Never mind the shuttle crash, the real threat is the CAIB report

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 03:46:12 +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:

According to the Houston Chronicle, Sean O'Keefe is telling NASA
employees to brace themselves for the CAIB report, which he calls
"a nasty piece of writing". "We're going to get hammered", he said.
"It's, make no mistake, going to be really ugly", he said.

In fact, O'Keefe himself is making a big mistake to play up the CAIB
report as a threat to NASA, as if it is somehow worse than the Columbia
crash. It does not bode well for shuttle or space station safety.
But this foolish stance by O'Keefe (confirmed by an equally foolish "we
shall overcome" letter from Readdy) reflects a little bit of foolishness
on the CAIB side.

I agree, in general. NASA is in no position to be in a state of
denial about its organizational dysfunction.

This time around the lesson is obvious and the CAIB's comments seem a
little bit pat and ad hominem. CAIB should move onto the next question
which Feynman hinted at in the last paragraph of his appendix. Namely,
once you grasp realistic estimates of risks, you should turn to questions
of policy. Why is it that manned spaceflight at NASA always seems to
fall to bad management, while unmanned spaceflight doesn't?

I reject the premise. What was the failure of the Mars mission that
did a controlled flight into terrain, because they didn't know (or
care) how to convert from English to metric units, if not bad
management? How about the original shape of the Hubble mirror--what
did that have to do with the fact that it was launched on an Evil
Manned Launch System?

Stop trying to attribute all ills of the space program to the fact
that people happen to be going as part of the mission, Greg. It's a
loser's game, and one that its practioners would (or at least should)
have eschewed long ago, had they the wisdom to realize it. If you
can't recognize what the true cause of the problem is, you'll have no
realistic hope of solving it.

--
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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On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 04:13:20 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


Stop trying to attribute all ills of the space program to the fact
that people happen to be going as part of the mission, Greg. It's a
loser's game, and one that its practioners would (or at least should)
have eschewed long ago

Doh!

"...practitioners..."

--
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:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:
What was the failure of the Mars mission that
did a controlled flight into terrain, because they didn't know (or
care) how to convert from English to metric units, if not bad
management?

It was bad management, of course. (Although to be fair, Mars is a
particularly unforgiving target.) As I said at the beginning of the
other thread: With a good mandate, management may be good or bad.
But with a bad mandate, management is invariably bad.

Public relations has always been the principal purpose of manned
spaceflight, not only in the United States but worldwide. It has not
been a good mandate since the 1960s. Even then, it was only good in a
perverse context, namely the Cold War.

How about the original shape of the Hubble mirror--what
did that have to do with the fact that it was launched on an Evil
Manned Launch System?

It was either bad management or bad luck, although flying on the shuttle
was an unwelcome distraction for the mission.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

In article ,
Greg Kuperberg wrote:
...Why is it that manned spaceflight at NASA always seems to
fall to bad management, while unmanned spaceflight doesn't?

What makes you think it doesn't?

The loss of Mars Climate Orbiter was 99% bad management -- the units error
would have been caught and corrected in a well-run project, because there
were plenty of hints that something was wrong.

Mars Polar Lander was much more of a routine engineering screwup, but one
can still reasonably argue that poor management was at least a major
contributing factor.

The Deep Space Two micropenetrators that were lost with MPL were simply
not ready to fly, but management decided to fly them anyway.

Several of Galileo's problems can be traced back to management. (I mean,
a star tracker that's only tested in two or three orientations??? Who was
running *that*?)

Hubble's main mirror was a management screwup through and through.

The essentially-total loss of WIRE was not because there hadn't been
hints that the pyro circuitry had something wrong with it, but because
management didn't insist that those be followed up on.

X-33 was a management disaster from beginning to end. X-34 wasn't
much better.

Mars Observer's loss was mostly an engineering failure, but management
over-optimism about "flight proven" subsystems did contribute.
--
MOST launched 1015 EDT 30 June, separated 1046, | Henry Spencer
first ground-station pass 1651, all nominal! |

In article ,
Charles Buckley wrote:
The problem with your overall statements is that NASA did have fairly
close estimates as to Shuttle safety and it's odds.

Yes, except that management was compelled to deny those estimates.
If not in its words (this time), certainly in its attitude.

Likewise NASA management is also compelled to insist that
microgravity research is of megaimportance.
--
/\ 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:


How about the original shape of the Hubble mirror--what
did that have to do with the fact that it was launched on an Evil
Manned Launch System?

It was either bad management or bad luck, although flying on the shuttle
was an unwelcome distraction for the mission.

Distraction to whom? Perkin-Elmer? Those in NASA who might've caught
it? Where does the nature of the launcher figure into that?

The Deep Space Two micropenetrators that were lost with MPL were simply
not ready to fly, but management decided to fly them anyway.

Is there anything but the grapevine to support that? It did seem a good
idea, a rush job, and strange amounts of silence after the fact...

Several of Galileo's problems can be traced back to management. (I mean,
a star tracker that's only tested in two or three orientations??? Who was
running *that*?)

Hadn't heard of that one...

Hubble's main mirror was a management screwup through and through.

Interestingly enough, a BBC program that airead yesterday here in Germany
presented it as basically bad luck - that a flake of paint was missing in
just the right place on the null corrector for things to go wrong.

On the other hand, they kept records and even the original measurement
hardware was still in place so that the causes for that screwup could be
reasonably determined. Now that is _good_ management! (Please excuse me
while I fetch a mop to take up the sarcasm.)

Jan

In article ,
Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Greg Kuperberg wrote:
...Why is it that manned spaceflight at NASA always seems to
fall to bad management, while unmanned spaceflight doesn't?
What makes you think it doesn't?

What I meant is that unmanned spaceflight doesn't ALWAYS fall to bad
management, not that it doesn't ever. That is clearly true: NASA unmanned
spaceflight does great things every year.
--
/\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis)
/ \
\ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/
\/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *

In article ,
(Greg Kuperberg) wrote:

In article ,
Herb Schaltegger wrote:
}In article ,
} (Greg Kuperberg) wrote:
} It was bad management, of course. (Although to be fair, Mars is a
} particularly unforgiving target.)
}More "unforgiving" than Mercury? Venus? Jupiter? Saturn? Uranus?
}Neptune?

Actually landing on Mars is harder than merely orbiting Venus
or even Jupiter, or than landing on the moon.

Your basis for this statement is suspect. And certainly you realize
that there have been at least one (marginally) successful landing on
Venus, don't you? Furthermore, your original statement didn't qualify
itself as limited to landings, just that ". . . Mars is a particularly
unforgiving target." And on that point, I'd have to remind you of
Vikings 1 and 2 and Mars Pathfinder; landing is difficult on any body
from orbital or interplanetary velocities. It is not, however,
impossible.

Your penchant for broad, unqualified generalizations is partly why the
sci.space long-term regulars don't take you very seriously.

Although interestingly they discovered a new difficulty of an inner
Jovian orbit mission: massive charged particle radiation.

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

"Herb Schaltegger" wrote in message
...

Your basis for this statement is suspect. And certainly you realize
that there have been at least one (marginally) successful landing on
Venus, don't you?

The Soviet Venera missions were more than marginally successful.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/venera.html