James Oberg: The real significance of the ISS thruster test failure

May 8 // The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/619/1

Last month's failure of a test of a pair of rocket engines on the
International Space Station has taught a whole series of unexpected lessons
and has answered questions that the station's operators hadn't even intended
to ask. Yet since nothing actually happened, a senior NASA spokesman said it
was a "non-event".

But that's nowhere near the truth. The incident and repercussions of it
further underscore that operating a space facility as complex and poorly
documented as the ISS is an irremediably non-deterministic process. That is,
anything can happen, at any time-and blindside everybody involved