[R-390] TUBES

[mikea]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 09:14:25PM -0800, Ed Zeranski wrote:
> >The Hubble bobble had nothing to do with miscalculation, though:
> >it was caused by a tech at (IIRC) Perkin-Elmer putting a gauge
> >stick in bass-ackwards, so that the mirror's focal length was
> >off.
> 
> Not a normal miss calq of numbers, you are right, but still a miscalq of
> risk. Have you read the after event stuff by Richard Fineman?  The old gnome
> got dismissed as 'just a CALTECH physicist' when he said the board wasn't
> even asking the right questions. :^)
> 
> Can't troubleshoot if you won't admit there is a problem.

Dick Feynman was a Friend of a Friend, and (as you almost 
certainly know, and the Congresscritters should have) "just a 
CALTECH physicist" like Einstein was "just a mathematician".
And yes, in this case, the two were of closely-comparable rank,
stature, skill, and talent. 

I spent three years at the Manned Spacecraft Center, working
the last Mercury shot, all the Gemini shots, and all the Apollo
work through the fire in the spacecraft. I was, in fact, the
guy who first pulled the biomedical data for that disaster off
the telemetry tape and ran it out to stripchart. NASA sure has
changed since 1967, and none of it is for the better.

-- 
Mike Andrews
mikea@mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin since 1964