How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
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How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
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Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#2"We informed the foam technicians at our plant in Michoud Louisiana that they were the cause of the loss of Columbia..."
That to me is pretty disgusting. In an incident like the loss of Columbia, there is no one, true "root cause". To assign blame to those foam technicians was disingenuous and just another instance of "passing the buck" that seems to happen so often in the post-mortem of NASA failures. NASA knew of earlier foam strikes (STS-112) yet chose to continue flying without diagnosing the problem. Even during the tragic STS-107 flight, engineers knew of foam strikes and their concerns were ignored. Even though they would have been almost completely powerless to remedy the situation on STS-107, the higher-ups decided to continue on with the mission instead of addressing the concerns with the heat shields. The article author states later in the article that he apologized to the foam technicians. Commendable, but I am still bothered by the fact that NASA was initially so eager to place the blame on a single contractor instead of owning up to their own culpability. Leadership and responsibility needs to come from the top, especially in such a prestigious organization!
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#3Every Shuttle in the fleet has had one or several extremely close scrapes with death. To look at the Shuttle record and see the history of calamity it's easy to think that we just had bad luck, but quite the opposite was the case. We were enormously lucky with the Shuttle, in a fairer world we would have lost more of them, and sooner. The Shuttle was plagued by many fundamental design flaws which combined to make it an inherently unsafe system. Within the last years of the program that knowledge finally started to sink in, which is why the Shuttle was essentially restricted to missions to the ISS.
Some of the achievements of the Shuttle program have been inspiring, and the vehicle itself is pretty to look at, but we should have canned that program long, long ago.
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#4Every Shuttle in the fleet has had one or several extremely close scrapes with death. To look at the Shuttle record and see the history of calamity it's easy to think that we just had bad luck, but quite the opposite was the case. We were enormously lucky with the Shuttle, in a fairer world we would have lost more of them, and sooner. The Shuttle was plagued by many fundamental design flaws which combined to make it…
This is an important point and one which many overlook. I don't blame the shuttle designers, it was a new kind space craft. The truth was that the more folks looked, the more questions they asked, the more problems were uncovered that could only be fixed by 'a complete redesign of that subsystem.' And ultimately there were few places where a complete redesign could be undertaken.
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#5"We informed the foam technicians at our plant in Michoud Louisiana that they were the cause of the loss of Columbia..." That to me is pretty disgusting. In an incident like the loss of Columbia, there is no one, true "root cause". To assign blame to those foam technicians was disingenuous and just another instance of "passing the buck" that seems to happen so often in the post-mortem of NASA failures. NASA knew of e…
Understand the type of organization NASA is. First, accountability is everything. It's not that there are big internal political struggles (there are), but more importantly accountability is required for high safety. We aren't talking about a 10 person startup where a bad commit to production takes down a site for a few hours. We're talking about people's lives, careers, and the safety of millions of people that could be negatively affected by a crash or explosion.
When he talks about it being their fault, it's not that those engineers are being singled out for punishment and derision. They had to find out where the problem existed that led to the loss of Columbia, and after extremely thorough testing they believed it existed with the foam team. It's simply a matter of finding where a problem is and doing everything you can to fix it.
So it's not a personal, vindictive "your fault", its an impersonal "the problem is here, lets fix it".
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#6This is an outstanding post that shows first hand what life as an engineer is like. It is often very hard to truly come to a conclusion that is 100% correct, even given what seems like infinite resources to do testing and analysis.
The big take away from this is what it means to be a good engineer: to be able to bow your head, and admit you were wrong despite all prior evidence.
outstanding!
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#7Every Shuttle in the fleet has had one or several extremely close scrapes with death. To look at the Shuttle record and see the history of calamity it's easy to think that we just had bad luck, but quite the opposite was the case. We were enormously lucky with the Shuttle, in a fairer world we would have lost more of them, and sooner. The Shuttle was plagued by many fundamental design flaws which combined to make it…
It was a 30-year design. Not too bad for our first reusable space plane.
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#8"We informed the foam technicians at our plant in Michoud Louisiana that they were the cause of the loss of Columbia..." That to me is pretty disgusting. In an incident like the loss of Columbia, there is no one, true "root cause". To assign blame to those foam technicians was disingenuous and just another instance of "passing the buck" that seems to happen so often in the post-mortem of NASA failures. NASA knew of e…
Understand the type of organization NASA is. First, accountability is everything. It's not that there are big internal political struggles (there are), but more importantly accountability is required for high safety. We aren't talking about a 10 person startup where a bad commit to production takes down a site for a few hours. We're talking about people's lives, careers, and the safety of millions of people that coul…
That's a really good summary of mission critical systems accountability problem.
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#9"We informed the foam technicians at our plant in Michoud Louisiana that they were the cause of the loss of Columbia..." That to me is pretty disgusting. In an incident like the loss of Columbia, there is no one, true "root cause". To assign blame to those foam technicians was disingenuous and just another instance of "passing the buck" that seems to happen so often in the post-mortem of NASA failures. NASA knew of e…
I'm just impressed he tells the story so honestly. He could have characterized what was said differently.
Re: How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
#10Every Shuttle in the fleet has had one or several extremely close scrapes with death. To look at the Shuttle record and see the history of calamity it's easy to think that we just had bad luck, but quite the opposite was the case. We were enormously lucky with the Shuttle, in a fairer world we would have lost more of them, and sooner. The Shuttle was plagued by many fundamental design flaws which combined to make it…
In that, the Shuttle was very much like the Concorde: a unique and complex system beyond the edge of knowledge (at its creation), full of flaws and working through a combination of sheer luck and heroic efforts.