🚀 go-pugleaf

Organization : California Institute of Technology
Keywords: 
From: jon@oddhack.Caltech.Edu (Jon Leech)
Path: oddhack!jon

In article <227@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> desj@brahms (David desJardins) writes:
>   The Rogers Commission "discovered" very little, and what they did every-
>one else now knows from their report.  Mostly what the Rogers Commission
>did is publish their opinions about how NASA should be run (or, if you
>prefer, "the many flaws in NASA and the shuttle program").  I seriously
>doubt that it would cause any serious change in the opinions of any person
>who was already knowledgeable about the program.

	What exactly does `knowledgeable about the program' mean?
People who were supposedly `knowedgeable' about the SRBs either were
never informed about the O-ring erosion problem, or chose to ignore it
repeatedly. Without changes in `how NASA should be run', I see no reason to
believe exactly the same thing will not happen with some other 
potentially fatal problem, enough times that potential turns into reality.
Perhaps the Commission recommendations are not the best way to fix
NASA management problems, but SOMETHING should be done if we are to
avoid another Challenger (ideally an infusion of money big enough
to restore the quality-control procedures and `can do' attitude of the 
Apollo days).

>
>>Offering their - or any - lives to a system with at least one demonstrated 
>>fatal failure mode is very generous for people who are NOT that familiar 
>>and who won't fly themselves.
>
>   Why is it different than the 25th flight, where we DID offer the crew's
>lives to a system with at least one (undemonstrated) fatal failure mode?
>Or the 27th flight, on which we WILL offer their lives to a system with
>at least one still undemonstrated fatal failure mode?  You are just as
>dead if you are killed by an undemonstrated failure mode as you are if
>you are killed by a demonstrated mode.
>   If you are saying that we should never fly the shuttle unless and until
>we are certain that there are NO fatal failure modes, then we are never
>going to fly it at all, and one is left to wonder why we built them in
>the first place.

	No, that's not what I'm saying. Consider an analogy to automobiles
or airplanes: when something seriously wrong happens (engines falling
off, say, or doors flying open at 30,000 feet), the vehicle is grounded
until the fundamental problem is fixed. Then it continues flying - with
the knowledge that there are unquantifiable further risks. This happens
even with military aircraft on occasion.

	In an ideal world we could afford to take the (probably low)
risks of flying shuttles immediately. In the real world, where another
shuttle loss would almost certainly not be replaced and might even
spell the end of civilian manned space flight, it behooves NASA to
be careful. This does not mean being `certain that there are NO fatal
failure modes'; it DOES mean being confident that the joint erosion
problem will not occur again, and fixing all the other problems
possible while the joint fix is going on.

	As long as I'm saying things people disagree with, how about
this: the Challenger disaster is in certain respects the BEST possible
thing to happen to the American space effort recently; by shoving
commerical payloads off the Shuttle, we may finally get a healthy
private ELV industry.

    -- Jon Leech (jon@csvax.caltech.edu || ...seismo!cit-vax!jon)
    Caltech Computer Science Graphics Group
    __@/