Shuttle Mishaps now under a Media Microscope

From the wires on ABC news:

" In January, workers did not lock down space shuttle Endeavour's nose
wheel landing gear while transferring it between floor jacks, causing
the orbiter to pitch forward. No serious damage was done. Later,
workers put too much pressure in the water coolant loop of space
shuttle Atlantis, requiring repairs.In January, workers did not lock
down space shuttle Endeavour's nose wheel landing gear while
transferring it between floor jacks, causing the orbiter to pitch
forward. No serious damage was done. Later, workers put too much
pressure in the water coolant loop of space shuttle Atlantis, requiring
repairs."

So it looks like somebody is looking into maintenance records from the
past to catch every anomaly and publicize it. No to say that it is
wrong, but it is not reflecting well upon the workforce.

Matthew Ota

A trend of accidents is bad, KSC had a safety standown to review
things. looks like about the same time a roofer working in the
industrial area fell after tripping on a lightning arrestor wire. sadly
he died.

Well, I think, from having worked for a UK shall we say governmental
organisation involved in advanced avionics, that it is usual for all such
happenings to be investigated, not in a spirit of blame, but in a spirit of
changing procedures to stop them happening again. I do think that the press
often mis the whole point that to err is human, after all, and the best we
can do is to devise procedures and systems to catch such possible problems
and prevent them happening again.

On the Shuttle are one, I'd be more worried about ehe joint. Surely a hit
big enough to cause the underlying structure to crack, must, by the laws of
leverage, have put a stress on the next joint toward the arm's fixing point
at the very least.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
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"Matthew Ota" wrote in message
oups.com...
From the wires on ABC news:

" In January, workers did not lock down space shuttle Endeavour's nose
wheel landing gear while transferring it between floor jacks, causing
the orbiter to pitch forward. No serious damage was done. Later,
workers put too much pressure in the water coolant loop of space
shuttle Atlantis, requiring repairs.In January, workers did not lock
down space shuttle Endeavour's nose wheel landing gear while
transferring it between floor jacks, causing the orbiter to pitch
forward. No serious damage was done. Later, workers put too much
pressure in the water coolant loop of space shuttle Atlantis, requiring
repairs."

So it looks like somebody is looking into maintenance records from the
past to catch every anomaly and publicize it. No to say that it is
wrong, but it is not reflecting well upon the workforce.

Matthew Ota

On 2006-03-18, Brian Gaff wrote:

Well, I think, from having worked for a UK shall we say governmental
organisation involved in advanced avionics, that it is usual for all such
happenings to be investigated, not in a spirit of blame, but in a spirit of
changing procedures to stop them happening again. I do think that the press

There is a similar culture in large IT organisations as well. Of course,
you do eventually get to the point of asking "How do you prevent humans
making errors ?" Answer: Replace them with robots, but then you need humans
to repair the robots when hardware eventually fails

Thankfully in the IT field, it only tends to be (potentially) large
amounts of dollars/UKP/Yen, rather than lives in the case of Manned
Spaceflight.


Iain

On 18 Mar 2006 03:07:42 -0800, "Matthew Ota"
wrote:

So it looks like somebody is looking into maintenance records from the
past to catch every anomaly and publicize it. No to say that it is
wrong, but it is not reflecting well upon the workforce.

There are more recent events, too.

1. The shuttle arm damage. Does that count as 2 accidents? Breaking
something to dump glass in the cargo bay and then denting the arm
trying to clean up the glass.

2. Dropping a film container and damaging some tiles on Endeavor.

3. Roofers started a fire on the VAB while the SRBs were in it, but
the fire wasn't above them. Now, this one sounds scary, but it was
probably a dinky little fire.

It sounds like the workers at the Cape were just in too big a rush and
were getting tired and careless. Didn't someone here say they were
putting in a lot of overtime. Maybe someone from NASA can say if this
is normal or the workers really were pushing it. I'm a programmer type
so I can't say if this is an above normal, normal, or below normal
accident rate for an industrial operation. OTOH, I'm a bit of a klutz
at mechanical things so I could probably have accounted for ALL these
accidents by myself if I worked at NASA. Well, all except the roof
fire. You'd never get me on top of the VAB. I get the creeps at the
mall when I see workers on the roof take shortcuts by walking across a
long section of skylights. I've experienced something like that one
time when I took the tour to the top of the St. Louis Arch. There's a
little carpeted area in the top where you can lay down and put your
head against a piece of VERY thick glass and look straight down with
nothing between you and the ground. Once was enough. It's strange how
things like that bother me, but I had no problem getting a private
pilots license. It just doesn't seem the same sitting in an airborne
Cessna 150 or 172.

BTW, I suspect roofers often cause fires. I can remember sitting in a
second story conference room in an office park in Atlanta and seeing a
big fire blaze up past the window outside. They had caught the tar in
their truck on fire and the flames were about as tall as the three
story office building we were in.

-- David (not an aerospace engineer)

yeah roofers start a lot of fires. hot tar can leak into building
between walls and go good, a firemans way of saying burning well

"David Ball" wrote in message
...
You'd never get me on top of the VAB.

Take it from a fellow acrophobic - it's not bad at all up there. The roof
is so big that you feel like you're standing on top of a mountain rather
than on a roof. The view is amazing.
Now the 150 meter tower just north of the VAB - that was scary.

"David Ball" wrote in message
...
On 18 Mar 2006 03:07:42 -0800, "Matthew Ota"
wrote:


3. Roofers started a fire on the VAB while the SRBs were in it, but
the fire wasn't above them. Now, this one sounds scary, but it was
probably a dinky little fire.

Tar fires are not uncommon when roofing work is being performed. Whoever
authorized the roof work on the VAB should have been more aware of this.
Hopefully they have re-scheduled the roof work for a time when the SRBs are
not in the VAB - like right after rollout.


JD

Why emphasize so many mishaps now, and not prior to feb1 2003? The
siat report of 2000 documents many dives and catches, none of which
caused a loss of vehicle and crew, but represented human error, just
like the recent mishaps Any space vehicle that is reusable requires
more maintenance and is more "touchy" than a disposable system, and
thus subject to greater chances of human error. The shuttle fleet
requires maintenance just like any other vehicle, we just need to be
committed to take care of it, if not failure of the system is our fault
not the systems.

"Joe Delphi" wrote in message
news:3UzTf.8597$ld2.8431@fed1read11...
"David Ball" wrote in message
...
On 18 Mar 2006 03:07:42 -0800, "Matthew Ota"
wrote:


3. Roofers started a fire on the VAB while the SRBs were in it, but
the fire wasn't above them. Now, this one sounds scary, but it was
probably a dinky little fire.

Tar fires are not uncommon when roofing work is being performed. Whoever
authorized the roof work on the VAB should have been more aware of this.
Hopefully they have re-scheduled the roof work for a time when the SRBs
are
not in the VAB - like right after rollout.

Umm, there's SRBs in there pretty much all the time as I recall. Remember,
after roll-out they still are getting ready to stack the next shuttle.

In any case, it takes a fairly high temp and I believe pressure to ignite an
SRB segment.




JD