Pre-Columbia Criticism of NASA's Safety Culture in the late 1990's

In article ,
James Oberg wrote:
Criticism of NASA's Safety Culture in the late 1990's:
Chapter 8 // The Mir Safety Debate, from "Star Crossed Orbits: Inside the
US-Russian Space Alliance", James Oberg, 2002, McGraw-Hill, NY.

Criticizing MIR was a good start, but it was not the same as warning
about shuttle safety. For one, you could well read it as attributing
complacency to the Russians, or at least as a disease caught from the
Russians. In fact it goes back to the very beginning of the shuttle
program, to the wishful thinking that manned spaceflight is operational
and not experimental. That is how Reagan described it in 1982, back
when the Russians were the evil empire.

After all, if NASA officials had fully grasped that the shuttle is
an experimental spacecraft, they would never have slated it for a
space station, and especially not for space station construction.
What construction workers, other than astronauts, commute to work in
test vehicles?
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
What construction workers, other than astronauts, commute to work in
test vehicles?

Well, some offshore oil well construction qualifies, although the test
vehicles in question (deep sea vehicles) have more generations in the
bag than the LEO contruction support vehicle.

/dps

From Greg Kuperberg:
James Oberg wrote:
Criticism of NASA's Safety Culture in the late 1990's:
Chapter 8 // The Mir Safety Debate, from "Star Crossed Orbits: Inside the
US-Russian Space Alliance", James Oberg, 2002, McGraw-Hill, NY.

Criticizing MIR was a good start, but it was not the same as warning
about shuttle safety. For one, you could well read it as attributing
complacency to the Russians, or at least as a disease caught from the
Russians.

Excellent point. I would go so far as to say that the Russian
problems may have contributed to complacency within the NASA safety
mindset because those within shuttle operations could take solace in
knowing that fires and collisions weren't happening within their
program.

In fact it goes back to the very beginning of the shuttle
program, to the wishful thinking that manned spaceflight is operational
and not experimental. That is how Reagan described it in 1982, back
when the Russians were the evil empire.

After all, if NASA officials had fully grasped that the shuttle is
an experimental spacecraft, they would never have slated it for a
space station, and especially not for space station construction.
What construction workers, other than astronauts, commute to work in
test vehicles?

Another excellent point. Here's my take on it... As soon as you
decide to start flying passengers, you are implicitly stating that
your vehicle is past the critical developmental stage and is now safe
and reliable enough to carry such extra members on board. The
decision to carry people who were non-essential for flight development
was made for STS-5 which launched way back in 1982 (with Reagan's
announcement, as you point out).

I don't subscribe to the notion that the shuttle is an experimental
vehicle. It has been used as an operational workhorse for many years.
Chris Kraft, in his 1995 report, went so far as recommending to
freeze the design.

I do not subscribe to any 1-to-1 comparison of aircraft flights to
spaceflights, as some FAA officials might quote in their safety
analyses. Space rockets are *not* aircraft. Their maturity needs to
be measured in "dog years". I'd take a wag at an equivalence of 1
spaceflight to be on the order of 100 aircraft flights.

From the CAIB report, p100:

As the Shuttle returned to flight, NASA Associate Administrator
for Space
Flight
Richard Truly commented, "We will always have to treat it [the
Shuttle]
like an R&D test program, even many years into the future. I don't
think
calling it operational fooled anybody within the program... It was
a
signal to the public that shouldn't have been sent."

I have a problem with this. You can't have it both ways. It is
either experimental and should be flown as such, or it is operational
and then assigned to conduct operational missions with cargo and extra
crewmembers. The vast majority of DTOs got checked off in those first
four flights.

As perhaps the ultimate case in point of the
low-flight-rate-to-maturity status that spacecraft have over aircraft,
note how the last Moon landing - just the *eighth* piloted freeflight
of the lunar module - was de facto non-experimental: There were no
astronauts on the Apollo 17 mission with a test pilot background. Not
Gene Cernan. Certainly not Jack Schmidt. Not even Ron Evans.

If Gehman is trying to paint "EXPERIMENTAL" on the side of the three
remaining orbiters while saying that NASA should press on with using
it on operational missions to continue building the station, then I
see this as similar to all of those aircraft flying around with FAA
certification as "EXPERIMENTAL" while carrying around passengers and
such. It is used as a way to dodge liability. After it crashes, you
can tell the families of those on board, "So sorry, but it was an
experimental vehicle".

If the shuttle has not matured beyond its critical development stage,
then how can you possibly justify extending the size of a shuttle crew
beyond two?

The shuttle IS operational, and it has been for a long time. An
airline could not get away with dismissing a crash by saying that the
plane hadn't been fully tested. And I don't want this used as an
excuse for Columbia or any future problems with shuttle operations.
If you want to treat it like an R&D program as Dick Truly stated back
in the '80s, then leave the mission specialists, payload specialists
and *definitely* the school teachers back on the ground.

Own up to the safety requirements or stop flying.


~ CT

"Stuf4 (a.k.a. CT)" wrote:

The shuttle IS operational, and it has been for a long time. An
airline could not get away with dismissing a crash by saying that the
plane hadn't been fully tested.

What they could say is that the particular circumstance that caused the
crash had not been tested. The point is: there's always something that's
going to get you. With proper backup systems, one will occasionally
experience a "successful failure". In the other case:

Own up to the safety requirements or stop flying.


[I'd add "all" prior to the "safety"]

Where there's not a backup, that's where the input from the ASAP, etc. comes
into play, but the report is not worth much if it is not heeded.

Jon

From Jon Berndt:
"Stuf4 (a.k.a. CT)" wrote:

The shuttle IS operational, and it has been for a long time. An
airline could not get away with dismissing a crash by saying that the
plane hadn't been fully tested.

What they could say is that the particular circumstance that caused the
crash had not been tested. The point is: there's always something that's
going to get you. With proper backup systems, one will occasionally
experience a "successful failure". In the other case:

Own up to the safety requirements or stop flying.


[I'd add "all" prior to the "safety"]

Where there's not a backup, that's where the input from the ASAP, etc. comes
into play, but the report is not worth much if it is not heeded.

I totally agree. Ironically, hours prior to Columbia's final entry I
had posted a link to an old ASAP document from the early '70s where
the shuttle program manager was being questioned for not having
designed a crew escape module. Talk about not being heeded. NASA's
answer was that (other than the two ejection seats already designed in
for OFT) it would be too expensive to redraw the shuttle design to
include crew escape. I'd like to see those people involved with that
decision personally contact the 14 families to explain why
Challenger's and Columbia's crews had no way out.


~ CT

I'd like to see those people involved with that
decision personally contact the 14 families to explain why
Challenger's and Columbia's crews had no way out.

And I'd like to see you expklain just what the "escape mechanism" was for any
spacecraft at the stage where Columbia was lost.

Bill Harris

Sci-Fi Quote of the month:
"We will never forgive and we will never forget." - Stilgar, "Dune"

From Bill Harris:
I'd like to see those people involved with that
decision personally contact the 14 families to explain why
Challenger's and Columbia's crews had no way out.

And I'd like to see you expklain just what the "escape mechanism" was for any
spacecraft at the stage where Columbia was lost.

OK. There's a colorful map on p45 of the CAIB report showing black
marks where debris was found. There's another colorful map on p75
showing where WLE RCC was found.

One map that has not been released to the public is one that shows
where debris from the crew cabin has been found. In seeing a tight
geographical grouping on this chart, you would be struck by the
realization that the crew cabin held together for a significant period
of time subsequent to the structural failure of the left wing.

As brutally seen in 1986, the crew cabin is much more robust than
other parts of the orbiter. There is a reason for this. It is
designed as a pressure vessel, whereas other parts of the orbiter have
no such requirement.

It is *easy* to augment the design of this pressure vessel so that it
then becomes a crew escape module. It is also easy to determine c.g.
limits of this module so that after orbiter breakup it has a stable
flight. An escape module design that would have permitted safe escape
for both -51L and -107 crews need not have had excessive weight.

I am certain that Rockwell, back in the early '70s, drew up a design
for an escape module. I expect that it included powerful rocket
motors to blast the crew away from the rest of the vehicle. I also
expect that the design also had an elaborate chute system to include
an envelope that would decelerate the escape module from hypersonic
speed all the way down to touchdown/splashdown. This requires more
complexity for chute weight and impact bags and floatation devices.

Not that I agree with the decision to eliminate this capability, but I
can understand the dilemma facing those who made the decision to
sacrifice crew safety in the interest of increasing payload
capability.

A smart compromise would have been a *lightweight crew escape module*.
There is no need for a huge parachute system. No need for
impact/floatation bags. No need even for giant-thrust rocket
separation motors.

After pyrotechnics separate the module from the rest of the vehicle, a
small motor can be used to build separation (-51L showed that no motor
at all is needed). Then instead of a giant parachute designed to give
the escape module a soft landing, all that is needed is a
stabilization chute system that slows the module down enough for the
crew to bail out of (no escape pole needed because the wings are long
gone).

This is just one idea. I'm sure that others were proposed.

I haven't seen *anyone* being called to testify (or in any other way
being held accountable) to that fatal decision to not give those crews
even a chance of hope.

Imagine a car company that does a study and determines that it is too
expensive to build a vehicle with airbags and even seatbelts, and that
the performance of that vehicle will be degraded by this safety
equipment. So they build it. And there is a long line of people who
still want to buy it and drive it. When those vehicles crash (and
they will crash) and their occupants take their final ride through the
front windshield, I can guarantee you that the NTSB would hold that
car company accountable for willful negligence.

Did Gehman (or Rogers) even ask to speak to those Rockwell/NASA folks
who made that call? Did they ask to speak to those within the
government who were responsible for oversight of that fatal decision?
(the NTSB of spaceflight, if you will) I see no evidence for that.


In summary, it would have been easy to design the shuttle with crew
escape capability covering the vast majority of ascent/entry. It
wasn't done. After the fact it becomes very hard to retrofit this
capability. This point has been discussed many times. Here's one
post (from just prior to Feb1st) with more info:

http://tinyurl.com/maro
(http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...ing.google.com)


~ CT

"Stuf4" wrote:

It is *easy* to augment the design of this pressure vessel so that it

It is? Care to elaborate on that assertion? "Easy"?

then becomes a crew escape module. It is also easy to determine c.g.
limits of this module so that after orbiter breakup it has a stable
flight. An escape module design that would have permitted safe escape
for both -51L and -107 crews need not have had excessive weight.

These assertions seem to go against what I have read. Why do you say this?
Can you refer to some published studies?

After pyrotechnics separate the module from the rest of the vehicle, a
small motor can be used to build separation (-51L showed that no motor
at all is needed). Then instead of a giant parachute designed to give
the escape module a soft landing, all that is needed is a
stabilization chute system that slows the module down enough for the
crew to bail out of (no escape pole needed because the wings are long
gone).

I'm not sure that pyrotechnics to separate the crew module from the rest of
the vehicle would go over so well, but that's just a hunch. The idea doesn't
seem so bad given that the crew module had in the case of 51-L separated
from the fuselage, but in the case of Columbia, do we know? In practice, it
might not be so easy to build.

Jon

In message , Stuf4
writes

Imagine a car company that does a study and determines that it is too
expensive to build a vehicle with airbags and even seatbelts, and that
the performance of that vehicle will be degraded by this safety
equipment. So they build it. And there is a long line of people who
still want to buy it and drive it. When those vehicles crash (and
they will crash) and their occupants take their final ride through the
front windshield, I can guarantee you that the NTSB would hold that
car company accountable for willful negligence.

I don't think we have to imagine this. Wasn't there a car where they
decided that including safety features (not legally mandatory but
desirable) would cost more than the compensation they would pay if one
crashed? They were silly enough to put it in writing, too.
--
"Forty millions of miles it was from us, more than forty millions of miles of
void"

"Stuf4" wrote in message
om...

Imagine a car company that does a study and determines that it is too
expensive to build a vehicle with airbags and even seatbelts, and that
the performance of that vehicle will be degraded by this safety
equipment. So they build it. And there is a long line of people who
still want to buy it and drive it. When those vehicles crash (and
they will crash) and their occupants take their final ride through the
front windshield, I can guarantee you that the NTSB would hold that
car company accountable for willful negligence.


History has proven you wrong.