"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...
On 1/25/2013 2:44 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article 6fe074bb-9939-4de2-b04d-51091823da51
@h2g2000yqa.googlegroups.com, says...
At least this will get us something to talk about other than spam
I'd rather let this group rest in peace along with the shuttle program.
Is that why you are posting to sci.space.shuttle?
To counter Bob's insane rantings about what "could have been". Bob
seems to think the best way to continue the shuttle program would have
been to ground it for five to 10 years while it's completely redesigned
to "make it safer". This is despite the fact that it's clear that NASA
didn't have the money or the political mandate for such a thing.
To be clear, neither Jeff nor I nor others I'm sure are saying, "Eh, let
them die." Safety is an admirable goal. It's a WORTHY goal. One should
never forget about it.
BUT, there will never be perfect safety. There is "safe enough".
Was the space shuttle safe enough to make the JFK-MCO flight with 120
families with kids on board? Hell no. But it didn't HAVE to be.
Could it have been safer? Arguably yes. Could it have been made as safe as
Bob insists. Not in any realistic political environment. And note, that in
both cases, the issue was as much management/cultural influences as it was a
physical cause. (i.e. had NASA not been so accepting of O-ring burn-thrus or
foam detachment as they were we might still have Challenger and Columbia.)
I'm reminded of two folks:
Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs. He did a great episode entitled I believe,
"Safety Third". He point was that while safety was critical to all the
myriad jobs he had done over the years, if safety was truly first, some of
them would never get done. (look at Alaska king crab fishermen. Or flight
paramedics here in the US).
And this:
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/ballsto...realworld.html
tl;dr - Mary Shafer: "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't
have the balls to live in the real world."
I suspect Bob has never been in the position where his decisions could
result in the direct result of a loss of life. I'm not talking about
"getting into a car" but decisions such as "calling off a search for missing
canoeists" or "putting 1 or more people on a rope over the edge of a cliff"
type decisions.
Others here I'm sure have at some point in their engineer careers have had
to tell someone "these are the risks, here's my recommendation" knowing that
their information and their decision could result in the loss of life. This
is never done lightly. By as Mary points out, if you play "what if" you
start to go down a road where nothing happens. Or if you insist on "perfect
safety" you never fly.
My heart goes out to the families of the astronauts who have died. But,
they did know the risks. It's not quite the same as a family of four
hopping aboard the 4:15 shuttle and being deluded by its safety.
Jeff
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Greg D. Moore
http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
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