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Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

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Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#71

Post by gpm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30
iidop wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destruction of $700m property due to negligence certainly seems jailworthy to me. At the very least, this company should be paying a fine which actually recovers the damages.

That can only be done if first, it can be proven that it was poor materials that caused the failure, and two, it's only useful if the company can actually afford a fine like that. You also have to consider what your motivation behind punishment is; is it re-education? Is it compensation of damages? Or is it to just completely bankrupt the company because Never Again? I mean in that last case, NASA and the US as a who…

How does being able to afford the fine have anything to do with it!?

The company caused 700M damage to the US tax payers (assuming the proof part), they should be on the hook to repay that, if they can't they should go bankrupt like anyone else who owes more money than they have.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#72

Post by TallGuyShort »

naringas wrote: post #13

the best thing is how the "company" (or corporation) is to blame. so none of the actual individual humans who did this is at fault here. at worst they would be fired and go to work somewhere else. which is compeletely fine. and with a fine like that, this is just a "cost of doing business" for the corporation. maybe one day terribly criminal corporations should be forcefully disbanded as punishment.

In this case, another commenter suggests it's because of the number of people employed. But I don't see why they can't punish everyone proved to be personally responsible (and perhaps the leadership wants to move people who are suspected but can't be proved deserving of criminal charges). And then at worst the assets (including the supply chain, infrastructure and all the employees required to operate it all) can continue under different ownership, but maybe mostly new leadership, or whatever. Surely some impact to the innocent still, but not nearly as much and justice is still done as much as can be proved.

I don't think this problem is unique to private corporations, though. If government projects blow through their budget and achieve almost nothing, they're usually able to get more funding, because if you don't give them more funding, "who would build the roads"? If an agency keeps having corruption issues, there's often a scapegoat or a review board put in place until the PR shitstorm blows over, and then nothing really changes. Very rarely will the general consensus be, "maybe giving people this much power and authority on this issue just does more harm than good".

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#74

Post by trickstra »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #55
homonculus1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an asinine response. Bad luck should happen in spite of the law, not because of it.

The law specifically seeks to prevent these kinds of outcomes by giving the parties involved leeway in how they do their jobs. You need an asshole cop, a prosecutor looking to pad their performance stats, a judge that doesn't care and a lawyer not doing their job in order for someone to go to jail on a possession charge and in the rare event that does happen when the miscarriage is pointed out it can usually be corre…

should we look at the numbers how many times it happened?

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#75

Post by jahabrewer »

tyingq wrote: post #41

Interesting. Extruded aluminum profile is one of the items that is under anti-dumping tariffs to discourage Chinese imports. There's a lot of rhetoric from US suppliers like this one about why we need high quality US aluminum.

We need to build with high-quality American fakes, not high-quality Chinese fakes!

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#76

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #25
MichaelApproved wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not typical for "kid[s]" to be put in prison for carrying "a few grams of weed." It might happen sometimes (in a country of 330 million people, everything that can happen will happen sometimes) but it's not typical. First, this shouldn't be a "sometimes" thing, it should be a "never" thing. You get convicted for drugs, regardless of how much, and your life is forever changed. Second, for all the made, think ab…

> First, this shouldn't be a "sometimes" thing, it should be a "never" thing. You get convicted for drugs, regardless of how much, and your life is forever changed. Communities have the right to declare certain things unacceptable and police their citizens accordingly. The regulation of vice and harmful substances is one of the core functions of state and local governments. In a country of 330 million people, that me…

> But the self-determination of communities is a more fundamental right than the right to consume whatever substances you want.

Pretty sweeping statement there. What if a majority of a "community" decides its residents shouldn't eat meat?

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#77

Post by pnutjam »

andrewflnr wrote: post #33
thanksgiving wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think it should be the board + CEO who goes to prison when it is a corporation that does something like this. Don't trust someone enough? Don't hire! Disclosure: My ulterior motive is that I think corporations are way too big and also I found the Sun Tzu story of killing a general very interesting. > Sun Tzu said: "If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood,…

> Don't trust someone enough? Don't hire! This is 100% impossible to carry out at the scale of a corporation. You don't have enough data about a person staging in front of you to bet a prison sentence on their never ever doing anything wrong, maybe unless you've been friends with them for years. The board+CEO have even less visibility and control over hiring decisions made by middle managers. You would make every lea…

I think his point is that this type of environment would discourage or essentially ban the type of huge corporation that depends on unaccountable middle managers to offload liability.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#78

Post by dsfyu404ed »

trickstra wrote: post #74
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law specifically seeks to prevent these kinds of outcomes by giving the parties involved leeway in how they do their jobs. You need an asshole cop, a prosecutor looking to pad their performance stats, a judge that doesn't care and a lawyer not doing their job in order for someone to go to jail on a possession charge and in the rare event that does happen when the miscarriage is pointed out it can usually be corre…

should we look at the numbers how many times it happened?

Sure. But you'll need to figure out some way to model social acceptance. Going to jail for weed in 1990 was not considered a miscarriage of justice. Going to jail for weed in 2010 is.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#79

Post by kps »

rayiner wrote: post #16
j-pb wrote: post #2

It's amazing how companies in the US can cause a billion in damage, wasting years of highly talented people, put climate science years behind, and get a slap on the wrist. Yet, some kid carries a few grams of weed and goes to jail or gets killed by the cops.

Both of your assertions are exaggerations. 1) It is far from certain that the falsified test results "cause[d] a billion in damage." Press releases about settlements are not court judgments. At trial, the government would have to prove "but-for causation." For one of the failures, for example, the government would have to prove that the launch vehicle's faring would have opened fully had the aluminum met specificatio…

> something that was the fault of lower-level employees (as here)

Ah, yes, some ‘lower-level employees’ just got together to falsify metals tests because… they have a fetish for falsifying metals tests? They get to brag to their pals at the pub about falsifying metals tests? They have a betting pool to see who can falsify the most metals tests? It must be something like that.

Re: Nasa Says Metals Fraud Caused $700M Satellite Failure

#80

Post by SkyBelow »

brianpgordon wrote: post #39
pseudolus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deferred prosecution agreement essentially means that as long as the SEI adheres to the financial terms of the plea agreement the government will eventually drop the charges [0]. That's an amazing deal in its generosity and I'm sure that the financial penalties levied are outweighed by the financial gain realized over the years of their fraudulent activity. The rationale for not pursuing the company for the full…

This is a worthwhile book that might help clear up some of your bewilderment at why corporate crime cases so often turn out so unsatisfactorily. https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute... My personal TL;DR from a couple of years ago if you don't have the time to read the book: - It's very hard for prosecutors to secure a criminal conviction even in the most blatant cases of wrongdoing. - Prosecut…

One thing to add, the majority of the population supports this outcome (if you measure actions as more important than words).
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