CAIB Working Scenario - Anyone been able to download this yet?

[Rusty Barton]

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 00:16:30 -0600, OM
<om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org>
wrote:

>...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
>.pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
>then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
>each time.
>
>Anyone happen to have the same problems?
>
>
> OM

I have Surewest DSL and was able to download all three sections of
the report in a few minutes at 10:55pm PDT. So CAIB's server seems to
be working.


--
Rusty Barton - Antelope, California | "When I die, I'm leaving my
Visit my Titan I ICBM website at: | body to science fiction."
http://www.geocities.com/titan_1_missile | - Steven Wright

[OM]

....I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
..pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
each time.

Anyone happen to have the same problems?


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

[James Oberg]

I've got it down, now I'm doing a high-quality print-out. This is a terrific
product on a horrible project.




"OM" <om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org> wrote
in message ...
> ...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
> .pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
> then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
> each time.
>
> Anyone happen to have the same problems?
>
>
> OM
>
> --
>
> "No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
> his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
> poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society
>
> - General George S. Patton, Jr

[LooseChanj]

On or about Sun, 13 Jul 2003 13:35:53 GMT, James Oberg > made the sensational claim that:
> I've got it down, now I'm doing a high-quality print-out. This is a terrific
> product on a horrible project.
> "OM" <om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org> wrote
> in message ...
>> ...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
>> .pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
>> then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
>> each time.
>>
>> Anyone happen to have the same problems?

I had to d/l it 3 or 4 times because it ended up corrupted. On windows and
freebsd, each, before I ended up with a "good" file.
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | This space is for rent
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | Inquire within if you
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | Would like your ad here

[Diane Wilson]

In article >,
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org says...
> ...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
> .pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
> then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
> each time.
>
> Anyone happen to have the same problems?

Downloaded the full PDF on Friday, no problems. 189 pages, most
of it pretty interesting. I just pulled it down again to save a
local copy, so I've successfully downloaded into Acrobat reader
and also direct to my hard drive.

Bruce noted that it says "PDF 1.5" which is Acrobat 6. Try getting
the newest reader from Adobe, and download again. Download size
was 12.4 MB.

Diane

[Paul F. Dietz]

James Oberg wrote:

> I've got it down, now I'm doing a high-quality print-out. This is a terrific
> product on a horrible project.

It's an interesting and (yes) horrifying read. I'm amazed the vehicle
continued to fly as long as it did with the damage they deduced must have
been occuring inside the wing.

I have to wonder if the vehicle could have been made more failure-resistant
if the wing had been made of, say, composites, or if there had been a backup
system to inject coolant into the wing interior in case of a penetration.

Paul

[LooseChanj]

Ok, it seems right clicking and choosing "save link target as" using
netscape/mozilla (I'm assuming this covers Firebird as well) results
in a corrupted file pretty much every time. Netscape 7 gives me a 16k file,
mozilla 1.4+ and netscape 7.1 give me a 25 meg file. Netscape 4.8 didn't
have a problem with right clicking, but shat itself trying to open the file
within the browser.
--
This is a siggy | To E-mail, do note | This space is for rent
It's properly formatted | who you mean to reply-to | Inquire within if you
No person, none, care | and it will reach me | Would like your ad here

[Herb Schaltegger]

In article >,
OM <om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org>
wrote:

> ...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
> .pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
> then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
> each time.
>
> Anyone happen to have the same problems?
>
>
> OM

Got the whole thing Friday evening in one fell swoop. Downloaded
cleanly at an average of 1.8 Mbps (gotta love cable on a underpopulated
node!). It opens and displays just fine in Apple Preview 2.0 (for Mac
OS X) and in Acrobat Reader 5.1 for OS X. Haven't tried to open it in
XP Pro or Linux (man, do I have enough OS's in my life or what?)

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

[OM]

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 14:32:40 GMT, LooseChanj >
wrote:

>
>Ok, it seems right clicking and choosing "save link target as" using
>netscape/mozilla (I'm assuming this covers Firebird as well) results
>in a corrupted file pretty much every time. Netscape 7 gives me a 16k file,
>mozilla 1.4+ and netscape 7.1 give me a 25 meg file. Netscape 4.8 didn't
>have a problem with right clicking, but shat itself trying to open the file
>within the browser.

....Same issues with IE. Gets about 128K or so, and then chokes, with
the estimated download time simply increasing by 3 to 5 minutes every
30 seconds or so. I fired off a note to the admin for the CAIB site,
but I don't expect anything from it until at least Monday.

Considering his traffic load, I'm not going to guess at *which* Monday
that will be...


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

[OM]

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 09:48:51 -0400, Diane Wilson >
wrote:

>Bruce noted that it says "PDF 1.5" which is Acrobat 6. Try getting
>the newest reader from Adobe, and download again. Download size
>was 12.4 MB.

....I don't think it's the Acrobat version here. I'm simply doing a
right-click-save, which should dump the PDF itself to my hard drive as
it's not any kind of protected link.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

[Bruce Palmer]

Diane Wilson wrote:
> In article >,
> om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org says...
>
>>...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
>>.pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
>>then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
>>each time.
>>
>>Anyone happen to have the same problems?
>
>
> Downloaded the full PDF on Friday, no problems. 189 pages, most
> of it pretty interesting. I just pulled it down again to save a
> local copy, so I've successfully downloaded into Acrobat reader
> and also direct to my hard drive.
>
> Bruce noted that it says "PDF 1.5" which is Acrobat 6. Try getting
> the newest reader from Adobe, and download again. Download size
> was 12.4 MB.
>
> Diane

I thought so, which is very weird because the first individual part 1
file says %PDF-1.3%

I'll be trying again later today.

--
bp
Proud Member of the Human O-Ring Society Since 2003

[Diane Wilson]

In article >, says...
> James Oberg wrote:
>
> > I've got it down, now I'm doing a high-quality print-out. This is a terrific
> > product on a horrible project.
>
> It's an interesting and (yes) horrifying read. I'm amazed the vehicle
> continued to fly as long as it did with the damage they deduced must have
> been occuring inside the wing.

"Fly" is probably relative. The damage was pretty huge for a long while
before serious aerodynamic problems started. Increasing air density
probably contributed to the timing of the breakup; Columbia was probably
unfit to fly well before that time.

Still, there was some new information in the report. I wasn't aware of
how much the wing shape was changing behind the leading edge, and aside
from loss of tiles. That "recession" of the underside of the wing
is pretty scary to think about.

This was the first time I'd seen anything about the location of the
Littleton tile. That's further proof, as if such proof were needed,
that tiles were coming off in quantity long before the breakup, whether
you just call it a "zipper effect" or get down to root causes like
the wing skin burning away underneath the tiles, or the adhesive
debonding because of the heat.

> I have to wonder if the vehicle could have been made more failure-resistant
> if the wing had been made of, say, composites, or if there had been a backup
> system to inject coolant into the wing interior in case of a penetration.

What would you cool, and how would you cool it? The interior of the
wing is mostly empty space, with solid metal structual pieces.

I'd be interested to know how well composite structural parts would
have held up in this scenario.

Diane

[Terrence Daniels]

"OM" <om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_research _facility.org> wrote
in message ...
> Anyone happen to have the same problems?

What's your connection speed?

I just got DSL a couple of days ago, and I downloaded it fine with My
GetRight. File size should be 12.1 MB. The problem is that their server
doesn't support resuming, so if something interrupts the download, you're
screwed & have to start all over again. This was a serious problem for me on
56K, because it took me two days to get a 5MB video of the first LESS
foam-firing test.

[Bob Niland]

> I have to wonder if the vehicle could have been
> made more failure-resistant if the wing had been
> made of, say, composites, or if there had been a
> backup system to inject coolant into the wing
> interior in case of a penetration.

It was known at the time that Aluminum was selected
that some additional margin would be lost compared to
other materials then available.

But your premise is problematic. You're suggesting
spending money and likely adding weight to solve a
problem that is more cheaply solved, with no weight
penalty, by flying the STS in-spec. You are proposing
to engineer on the assumption that NASA management
will continue to push the system into the margins
of the envelope.

Heads need to roll on this. That, and only that, just
might get the attention of the surviving managers.

Both shuttle losses were the result of fully realized
risks of parallel staging. Flying the orbiter beside
the solids&fuel, rather than on top, is extra dangerous.
It requires extra care. It didn't get it. In both cases,
management flew despite out of spec incidents (that
just hadn't killed anyone yet, until they did).

General "Buck" Turgidson: "I don't think it's quite
fair to condemn the whole program because of a single
slip up." (from the movie "Dr. Strangelove").

Yes, it is fair. The whole point of the Human Factors
Reliability program in D.S. was to prevent even one
instance of the catastrophe the movie was about.

The whole point of the STS safety program was to
prevent even ONE loss. We've now lost two. If NASA
management doesn't get seriously re-engineered, it
will take three more losses to finally wring out all
the lurking fatal threats.

Regards, PO Box 248
Bob Niland Enterprise
Kansas
which, due to spam, is: 67441-0248 USA
email4rjn AT yahoo DOT com
http://www.access-one.com/rjn

Unless otherwise specifically stated, expressing personal
opinions and NOT speaking for any employer, client or Internet
Service Provider.

[Paul F. Dietz]

Bob Niland wrote:

> But your premise is problematic. You're suggesting
> spending money and likely adding weight to solve a
> problem that is more cheaply solved, with no weight
> penalty, by flying the STS in-spec. You are proposing
> to engineer on the assumption that NASA management
> will continue to push the system into the margins
> of the envelope.

In the real world, managers and engineers make mistakes.
Reliability involves 'defense in depth'. For example, if we
always operated nuclear reactors 'in spec' we wouldn't need
containment buildings. We wisely build them anyway, since
people *do* screw up.

The shuttle has a considerable number of places where there
is no defense in depth. I understand that mass budgets force
this to occur, but, nevertheless, those mass budgets are
a function of the design approach, and a different design
might not have required so many compromises.

Paul

[Doug...]

In article >, says...
>
> <snip>
>
> In the real world, managers and engineers make mistakes.
> Reliability involves 'defense in depth'. For example, if we
> always operated nuclear reactors 'in spec' we wouldn't need
> containment buildings. We wisely build them anyway, since
> people *do* screw up.

I want to quote a passage from a book I have read. The book is
relatively unimportant (a relatively forgettable science fiction series
that I rather enjoy) -- the name of thr book is "The High-Tech Knight" by
Leo Frankowski. But it has the following analysis of large organizations
that I think especially applies to large governmental agencies:

"In large organizations, it is hard to be noticed, so it is very
difficult to do something that is demonstratively right. It therefore
becomes critically important to your career that you never do anything
that is demonstratively wrong. Fools may not be fired, but they are
rarely promoted, either. To downgrade a subordinate manager seems to
imply that one didn't know what one was doing when one promoted him in
the first place. Best to leave him alone and hope that nobody notices.
It takes something fairly obvious, an exploding atomic power plant, for
example, to get anything changed. But generally, things just go on as
usual.

"This results in the same fools making the same mistakes forever. People
become demoralized, especially the best, most energetic workers. Useful
work slows or even comes to a halt. I don't mean that the workers stop
working. They are all furiously active, looking busy. They worry all
day long and go home tired. But they are not doing anything useful."

....skip two paragraphs of story-related observations to the completion of
the original thought, bringing it back to responsibility for failures and
mistakes and how the world at large reacts to them:

"People will shake their heads or laugh at someone doing something silly
with his own money, but they won't try to vote their congressman out of
office because of it. But if it's the *government's* money being spent,
they rightly think it's their money being wasted and the matter becomes
political. Consider the way one blown gasket stopped the entire American
space program for years."

That first quote is one of the best, most accurate descriptions of large
organizations I have ever seen, and I think it's appropriate here. It
applies very much to the questions that have been raised about NASA
management making mistakes. As noted, there is an incredibly ingrained
culture in *all* large organizations which makes avoiding being seen as
doing something wrong become the primary focus and motivation for most
workers. In this case, it meant that NASA management admitting they
could have a problem from the foam strike would have meant someone
admitting that something was wrong, that someone had made a mistake. And
no one was going to step up and take responsibility for a mistake.
Because it is critically important to their careers to never be seen
doing something demonstratively wrong. The knee-jerk reaction is to deny
that the problem exists. As Frankowski note, it takes something fairly
obvious, like an exploding power plant (or a disintegrating orbiter) to
get anything significant changed in the organization's management,
structures and processes.

That last quote is appropriate because, since this particular set of
mistakes and resultant failures cost tax dollars and human lives, it has
become political. People feel (rightly) that they are stakeholders in
NASA's operations, because their tax dollars pay NASA's bills. So people
feel they have the right to involve themselves in the investigation, the
management changes, the hardware and procedural changes, etc., that will
come out of CAIB. That's a classic definition of something becoming
political -- it becomes a process that involves the people. Ergo, you
have people in these and other public forums throwing in their two cents'
worth, with greater or lesser degrees of intensity and/or capability.

Not a bad description of the situation evaluated by the CAIB, and
plaguing Usenet since February 1st, for something written fourteen years
before Columbia was destroyed, don't you think?

--

It's not the pace of life I mind; | Doug Van Dorn
it's the sudden stop at the end... |

[Elysium Fossa]

I tried to download it a few hours ago and experienced the same problem.
I also had the same thing happen when I downloaded the video clips of
the recent foam impact tests too.

OM wrote:
> ...I've tried unsuccessfully for the past 12 hours to download the
> .pdf of the CAIB's working scenario. It gets about 128K downloaded,
> then freezes. I've tried this on four systems so far, and same result
> each time.
>
> Anyone happen to have the same problems?
>
>
> OM
>

[ElleninLosAngeles]

Re. Doug's book quote:

"This results in the same fools making the same mistakes forever.
People become demoralized, especially the best, most energetic
workers. Useful work slows or even comes to a halt. I don't mean
that the workers stop working. They are all furiously active, looking
busy. They worry all day long and go home tired. But they are not
doing anything useful"

Very funny and true-to-life!! This reminds me of one company I worked
at in particular.

[G EddieA95]

Alright, what will I need to get it successfully? Do I need to purchase
Acrobat 6?

[James Oberg]

It's just the report from CAIB -- I like to mark up a hard copy. Same data
as on line already.


"George Kasica" > wrote in message
...
> >I've got it down, now I'm doing a high-quality print-out. This is a
terrific
> >product on a horrible project.
>
> Jim:
>
> If you care to send it here email or such I'd be happy to put it on
> the STS-107 pages here.
>
> George
>
>
> ===[George R. Kasica]=== +1 262 677 0766
> President +1 206 374 6482 FAX
> Netwrx Consulting Inc. Jackson, WI USA
> http://www.netwrx1.com
>
> ICQ #12862186

[Herb Schaltegger]

In article >,
(G EddieA95) wrote:

> Alright, what will I need to get it successfully? Do I need to purchase
> Acrobat 6?

No, Acrobat Reader 5 for Mac OS X and Linux, Acrobat Reader 6 for Mac
and Acrobat Reader 5 and 6 for WinXP all open the file just fine, as do
Apple Preview for OS X and Xpdf or Ghostview for Linux. It's pretty
much just a .pdf file, despite the warnings that Adobe pops up if you
open in Acrobat 5. The only thing odd about it (from my perspective) is
that when I print it from my iBook to my networked printer (connected to
my Linux box via CUPS), all the letter A's (upper or lower case) come
out as little graphical boxes! All the grapgics and every other
character print just fine. How weird is that? If I print it natively
(as a local file) from Acrobat Reader 5, Xpdf or Ghostview for Linux, no
problems. Must be some kind of networking glitch in either CUPS or my
printer driver.

Ahh, fun with networks . . . ;-)

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

[OM]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:23:00 -0500, Doug... >
wrote:

>In article >,
says...
>> Alright, what will I need to get it successfully? Do I need to purchase
>> Acrobat 6?
>
>You shouldn't need to purchase anything. Acrobat 6 is available for free
>(at least the parts you need) from Adobe.

....If you have Acrobat 5 loaded, it should either automatically
download the required updates. However, if you tell it "no", the
document will still open just fine.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

[G EddieA95]

>free
>>(at least the parts you need) from Adobe.
>
>...If you have Acrobat 5 loaded, it should either automatically
>download the required updates. However, if you tell it "no", the
>document will still open just fine.
>
>
> OM
>
Thanks OM,

How do you get around the repeated DL aborts of the document???

[Bruce Palmer]

OM wrote:
> ...If you have Acrobat 5 loaded, it should either automatically
> download the required updates. However, if you tell it "no", the
> document will still open just fine.

Unless you were to open the document in both Acrobat 5 and Acrobat 6 at
the same time and compare them page by page there's no easy way to tell
if you're missing anything.

With nothing else than intuition to go on, my guess is that there is no
difference. The document was probably produced with a recent version of
Acrobat - version 6 - and the warning is just friendly marketing-speak
for "we really want you to upgrade so our bottom line will benefit".

If they _really_ wanted to be helpful they should have added a warning
like "There's a really nifty graphic on page 32 that you won't be able
to view properly unless you upgrade to Acrobat 6". That the warning
only mentions the possibility that not everything will render properly
speaks volumes IMO.

--
bp
Proud Member of the Human O-Ring Society Since 2003