The Economist whitewashes NASA:
Economist.com: ...At first sight, one of the more troubling aspects of the report is that it seems that a rescue mission involving another shuttle, Atlantis, might have been feasible had the damage caused by the foam been recognised as dangerous. The mission's managers, though, failed to recognise that danger, and so the question of mounting a rescue was never raised. Scott Hubbard, a board member and director of NASA's Ames Research Centre, says the best estimate of the actual damage is that the hole in the wing was 25cm (ten inches) across, plus or minus 50%. That could probably have been detected by pointing the camera of a military satellite at Columbia, if anyone had thought to do so. All told, there were at least eight missed opportunities for discovering the damage, according to the board. But at every juncture the programme's structure, processes and managers resisted new information.
That sounds damning. Yet those who smugly ask, "why were safety warnings ignored?" might care to pick through malfunction reports from the previous 113 shuttle flights to see the benefits that hindsight brings. In them, they would find mention of half-a-dozen crucial pieces of hardware that have repeatedly faltered or failed, and have defied attempts at repair.
But nobody thinks that the Columbia flight was at all unusual in having engineers worry during it that key pieces of hardware might fail.
What is "unusual" is that managers' attitude toward engineers' concerns was, "Let's not find out."
Posted by DeLong at August 27, 2003 09:26 AM | TrackBack
The Economist becomes more comically bureaucratic by this issue. After all the British were once rulers of half the world, goes the smug attitude. Phooey.
Posted by: dahl on August 27, 2003 11:19 AMActually, we don't know that wasn't the (some?) managers' reaction during previous flights. It seems to have been the management attitude prior to the Challenger disaster.
It must be remembered that the external position of NASA is the same today as it was then. It has flagship programs which have been vastly overpromised and chronically underbudgeted (not underfunded, underbudgeted). Not all managers flourish in such an environment. It is a reasonable postulate that those who do share some (perhaps undesirable) traits. It is this, I think, which is meant when people blame "NASA culture" for the disasters.
There is a proverb which castigates people for doing the same thing over and expecting different results. But that's what we have done with NASA. And, apparently, what we will continue to do.
Posted by: jam on August 27, 2003 06:16 PMAnybody who has ever seen a shuttle launch can readily see it is NOT a "transportation system", but a very high risk assemblage. Apparently nothing in the documentation or the flight history contradicts this. Let's hope the crews are henceforth limited to professional explorers under no illusion that they are part of the broad scientific community merely transported to an intriguing environment for research.
Posted by: Don Hodges on August 27, 2003 07:37 PMNASA has been privatized such that the technical ability of the "managing" government people is nil, compared with their ability to cry "outsource". Government engineers, with careers tied to programs, and in it for the long haul need to get the power back.
If the shuttle is any indicator we should shudder to realize that the current and prior administration have decided to privatize the defense of the country. Seems that Rome did that on its way down.
Posted by: Larry Fixer on August 27, 2003 09:51 PMNASA has been privatized such that the technical ability of the "managing" government people is nil, compared with their ability to cry "outsource". Government engineers, with careers tied to programs, and in it for the long haul need to get the power back.
If the shuttle is any indicator we should shudder to realize that the current and prior administration have decided to privatize the defense of the country. Seems that Rome did that on its way down.
Posted by: Larry Fixer on August 27, 2003 09:52 PM"Anybody who has ever seen a shuttle launch can readily see it is NOT a "transportation system", but a very high risk assemblage."
My parents saw the Columbia on the launch pad, a couple days before it took off. Then they drove through east Texas (to my place) a couple days before it re-entered.
We were talking about the Columbia Friday night...the night before re-entry. I told them that every time a shuttle takes off, I expect it to explode like the Challenger.
As an engineer, it's quite remarkable to me how *safe* the shuttles have been. Only two disasters in over 100 flights.
On a somewhat related note, in 2002 there was not a crash fatality in a commercial carrier airplane in the United States. I'll bet that's like 1+ million flights. Truly remarkable.
Finally, from the movie Pushing Tin (about air traffic controllers), there's a line something like:
"For twenty years, you handle 3 million flights without an error. Then there's a collision, and your career is ruined."
Ain't it the truth! Frikkin' Monday mornin' quarterbacks. (Not that the Monday morning quarterbacks are bad people. Just that it's helluva lot easier to quarterback on Monday morning.)
"Apparently nothing in the documentation or the flight history contradicts this (that it's a high risk assemblage)."
Well, I think the initial risk assessments had shuttles failing only once in 100,000 flights. That goes to show that risk assessment can be a very inexact science.
Posted by: Mark Bahner on August 28, 2003 02:09 PM