[Boatanchors] Space Shuttle (OT, kinda)

[J. Forster]

I spent two plus years working on a payload, only to see it blown up after
BECO due to a staging failure. I saw the problem, told my late boss, but
it went off anyway.

And that was not the only time, either.

-John

==============



> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 08:09:59PM -0500, David Stinson wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Gary Pewitt" <garypewitt at centurytel.net>
>> To: <W9RAN at oneradio.net>
>> >....  Congress on the other hand cut NASA's budget so much
>> > that we ended up with the inferior design that gave us two
>> > catastrophic
>> > failures in the Shuttle fleet...
>>
>> I had a very minor ground support role for the Challenger flight.
>> One of the data trailers had a big mural of Challenger on the outside
>> and all kinds of  well-wishing messages written on it.
>> I will never forget the call from my boss, or the looks on the faces
>> of my fellow techs and engineers that day.
>>
>> In fairness, I think it was incompetant management, rather than faulty
>> design,
>> that caused those terrible events.  It wasn't the foam strike on
>> Columbia that
>> caused the disaster; system problems are one of the things we have to
>> expect on "the cutting edge" and working them out is supposed to be
>> part of the job (rather than pretending they're not a problem).
>> Just as with Challenger, it was (mis)managers wanting
>> to polish their own apples, ignoring techs and engineers who
>> told them what would happen and being told to shut up.
>> Whenever something like this happens,
>> you can usually find some glad-handing back-side kisser in authority
>> at the root of it, and some poor lower-level tech or engineer
>> to take the blame.
>
> I had a minor ground support in the Gemini and Apollo programs. When we
> got the word of the fire in the spacecraft, it was as though someone had
> struck each of us *HARD* in the solar plexus. It was (mis)management
> there,
> too. People had been reporting electrical problems and comms problems for
> literally weeks. People had expressed concerns about flammability in pure
> O2. Electrical problems and pure O2 atmosphere, as things turned out, are
> a
> *very* bad mix, and three people died.
>
> The same thing holds true, mutatis mutandis, for Challenger and Columbia:
> management decided that even though problems had been reported, nothing
> bad
> was going to happen -- because nothing bad had happened so far.
>
> NASA managers appear to not learn.
>
> I'll get off my soapbox now. These three failures are a real hot-button
> for me, but that doesn't mean I should take it out on you folks.
>
> Very 73, de
>
> --
> Mike Andrews, W5EGO
> mikea at mikea.ath.cx
> Tired old sysadmin
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