In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
(Curiously, relatively little anger is directed at NASA director Sean
O'Keefe, even though he calls himself a "bean counter". Does "bean
counter" sound like "flight safety"?)
Whatever problems they find in NASA management, I'm sure they were
there long before Mr. O'Keefe came along. The perceived problem when
he took the job was budgets and schedules, not flight safety. I
hardly think it's reasonable to blame him for not going up and
cleaning up what was not perceived to be a problem.

"But no one *told* me that safety was a problem!"

That's just crazy. First off good management always means learning
an organization's real problems rather than walking in the door with
"perceptions", which is to say, preconceptions. This is especially true
if catastrophic risk is one of the underlying problems.

Second, if O'Keefe didn't know that flight safety is a problem, then
where has he been? Was he in a coma when Challenger crashed? Did he not
learn when he started that STS-93 was saved by a prayer on launch in 1999?

Third, O'Keefe *was* told that safety was a problem, after at most
five months on the job. In April 2002 testimony to Congress, Richard
Blomberg, the outgoing chair of NASA's safety advisory panel, said,
"In [15 years of] involvement, I have never been as concerned for
Space Shuttle safety as I am right now." And he said, "All of my
instincts suggest that the current approach is planting the seeds for
future danger." And what did Blomberg mean by "the current approach"?
He was referring in particular to deferred repairs and privatization
without adequate safety oversight, both of which were consequences of
*cost cutting*.

So what was O'Keefe's response to that blunt, public warning? As far
as I know, he was still Mr. Bean Counter, determined to cut costs.

Now I personally don't care how O'Keefe manages manned spaceflight
at NASA. At this point cost-cutting for the shuttle and the space
station is like advising a cancer patient to avoid cholesterol - it just
doesn't matter any more. The point is that blind finger-pointing
at "management", but not at specific top managers like O'Keefe, actually
speaks for a bad mandate.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
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