🚀 go-pugleaf

Harry H Conover wrote in article <5t07te$u7@news-central.tiac.net>...

>Steve Alexanderson (no-spam-please-Salexanderson@Cencoast.com) wrote:
>:
>: I wonder how things might have turned out, if a PE had stood up to
>: management, and threatened to take them to the board for practicing
>: engineering without a license; when management overrode engineering's
>: recommendation to delay launch of the Challenger. Management could have
used
>: a few PEs also.
>
>Likely, NASA management includes more than just a few PEs.  Remember,
>NASA is public sector employment, and that's where PEs flourish.  Same
>is true of the 'Beltway Bandits' that surround DC and leach off the
>government.


 NASA is federal agency. The feds claim exemption from state laws like
engineering licensing. They even have positions called Professional Engineer
that list no licensing requirement. Add federal exemption to the list of
exemptions.  In any case, the management I was referring to was that the
private company responsible for designing the seals. If memory serves,
engineering recommended delay but management blocked the message from ever
getting to NASA.



>
>Regretably, where money, schedule, and position are concerned, PEs are
>just a likely to 'adjust' their 'expert witness opinions' in the face of
>pressure from above as anyone else, and a PE's stamp is a readily
>purchasable commodity.

I disagree. I don't claim that PEs are morally superior to those without a
license, but they do have an added incentive to watch their ethics.

>
>The real 'Hell Raisers' and 'Loose Cannons' on large, government projects
>are more likely to come, sad to say, from the scientific rather than
>Professional Engineering community.  Recall who actually first blew the
>whistle on the shuttle disaster.
>
>More recently, a number of PEs were associated with the decision to
>launch the Hubble Telescope without its first undergoing a routine
>vacuum columnation of the optics on Earth -- even though in-vacuum
>optical alignment and testing has been a integral part of the
>required alignment process for orbital (defense) optics (like the
>those of the KH-11) for nearly 30 years.

Was safety compromised? Don't think it compares with the Challenger launch.

--
Steve Alexanderson, P.E.
Newport Oregon

"I know engineers. They love to change things."  Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy