as actual debators do all the time: it's not just about rhetorical flourishes.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In this case, this means that disagreeing with the almost universally accepted findings and judgements of the CAIB requires you to bear the burden of evidence.
So let's hear it. Let's start slow. Pick one specific finding with it's supporting evidence as presented in the CAIB report and tell me, precisely, why it's wrong. Bear in mind, I will expect you to either have examined the source material the CAIB relied on (also available online), or to have the results of an independant investigation of equal quality, otherwise you're asking me to accept a he-said she-said, and given the qualifications of the CAIB, I'll go with what they-said.
This isn't a game. There are no debate points. Just actual lives.
Really? Just where did you read/watch about Boris Smeds before? Seriously. I think we got a scoop of sorts and I'd like to know if we didn't.
You *don't* tell a person to debate with a publication that they don't think backs up your point.
/. comment box, but that's just they way the real world is sometimes.
Here's the point: you don't know if the CAIB report does or not back up my point, because you haven't bothered to read it, despite it being excellently written and presented and freely available. You don't get to have an opinion, or a debate, about something you know nothing about. You're like someone commenting about long division who still hasn't got past the counting on their fingers stage.
I'm not going to debate to entire CIAB report with you (which backs up the summary statements I quoted in great detail). If you want specifics, they're right there. I'm sorry this topic is too complex to be reduced down to what I can summarize into a
Now, if you seriously believe the CAIB is has made errors of fact and judgement as you claim, you have a duty to a) read the report and b) issue a rebuttal. The paper can't talk back, but the CAIB report wasn't handed down on tablets to Moses. All the board members are real walking people, and a huge community of professionals are out there who are really interested in meaningful commentary on the CAIB report, including myself.
In the meantime, given your obvious igorance of even secondary source material, such as the CAIB, I'll take the board's recommendations and judgements over yours: I would note as well that NASA accepted these findings, as did nearly everyone else on the planet qualified to evaluate it.
1. Thanks for taking the time /. experiences was when some slashgit was ragging on an article I edited on the history of id software, when Carmack himself roused himself to reply saying the article was "quiet good." Boo-yah!)
2. Thank you - although Jim Oberg, the article's author deserves much of the credit.
3. Thank you, but see (2) re: Oberg
4. I know, I know, and I should be used to it by now, but when it's your own work, one's skin is just that little bit thinner.
5. See (4). (Actually one of my favorite
Nice to hear from a member!
Christ almighty -- are you really so lazy that you can't take it upon yourself to read the analysis of NASA, despite getting worked up enough about to spout off on /.?
Fine, sluggo, here you go (I've highlighted the extra-relavent bits for those who require spoonfeeding):
P. 195 CAIB report Vol 1.
The Board began its investigation with two central questions about NASA decisions. Why did NASA continue to fly with known foam debris problems in the years preceding the Columbia launch, and why did NASA managers conclude that the foam debris strike 81.9 seconds into Columbia?s flight was not a threat to the safety of the mission, despite the concerns of their engineers?
As the investigation progressed, Board member Dr. Sally Ride, who also served on the Rogers Commission, observed that there were "echoes" of Challenger in Columbia. Ironically, the Rogers Commission investigation into Challenger started with two remarkably similar central questions: Why did NASA continue to fly with known O-ring erosion problems in the years before the Challenger launch, and why, on the eve of the Challenger launch, did NASA managers decide that launching the mission in such cold temperatures was an acceptable risk, despite the concerns of their engineers? The echoes did not stop there. The foam debris hit was not the single cause of the Columbia accident, just as the failure of the joint seal that permitted O-ring erosion was not the single cause of Challenger. Both Columbia and Challenger were lost also because of the failure of NASA?s organizational system. Part Two of this report cites failures of the three parts of NASA?s organizational system. This chapter shows how previous political, budgetary, and policy decisions by leaders at the White House, Congress, and NASA (Chapter 5) impacted the Space Shuttle Program?s structure, culture, and safety system (Chapter 7), and how these in turn resulted in flawed decision-making (Chapter 6) for both accidents. The explanation is about system effects: how actions taken in one layer of NASA?s organizational system impact other layers. History is not just a backdrop or a scene-setter. History is cause. History set the Columbia and Challenger accidents in motion. Although Part Two is separated into chapters and sections to make clear what happened in the political environment, the organization, and managers? and engineers? decision-making, the three worked together. Each is a critical link in the causal chain. This chapter shows that both accidents were "failures of foresight" in which history played a prominent role.1 First, the history of engineering decisions on foam and O-ring incidents had identical trajectories that "normalized" these anomalies, so that flying with these flaws became routine and acceptable. Second, NASA history had an effect. In response to White House and Congressional mandates, NASA leaders took actions that created systemic organizational flaws at the time of Challenger that were also present for Columbia. The final section compares the two critical decision sequences immediately before the loss of both Orbiters - the pre-launch teleconference for Challenger and the post-launch foam strike discussions for Columbia. It shows history again at work: how past definitions of risk combined with systemic problems in the NASA organization caused both accidents. Connecting the parts of NASA?s organizational system and drawing the parallels with Challenger demonstrate three things. First, despite all the post-Challenger changes at NASA and the agency?s notable achievements since, the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed. Second, the Board strongly believes that if these persistent, systemic flaws are not resolved, the scene is set for another accident. Therefore, the recommendations for change are not only for fixing the Shuttle?s technical system, but also for fixing each part of the organiz
It not one of my comments have I complained about cost. Nor did Oberg in his article. You're shadowboxing.
just because he worked in mission control doesn't make him an expert in every aspect of engineering or spacecraft design
Nobody is an expert on "every aspect of engineering or spacecraft design." If we took your position to its logical conclusion there could be no oversight or criticism of any problem more complex than what a single engineer could reasonably tackle.
To say good oversight is hard to do is true, but it doesn't invalidate someone reporting demonstrably bad oversight.
Cheers!
That stripping missions down to the point where meaningful independent technical oversight is lost kills probes.