NASA managers should have went to jail for murder...

[Testing]

I am reminded of a cool quote (without attribution, alas) that is hanging on the wall of my daughter's school.

"A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for."

The United States Coast Gaurd has one similar. I actualy prefer the Revenue Cutter Service myself. paraphrase "We have to go out. Nothing is said about coming back"

 

[DrRocket]

They knew it was gonna blow up and launched anyway. There was a group of engineers thinking it would blow up on the pad but they were overuled. The people who were responsible for the Challenger launch descision should be in jail for murder.

Its sad that no one was held responsible cause they should have been.

That is utter rubbish. I don't know how many of the engineers involved you know personally, but I do know some of the principals.

There were people who recognized that it was not smart to be operating outside of the environment in which the motors have been qualified. They were absolutely correct. But there was no one who really knew or had any good reason to believe that the failure would occur.

That is not an excuse for what happened, or justification for the decision to launch. The burden of proof should be applied so that it is necessary to justify a launch decision rather than necessary to justify a decision not to launch. Management of the launch decision was backwards. That is not good, but it is not a deliberate decision to incur a failure and the resulting deaths either.

Your accusation of "murder" is absolutely ridiculous, and if you had any authority it would also be irresponsible.

You don't know what you are talking about.

 

[kyle_baron]

The words dense and ignorant, would be more appropriate than murder.

 

[drwayne]

My questions earlier were not really a tangent by the way. Is the line between
agressiveness and carelessness really soley determined by whether things work
out or not?

In the case of Apollo 13, data existed that a problem was there, but was probably
manageable. Clearly, they had no idea how close to the hairy edge of ugly
failure they were running. The facts of course were that they were within
a second or two of destroying the stack.

Wayne

 

[newsartist]

I am reminded of a cool quote (without attribution, alas) that is hanging on the wall of my daughter's school.

"A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for."

A good quote for a girl at school....

It's by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. That is Rear Admiral Hopper, (USN). She wrote more than is usually quoted, and it fits here too:
“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things.”

 

[drwayne]

Thank you for that. I never had the privilege of meeting her, but the word "legend" fits nicely.

That ranks right up there with the famous quote from Commander Ernest Evans:

"This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harms way, and anyone who doesn't want to
go along had better get off now"

 

[DrRocket]

My questions earlier were not really a tangent by the way. Is the line between
agressiveness and carelessness really soley determined by whether things work
out or not?

In the case of Apollo 13, data existed that a problem was there, but was probably
manageable. Clearly, they had no idea how close to the hairy edge of ugly
failure they were running. The facts of course were that they were within
a second or two of destroying the stack.

Wayne

No the line is not simply whether or not a decision results in success or failure. The very decision to launch entails some risk, and where there is risk there is always some chance of failure. In that regard there is some parallel with Naval ships that go "in harms way". The overall risk is something that the astronauts sign up to when they become astronauts. Rockets are inherently risky. The shuttle is not a bus.

On the other hand, when one makes a "go" decision for a particular launch and a particular launch date, that decision ought to be made in an almost completely risk-averse manner. There is no point is taking a risk to launch on Tuesday, when you can always stand down, evaluate the risk and perhaps fix the problem and then launch on Friday. In that regard a launch decision is quite different from a military decision to "go in harms way".

The problem with the Challenger decision was the acceptance of unnecessary risk in the name of the launch schedule. Rockets are designed, tested and qualified to a specific set of environments and criteria. One ought not go outside of those criteria without an extraordinarily good reason and without a great deal of technical data that shows it to be acceptable to do so. There is quite a history showing that small changes in rocket conditions, changes or excursions thought to be minor, have resulted in catastrophic failures. That is part of the business, because the difficulty in getting out of the Earth's gravity well, is so profound that rockets are driven to be of very high performance and very low weight, making them susceptivle to single-point failures. That is why professional rocket people are very conservative with regard to technical matters and do not operate outside of proven regimes without an extraordinary level of analytical and test data. The Challenger decision was pushed by non-technical people in high positions, and the technical side that went along did so under protest, should have dug in their heels and refused to agree, but were under pressure that could affect their livelihood to sign up.

One has to pay attention to details and not do what might seem at the moment to be acceptable when the data is not clear. On one very major launch I got in the way, early on, of a "go" decision on the basis of a small part that showed an in-specification, but out-of-family condition. That condition would often be, and was, looked upon by the responsible engineer as actually being good -- it was a statistically very low leakage current. Leakage currents are normally viewed as a problem only when they are high. This one was 7-sigma low. 7-sigma events do not "just happen", and it was clear to me that that particular piece was different and the normal data did not apply. When the part was looked at in more detail it was found to be about to fail. It was replaced that the launch went without a hitch. There is no point in taking risks when you don't have to.

I don't know the details of the Apollo 13 story. I understand that some sort of problem with a heating element resulted in the incident, but I don't know what pre-launch indications they had of a problem. If, as you say, there were problem signs and the decision was made that the problem was manageable prior to launch then I would be rather critical of the decision making. The impact to fixing such a problem would only be a schedule delay. That sort of risk taking is not something that I would support.

Risks are part of the business, and are accepted on the basis of some rather rigorous technical work to mitigate those risks. One has to accept risks, with knowledge of the nature of the risks and having done everything reasonable to make sure that the risks don't turn into tragedy. But the stakes are high and taking a dare is just plain stupid.

 

[drwayne]

Interesting article from a few days ago:

http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090327sts27/

 

[drwayne]

"I don't know the details of the Apollo 13 story. I understand that some sort of problem with a heating element resulted in the incident, but I don't know what pre-launch indications they had of a problem."

I was referring to a different problem with Apollo 13.

Apollo 13's center engine on the second stage went WILD with POGO. It was within seconds of tearing
itself completely loose from the stage, and destroying the stack. It was a very scary event that
is only lost in most memories because of the later O2 tank accident.

POGO was a problem throughout Apollo, on all three stages at various time, though a fix for this brand had been identified and implemented on the next stack, but was not though important enough to unstack 13. They did not
realize how close they were running to the hairy edge.

 

[drwayne]

Here is a link on the unmanned test to which I referred:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_6

Wayne

 

[drwayne]

Classic POGO article:

http://www.pwrengineering.com/articles/pogo.htm

Wayne

 

[JonClarke]

That is just utter garbage when it comes to NASA. It is not a job's program or a money laundry. Iit exists to excel and has done so for 50 years.

Any government agency is money laundry, plain and simple.

Government programs have put people into space, sent them to the Moon, built space stations, landed probes on Mars, Venus, and several asteroids, put probes in orbit round Jupiter and Saturn, sent others beyond the solar system, orbited observatories that have made extraordinary discoveries about the univerese, provided navigation and S&R services, weather observations... If this is money laundering let's have more of it.

They don't need to really accomplish anything, just give the impression of doing so. Anything else than giving the impression of accomplishing something is really not needed, sometimes even unwanted (you accomplish too much, you are being too efficient, as a result budget for next year shrinks).

You obviouysly haven't been paying much attention to what has been accomplished in space if you think this.

MeteorWayne posted an article of a old moon pictures taken before Apollo by lunar orbiters. Government agency estimated the cost to reproduce the images to be 6 million. A few dedicated individuals accomplished the task for mere 200 000.

And how are the two figures comparable?

Socialism is crime against humanity, because it places real valuable tangible assets in the hands of low morale and low output people, that could otherwise be used efficiently and for the benefit of the community. Actually there should be so-called "third way", but I'm not going to discuss it further in this thread.

Take this sort of politrical grand standing to the open forum. It has no place here.

Government: 6 million
Dedicated individuals: 200 000

Meaning? Relevance?

Jon

 

[JonClarke]

The words dense and ignorant, would be more appropriate than murder.

Dense and ignorant is not a phrase that generally describes people managing difficult, dangerous, and complex projects. Even when they get it wrong. It may often describe those who sit in judgement of them from the comfort of their keyboards, however.

 

[frodo1008]

JonClarke, that was indeed a great post! I have never been able to quite understand why people come to a space advocacy site such as space.com with nothing else but criticism for such as the American space program and NASA.

We have (even those of us that fully support NASA) all had moments of not agreeing with NASA on some space subjects and projects. But some seem to have nothing else to do but sit at a keyboard and carp away.

Perhaps we should have some kind of troll type of filter for these more scientific forums that would automatically sentence such posters over to the free space forum?

 

[JonClarke]

Thanks Frodo! Praise from the praiseworthy is thanks enough.

 

[CalliArcale]

A good quote for a girl at school....

It's by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. That is Rear Admiral Hopper, (USN). She wrote more than is usually quoted, and it fits here too:
“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things.”

That was Hopper? As in "Amazing Grace" Hopper? COOL!!!!! She is so awesome. There aren't many women in the early days of computer science, but she's one of the biggies. Arguably, more important than Ada Lovelace, who often gets the cred for being the "first programmer" and therefore also the first woman programmer.

Hmmm -- according to Wikipedia, she is also the source of the famous expression "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." Cool!