Jud Lovingood changes his mind

In article ,
ElleninLosAngeles wrote:
"I believe the shuttle is inherently unsafe," retired NASA
mathematician and rocket engine expert Jud Lovingood said this week.
"We have proven that, and there are more problems waiting to jump out.
It is too complex. It is 1970s technology."
....
Also, has anyone heard of "retired NASA mathematician and rocket
engine expert Jud Lovingood" before?

Judson Lovingood was one of the NASA managers who stood accused after the
Challenger accident 17 years ago. It was exactly this Jud Lovingood who
was skewered in Richard Feynman's autobiography, "Surely You're Joking,
Mr. Feynman":

Here's a piece of paper each. Please write on your paper the answer to
this question: what do you think is the probability that a flight would
be uncompleted due to a failure in this engine?

...

"Well," I said, "I've got four answers, and one of them weaseled."
[The three engineers each said 1 in 200 or 1 in 300.] I turned to
Mr. Lovingood: "I think you weaseled."

"I don't think I weaseled."

"You didn't tell me what your confidence was, sir; you told me how
you determined it. What I want to know is: after you determined it,
what was it?"

He says, "100 percent" --- the engineers jaws drop, my jaw drops;
I look at him, everybody looks at him --- "uh, uh, minus epsilon!"
So I say, "Well, yes; that's fine. Now, the only problem is, WHAT
IS EPSILON?"

He says, "10^-5". It was the same number that Mr. Ullian had told
us about: 1 in 100,000.

The obvious part of this story is that NASA managers were in denial
about the real risk of a shuttle crash. The not-so-obvious part is
that Lovingood should have known better, because he was trained as a
mathematician and an engineer. Now that he's retired, he does know
better. He notes, correctly, that more dangerous problems are waiting
to jump out when the shuttle flies again.

All of this illustrates that management failures at NASA manned
spaceflight are not as simple as having bad managers. The managers, good
and bad, are all under pressure from on high to deny risk. The ideology
that the shuttle flights are safe and routine, or at least could be,
has defined the shuttle program from the beginning. It has been echoed
by politicians across Washington, including presidents. Even the CAIB
report, after presenting evidence that the shuttle is inherently unsafe,
concluded unaccountably that it isn't. As the LA Times article said,
if Washington decided that the shuttle is inherently unsafe, it would
be the end of the space shuttle.

So when the shuttle resumes flying, it will be risky and it won't be
routine. NASA managers will be under pressure to deny it, and denial
will increase risk. It will be deja vu all over again.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

Likewise it is generally assumed that the OSP will be an improvement in safety.
We will have a better idea of the truth of this assumption after 25 or 50
flights.

Lovingood was in on the Thiokol teleconference. I hope other Feynman anecdotes
are better than this one, a statistical geek-fest. ZZZzzzz

I am still trying to get clear on the teleconference. I was under the
impression that Lovingood and other same-level NASA associates did not have
specific knowlege that Thiokol's engineers had registered a no-go.

As I re-read the Rogers report, it seems that they DID know. So a contractor's
engineers say no, but a while later the executives come back and say it's ok,
and then you tell you boss "They said it was ok."

It is telling that just hours before the 51-L accident, a meeting was held
discussing cold O-rings. The engineer's concerns turned out to be accurate.