Management, mandate, and manned spaceflight

Maybe because people smell blood in the forthcoming CAIB report, it has
been fashionable lately to bash NASA management for the Columbia disaster.
This seems to be the exceedingly rare point on which Oberg, the New York
Times, CAIB, and many other parties all seem to agree. But not me.

(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"?)

I'm no fan of the NASA manned spaceflight program or its management, but
people are turning one single wart in the ugly picture into a mountain
of blame. People are talking as if Linda Ham personally hurled foam
at Columbia's wing in a fit of total incompetence. (But they grant
her "good intentions".) That's not what those meetings were about.
They were about MAYBE discovering the hole in the RCC panel and MAYBE
saving the astronauts, and even so probably not Columbia itself.
It would have been an expensive long shot and it's not the real problem.

The real problem is that the shuttle is not safe for astronauts and
never will be. Granted, bad management is the immediate cause of that.
But behind bad management lies a bad mandate, namely, the mandate
of manned spaceflight. A manager with a good mandate may be good or
bad; a manager with a bad mandate is going to look bad no matter what.
It is a fantasy of public opinion that space travel is kind-of like air
travel and kind-of like continental exploration. (For most people it's
not even strongly held opinion, just ill-informed.) It's actually more
like ocean-floor exploration, which by common sense is almost entirely
done by remote control. But NASA and its elected patrons have spent
decades catering to public naivete about manned spaceflight. Now they
face a reckoning.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:43:29 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Greg Kuperberg) made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Maybe because people smell blood in the forthcoming CAIB report, it has
been fashionable lately to bash NASA management for the Columbia disaster.
This seems to be the exceedingly rare point on which Oberg, the New York
Times, CAIB, and many other parties all seem to agree. But not me.

(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.

The real problem is that the shuttle is not safe for astronauts and
never will be.

No, the real problems are that the Shuttle is too expensive, too
fragile, and every accident make a fleet that's already too small
smaller, by an increasing percentage.

Lives of the astronauts are a secondary issue. NASA has too many of
them, and if they don't want to take the risk, they'd have no trouble
find more who will. This whining notion (by those whose lives aren't
even at risk) that human life takes precedence over all other
considerations is absurd. It's not true of any other human endeavor,
and opening a frontier is the last place in which that emphasis should
be placed.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

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Charleston wrote:

A little cavalier are we?

Maybe the value of human life is different where you are from. In the U.S.
we place the value of human life up there in the stratosphere. We
especially do this when people voluntarily put heir lives on the line for
their country.

The value of a life in the US is on the order of millions of dollars.
This is small compared to the cost of a shuttle launch, or to the cost
of an orbiter.

If the shuttle were an order of magnitude less expensive, but no safer,
it would be worth flying. If it were an order of magnitude safer, but
no less expensive, it would not be.

Paul

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:55:38 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

No, the real problems are that the Shuttle is too expensive, too
fragile, and every accident make a fleet that's already too small
smaller, by an increasing percentage.

Well there is always the option to buy more, not that they would.

Lives of the astronauts are a secondary issue.

To space travel and space exploration, then yes, but it is clear to
see that the Shuttle was never designed for safely.

No ejection seats, no option but to die in many launch failure
scenarios. And even those forward facing seats can cut them in half in
an extreme event.

NASA has too many of
them, and if they don't want to take the risk, they'd have no trouble
find more who will.

True, but they also won't like you if you keep blowing them up. Still
the day when Astronauts refuse to ride on it due to safety concerns,
then you have problems.

This whining notion (by those whose lives aren't even at risk) that
human life takes precedence over all other considerations is absurd.

That is not the problem.

Such extreme deaths only goes to get people thinking about death, them
in that situations, their families and loved ones, where they almost
make this personal.

And as people do not like thinking about their own mortality, then
that is why they get annoyed and upset.

So if you don't blow them up and put this all over the news services,
then people won't get so upset.

It's not true of any other human endeavor,

Those other human endeavors do not make big media headlines for weeks
following.

and opening a frontier is the last place in which that emphasis should
be placed.

Certainly, but plan for safety in the design.

Cardman.

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)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

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.

I don't really blame O'Keefe...these management issues seem to become a problem
when Dan Goldin took over the job of NASA administrator...that seems to me to
be the point where safety became a secondary issue and NASA became a way for
the US to make nice with the non-communist Russia.

This whining notion (by those whose lives aren't
even at risk) that human life takes precedence over all other
considerations is absurd. It's not true of any other human endeavor,
and opening a frontier is the last place in which that emphasis should
be placed.

Dude...it's not even YOUR ass atop a rocket...we've been giving the best this
nation has to offer four (now down to three) beat up birds to fly in with
almost no safety assurances. Because of what the astronauts do, the simple
nobility of what they do, they deserve the best support from us and we give
them ****.

-A.L.

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Charleston wrote:

I qualified my statement. I said it was way up there in the
stratosphere as
a sarcastic reference to the point at which the Columbia crew may well
have
perished. You OTOH, immediately qualified your value system in terms of
money alone. Money is not the only thing of value in life, hence my
reference to the word cavalier.

When you grow up, you will discover that the value of a life is regularly
measured in dollars. This is done routinely in torts, in making
regulations,
and in establishing government policy. This isn't cavalier, it's business
as usual.

When you grow a heart perhaps you will see that there is more to life than
money and lawsuits and...

Look Paul, there is no reason to insult each other and I only responded as I
did above to make a point. There are some intangible things in life that
are bigger than the dollar. My job often involves environmental disease
investigations. In the end a judge often assesses the value of human pain,
suffering, and death. When a two year old child is maimed permanently by an
undercooked hamburger, the value in terms of a normal life are often
difficult to assess. An 81 year old man who has six months to live, but
then dies due to the negligence of others some three months earlier, may be
a lesser loss, but there is still loss. When negligence is involved, judges
often weigh and attach punitive awards to the damaged or their surviving
kin. When human suffering or death is caused by the deliberate acts of
others and sometimes just their plain stupidity, people are often placed in
prison for a life lost through negligence. When the loss of one life alters
the life of others in the form of suffering, what is that indirect cost? I
dare say it often goes unmeasured. All of these items add to the value of a
life. While you can average out the value of a human life, in strictly
financial terms in a court of law, you can't place a tangible price on the
very real damage done to the victims families, and those colleagues who
sometimes unknowingly send others off to death. I hope that makes sense. I
certainly know where you are coming from. I just hope you can see my points
too.

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC

"MasterShrink" wrote in message
...

Because of what the astronauts do, the simple
nobility of what they do, they deserve the best support from us...

Yes they do. They deserve better, but better costs a lot of money and sadly
we are preoccupied right now spending our money on the "other things".

--

Daniel
Mount Charleston, not Charleston, SC
..

Then on the STS-95 launch the drag chute door came off during SSME
ignition, which struck the outside of the center nozzle.

Of course on THAT flight they could ask the air force for images of the shuttle
to check the damage...I mean, John Glenn was aboard...

Even though I doubt possibly losing the drag chute is as bad as losing thermal
protection seeing as NASA didn't use drag chutes till STS 49.

-A.L.

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 18:19:35 -0700, in a place far, far away,
"Charleston" made the phosphor on
my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

This whining notion (by those whose lives aren't
even at risk) that human life takes precedence over all other
considerations is absurd. It's not true of any other human endeavor,
and opening a frontier is the last place in which that emphasis should
be placed.

A little cavalier are we?

No, just realistic.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: