Opportunity, the second Mars Explorer Rover is on the surface andtransmitting!

Ron Kihara wrote:


The Columbia appears to be more of the same.

NASA hasn't changed a bit. Whenever an engineer brings up a safety issue
that interferes with a do or die launch the engineer is told - do shut
up- or your career will die. They have been doing this for going on 20
years.

Bob Kolker

Ron Kihara wrote:


The Columbia appears to be more of the same.

NASA hasn't changed a bit. Whenever an engineer brings up a safety issue
that interferes with a do or die launch the engineer is told - do shut
up- or your career will die. They have been doing this for going on 20
years.

Bob Kolker

Jeepers wrote:

In article %pRQb.115802$sv6.604631@attbi_s52,
"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:


On top of all this they claimed the odds of disaster were something like
one in ten thousand per orbiter.


Cite?

See
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/16/Wo...ossible_.shtml

" Before Challenger, NASA publicly estimated the risk of catastrophe at
one in 1,000. Before Columbia, the operating risk was called one in 500.
NASA has been working on a second-generation space plane with the stated
goal of cutting the risk to one in 10,000.

The risk of getting cancer is one in eight."

My err. NASA estimated a one in one thousand risk. They were only off by
a factor of twenty. And I was off by a factor of ten which makes me
twice as accurate as NASA.

Bob Kolker

Jeepers wrote:

In article %pRQb.115802$sv6.604631@attbi_s52,
"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:


On top of all this they claimed the odds of disaster were something like
one in ten thousand per orbiter.


Cite?

See
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/16/Wo...ossible_.shtml

" Before Challenger, NASA publicly estimated the risk of catastrophe at
one in 1,000. Before Columbia, the operating risk was called one in 500.
NASA has been working on a second-generation space plane with the stated
goal of cutting the risk to one in 10,000.

The risk of getting cancer is one in eight."

My err. NASA estimated a one in one thousand risk. They were only off by
a factor of twenty. And I was off by a factor of ten which makes me
twice as accurate as NASA.

Bob Kolker

Jeepers wrote:

In article %pRQb.115802$sv6.604631@attbi_s52,
"Robert J. Kolker" wrote:


On top of all this they claimed the odds of disaster were something like
one in ten thousand per orbiter.


Cite?

See
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/02/16/Wo...ossible_.shtml

" Before Challenger, NASA publicly estimated the risk of catastrophe at
one in 1,000. Before Columbia, the operating risk was called one in 500.
NASA has been working on a second-generation space plane with the stated
goal of cutting the risk to one in 10,000.

The risk of getting cancer is one in eight."

My err. NASA estimated a one in one thousand risk. They were only off by
a factor of twenty. And I was off by a factor of ten which makes me
twice as accurate as NASA.

Bob Kolker

Robert J. Kolker wrote:




Ibid.

"Many experts say that on a machine so complex, with so many parts, odds
have no meaning. Eugene Covert, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who was a member of the Challenger commission,
said it's impossible to define an acceptable level of risk based solely
in terms of statistics.

Instead, it's based on a combination of what astronauts, NASA personnel,
lawmakers and the public will put up with, he said. Even astronauts,
suspended between probability and reality, put little stock in NASA's
risk estimates."

In short, even the astronauts themselve no longer believe what the
agency tells them about the risks.

Bob Kolker

Robert J. Kolker wrote:




Ibid.

"Many experts say that on a machine so complex, with so many parts, odds
have no meaning. Eugene Covert, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who was a member of the Challenger commission,
said it's impossible to define an acceptable level of risk based solely
in terms of statistics.

Instead, it's based on a combination of what astronauts, NASA personnel,
lawmakers and the public will put up with, he said. Even astronauts,
suspended between probability and reality, put little stock in NASA's
risk estimates."

In short, even the astronauts themselve no longer believe what the
agency tells them about the risks.

Bob Kolker

Robert J. Kolker wrote:




Ibid.

"Many experts say that on a machine so complex, with so many parts, odds
have no meaning. Eugene Covert, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who was a member of the Challenger commission,
said it's impossible to define an acceptable level of risk based solely
in terms of statistics.

Instead, it's based on a combination of what astronauts, NASA personnel,
lawmakers and the public will put up with, he said. Even astronauts,
suspended between probability and reality, put little stock in NASA's
risk estimates."

In short, even the astronauts themselve no longer believe what the
agency tells them about the risks.

Bob Kolker

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:51:36 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:

It would be more accurate to say NASA is Morton Thiokol...

You missed my point, which was only that NASA and JPL are different entities
with very different internal cultures and politics. This is often overlooked.
Sean O'Keefe can walk around the Mars Rover control rooms beaming and talking
about NASA's great success, but (funding aside) this mission, and most others,
are not NASA projects at all, but collaborations between JPL and various
universities.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:51:36 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
wrote:

It would be more accurate to say NASA is Morton Thiokol...

You missed my point, which was only that NASA and JPL are different entities
with very different internal cultures and politics. This is often overlooked.
Sean O'Keefe can walk around the Mars Rover control rooms beaming and talking
about NASA's great success, but (funding aside) this mission, and most others,
are not NASA projects at all, but collaborations between JPL and various
universities.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com