this sure seems like a symptom of a much larger organizational failure that could mistake "it's not plugged in" for "it's broken"
My $500M Mars rover mistake
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Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#12Are the electronics in these rovers really so bespoke that they don't have multiple copies of each electronic component warehoused on-site?
I'd expect that the rover body itself would be bespoke this late in the process, although a parallel test vehicle would be useful, do they have that?).
But in case someone fried the rover's electronics I'd think tearing it apart and replacing them while maintaining the chassis should be doable in 2 weeks, but what do I know?
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#13I like this - “Let your scars serve you; they are an invaluable learning experience and investment in your capability and resilience.”
I have had couple of scars of mine. I feel like sometimes you become risk-averse and When you are launching new things you will face the fear of failure.
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#14With only two weeks left to go, why was a multimeter completing the telemetry circuit?
maybe it was measuring the current rather than the voltage as he thought, which would require putting it in series with the circuit
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#15This clickbait title is misleading.
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#16I'm reminded of the phrase - if your intern deleted the production database you don't have a bad intern; you have a bad process.
Whether this was a process problem or a human one we don't really get to judge since we do expect more from a FTE.
I'll just say putting myself into his shoes made me tear up as I read the dread and pangs of pain upon realizing what happened - then to have life again after the failure of the ray of hope. That weight, I've never had a project that so many people depended on.
All heroes in my book.
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#17Ohhhh I hate things that you “just have to not screw up.” A fiddly manual process with so many possible ways to screw something up is almost guaranteed to see a catastrophic failure.
If this really manual fiddly process was really the only way they could test the motors, I’d say that’s a big failure on the design engineer’s part.
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#18Why would you ever allow people to work 12-hour days on something so important? Grad student labour is cheap, surely trying to have one person do the work of two is a false economy.
> Grad student labour is cheap
Sir, this is NASA not Kerbal space program ;)
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#19Any test that could cause a fatal destructive error should be risk assesed and a suitable protocol approved with four eyes approval on a final checklist before going hot on the electrics. The issue here is poor project governance not human error.
Re: My $500M Mars rover mistake
#20How is this a $500 million mistake? It seems the issues didn’t cost $500 million.