[TheForge] YAK relativity- WAY OT, or not...

Thu Jan 8 09:32:02 2004

The NASA culture being what it is today, I wouldn't doubt it.

The Challenger disaster occurred despite considerable warnings from
Morton-Thiokol engineers that the solid-fuel boosters could fail
catastrophically at low temperatures. They HAD the data, but they didn't
simplify it sufficiently for the mucketymucks in charge to understand. 
(They assumed the mucketymucks were intelligent as they were - a bad
assumption, it seems.)  This was brought out later when a expert (Tufte)
in "visual representation of quantitative data" graphed the data. 
Voila' - only an idiot would have approved a low-temperature launch!

Very sad.

Looks like a similar thing may have happened in the Columbia disaster. 

Bruce
NJ

>>> [email protected] 1/7/2004 7:33:46 PM >>>

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> I remember before learning of this, having wondered about it more
> than once, but refraining from bringing it up because I didn't want
> to look like a dumbass.  My assumption was that because these were
> Great Brains(tm) that they knew what they were doing and that I was
> a dumbass for not knowing it.  It turned out they were  wrong-0 in
> assuming that so small a discrepancy in a value would not
significantly
> affect the outcome of a calculation.  My only error was in assuming
> their infallibility, that they would not miss so obvious and basic
> a thing as this.  

Makes me wonder if some lowly NASA tech had the same thought process 
during the last mission to Mars.
1 inch = 25.4 mm   

> 
> 
> What a curious little universe we live in.

possibly one of many.....  

_______________________________________________
http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
theforge mail list group photo site is
http://www.photoaccess.com
Login:  [email protected]
password:  anvil
___________

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---