MSNBC (Oberg) - Deadly space lessons go unheeded

"supernova" wrote:

The situation was even worse. Management cancelled a request to the Air
Force by the engineers to image the orbiter from space, flew the entire
mission upside down making ground-based imaging virtually impossible,
refused to use the advanced adaptive optics large telescope facilities
run by the Air Force on Maui and in New Mexico and refused to consult
their own image enhancement division, based in Huntsville, which
supplies state-of the-art image enhancement consulting to the FBI, for
example.

Management knew it had a serious problem shortly after launch--they
simply wanted to avoid negative publicity and hope for the best.
Result--one lost shuttle.

Try reading the actual report. You'll find the sequence of events
quite different.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:

Sean O'Keefe, on the other hand, had nothing in his resume to indicate
an interest in space.

Interestingly enough.... The *best* Administrators to date had no
interest in space, and the *worst* had a demonstrated enthusiasm.

This indicates that something other than an 'interest in space' is
required of an Administrator.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:26:42 +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:
It doesn't make sense for the NASA administrator or any other presidential
appointee to be outright disloyal to the president. The basic question is
what will be the *first* loyalty of the next NASA administrator. Will it
be (a) himself, (b) the president, or (c) American interests in space?
It it's not carrying out the space policy of the president, then he
shouldn't accept the position.

Except that there is no such thing as "THE POLICY" until the president
comes up with it. One would hope that the president crafts it with
expert advice from the NASA administrator and other people. In fact Sean
O'Keefe did have a big hand in the Bush "space vision", if you can believe
Frank Sietzen. I know that Bush is a man of faith, but surely he didn't
get the "space vision" directly from God --- and would you want him to?

The problem is that, as far as I know, no engineer anywhere in the
chain of command has claimed any credit for the Bush space vision.
The only reported influence has been O'Keefe, Bush, and Bush's in-house
political advisers. And Bush's speech shows it. It looks like O'Keefe
acted on his loyalty to Bush personally and to NASA as a bureaucracy,
and not to any other representative of the public interest. Well,
maybe the next NASA administrator will be an improvement.

--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \ Home page: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

In article ,
Derek Lyons wrote:
(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
Sean O'Keefe, on the other hand, had nothing in his resume to indicate
an interest in space.
Interestingly enough.... The *best* Administrators to date had no
interest in space,

You can't say that James Webb had no interest in space. Maybe his
resume didn't reveal any interest in space, but that doesn't mean that
he had none. He was at least interested in running NASA. He ran it
for seven years -- he didn't quit at the age of 48 to see his children
off to college.

For that matter, Webb's right-hand man was Hugh Dryden. Dryden was a
trained engineer and he was extremely important to decision-making at
NASA in that period. I do not know if Sean O'Keefe has a right-hand man.
Maybe his right-hand man is Steidle, or Readdy, or nobody; but I see no
evidence that it is an engineer.

Would you really want a NASA administrator who couldn't care less
about space?

and the *worst* had a demonstrated enthusiasm.

Honestly I don't know if Goldin was a good or bad NASA administrator.
It seems to me that the projects that were actually started under Goldin,
for example Deep Impact, really look pretty good. I know that the space
station looks pathetic, but it looked equally pathetic before Goldin
took office.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \ Home page: http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~greg/
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

World Health Organization. Unlike the
single-payer system in Canada where everybody
has health insurance and no one sees a bill

Uhmm, I see a bill every March when I pay my taxes, then there is the
Ontario Health Care Premium, OHIP, prescriptions, ambulance, eye
exams, dentist, oh ya, and you can't have a checkup more than once a
year unless you pay for it.

I count my lucky stars that my wife and eye have excellent coverage
through our employers

I cut my finger a few months back, I could wait for the doctor to
freeze my finger and put in stiches, or PAY $10 to have him glue it in
30 seconds.


-— here in the U.S. complex and fragmented
bills devour huge amounts of time and
resources.

You've obviously never looked under the covers at any hospital in
Canada.

Our local hostpital just built a brand new Emergency ward, but has no
money to operate it.

After "saving healthcare for a generation" and imposing the largest
tax increase in Ontario history to fund improvements to our healthcare
system. Ontario is now laying off 1200 nurses and giving most
hospitals a budget increase less than the rate of inflation.

My best friend is a Radiation Oncologist in Edmonton, and the stories
he tells just makes you wonder about people.

The hospital got a state of the art MRI and IRT machine a few months
ago, and he's been through one road block after another just trying to
get them hooked up to one another. But you see the MRI is owned by
Radiology, and IRT by Nuclear Medicine, the treatment planning
workstation by Oncology, data infrastructure by the IT department.

All he wants to do is set it up so that someone with a brain tumor can
get an MRI that is automatically fed into the treatment planning
software, so he can plan a treatment, then export it into the IRT
machine to deliver the radiation does. It would save days of effort
for each patient, result in extremely accurate dosages (meaning more
effective treatment with fewer side effects), save millions of dollars
a year for the hospital, and save lives. But no.. each feifdom doesn't
want to let another deparment play with its toys. Guess where he's
moving next year? It's a good think that Paul Martin says there is no
brain drain.

It is not uncommon to wait 9
hours for service in a hospital emergency
room"

No we just end of waiting for 12 hours (Just did this last year)

Canada does have a universal health care system, a universally crappy
one.

Kelly McDonald

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 00:26:42 +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:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
I'm a little confused about this new philosophy of presidential
appointments. Are *all* presidents supposed to appoint people who are
"independent" and will argue with the president and not implement his
policies, or is this just for Republican presidents?

It doesn't make sense for the NASA administrator or any other presidential
appointee to be outright disloyal to the president. The basic question is
what will be the *first* loyalty of the next NASA administrator. Will it
be (a) himself, (b) the president, or (c) American interests in space?

It it's not carrying out the space policy of the president, then he
shouldn't accept the position. If he finds that policy untenable
after accepting the position, then he should resign. The notion that
he should be "independent" (i.e., accountable to no one as to how he
spends the taxpayers' money) is absurd.

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 02:43:18 +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:

It doesn't make sense for the NASA administrator or any other presidential
appointee to be outright disloyal to the president. The basic question is
what will be the *first* loyalty of the next NASA administrator. Will it
be (a) himself, (b) the president, or (c) American interests in space?
It it's not carrying out the space policy of the president, then he
shouldn't accept the position.

Except that there is no such thing as "THE POLICY" until the president
comes up with it. One would hope that the president crafts it with
expert advice from the NASA administrator and other people. In fact Sean
O'Keefe did have a big hand in the Bush "space vision", if you can believe
Frank Sietzen. I know that Bush is a man of faith, but surely he didn't
get the "space vision" directly from God --- and would you want him to?

The problem is that, as far as I know, no engineer anywhere in the
chain of command has claimed any credit for the Bush space vision.

You would expect them to? How amusingly naive.

The only reported influence has been O'Keefe, Bush, and Bush's in-house
political advisers. And Bush's speech shows it.

Really? Go on...

It looks like O'Keefe
acted on his loyalty to Bush personally and to NASA as a bureaucracy,
and not to any other representative of the public interest.

?????

Who is the representative of the public interest when it comes to
setting naional space policy *if not the elected president*?

Have you ever taken a civics course?

Kelly McDonald

World Health Organization. Unlike the
single-payer system in Canada where everybody
has health insurance and no one sees a bill

Uhmm, I see a bill every March when I pay my taxes, then there is the
Ontario Health Care Premium, OHIP, prescriptions, ambulance, eye
exams, dentist, oh ya, and you can't have a checkup more than once a
year unless you pay for it.

I count my lucky stars that my wife and eye have excellent coverage
through our employers

I cut my finger a few months back, I could wait for the doctor to
freeze my finger and put in stiches, or PAY $10 to have him glue it in
30 seconds.

Hehehe, here in Texas if you didn't have insurance, and one
in four working Texans doesn't have and can't afford insurance,
if you went to the emergency room for a laceration requiring
stitches you'd be looking at a couple of thousand dollars,
maybe more, that you would instantly owe, and not only that,
but if you didn't pay up they'd turn it over to a collection
agency who will make your life a living, miserable hell. Even
with insurance the deductibles are commonly $500-2,000, so
you would still end up paying quite a bit out of pocket.

I have what's considered fairly decent insurance through my
employer, coverage that I could in no way afford on my own
since it runs upwards of $6,000/year, and even with that my
annual out of pocket costs are over $3,000. That's a $1,200
deductible, and the rest is 20% copay up to a maximum copay
of $1,800 in any given year.

But for every three of people like me there is a person
who has no coverage at all. These people frequently either
delay seeking care for urgent medical conditions such as
chest pain and strange lumps, or just don't go to a doctor
at all.

The question really boils down to one simple premise: Is
universal access to quality health care a definition for
civilization? I think so, but there are many, many people
out there who don't. Invariably the people who don't have
a vested financial interest in preventing uninsured people
from having access to health care.

Barbaric, isn't it?

JazzMan
--
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"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Jeff Findley" wrote:
Seriously though, the discussion of the safety culture within the US
nuclear
submarine fleet was very appropriate. Who in their right mind would put
the
crew operating a nuclear reactor on a submarine in a position to "prove it
will fail" when something unexpected happens?

Rickover is credited with inventing the culture, but mostly he
codified and formalized the existing culture and then turned the knob
from '10' to '11'.

He had a lot of help also. And the knob was more like "10" to "100"

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

....
When the film from the Columbia launch showed a possible impact on the
RCC,
the engineers were again stuck in a situation where the flight was going
to
be run as planned unless they could prove that there was a problem with
the
TPS....

Since the Crater program indicated possible severe tile damage
over a wide area, it's unclear how the conclusion "safe return indicated"
was reached.

The big, bold-letter heading in the Boeing report said "Crater Equations
Show Significant Tile Damage".

In at least one scenario, the Crater output clearly showed damage
of 4.7 inches deep (tile was only 2.6-2.8 inches deep), over a wide area.

As we now know, it was the RCC that was damaged, but at that time
the exact impact point wasn't known, just the approximate region.
For all they knew then, it could have been the tiles, and Crater
was (in Boeing's words) the "official evaluation tool".

How the "safe return indicated" conclusion was reached when the
data itself in the Boeing reported indicated otherwise has never
been adequately explained.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/2203main_COL...ing_030123.pdf

-- Joe D.