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Artemis II is not safe to fly

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Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#391

Post by ethbr1 »

njovin wrote: post #379
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fundamentally a human coordination problem that cannot be solved The more populated and complex an organization gets it becomes impossible to maintain a singular value vector (get these people around the moon safely) Everyone finds meta vectors (keep my job, reduce my own accountability) that maintain their own individual stability, such that if the whole thing fails they won’t feel liable

It can't be solved 100%, but it can be _mostly_ solved with systemic buy-in to the safety culture. Commercial aviation is a great example IMO. We've spent the last several decades making sure that every single person trained to participate in commercial aviation (maintenance, pilots, attendants, ATC, ground crew) knows their role in the safety culture, and that each of them not only has the power but the _responsibil…

Yes and... NASA space programs (doing rare, unknown things) are different than commercial aviation (doing a frequent, known thing with high safety). Best be careful applying solutions from the latter to the former.

Layering additional safety layers on top of a fundamentally misaligned organization process also generally balloons costs and delivery timelines (see: NASA).

The smarter play is to better align all stakeholders' incentives, from the top (including the president and Congress) to the bottom, to the desired outcome.

Right now most parties are working towards very different goals.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#392

Post by sfn42 »

adamsb6 wrote: post #361
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Are we? People saying "have a safe trip" is pretty weak evidence. The counter evidence is just about everything else going on, at least in the US. Relaxed worker safety standards, weakened environmental protections, and generally moving as fast as possible.

My kids are going to be legally mandated to be in car seats until they’re about 12 years old.

Oh wow what a tragedy. You think maybe there's reasons for that mandate? Like maybe it saves children's lives?

But sure everything would be better if any moron was allowed to decide how to keep their own kids safe.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#393

Post by withinboredom »

monkeywork wrote: post #375
withinboredom wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer if we just wrote off space-x and pretend they don't exist.

why because "elon bad" ?? cut your nose off to spite your face if you want but the rest of us will recognize the importance of space-x and be grateful it is here.

This is about going to the moon. Space-x is over budget and extremely late. It has nothing to do with the management there, only that it is better to come up with a solution without them.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#394

Post by rdiddly »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #332
actimod wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is bound to happen again and again considering humans are so oblivious to safety.

humans are so oblivious to safety It seems that in modern times, humans focus on safety almost to the exclusion of everything else. As much as the more traditional salutations "godspeed" or "have a nice day", we're even more likely to hear "drive safe" or "have a safe trip" or "be safe". We're very nearly paralyzed by insisting that everything must be maximally safe. Surely you've heard the mantra "...if it saves jus…

America has been craving safety since 9/11, and it has made cowards of everybody, so in some sense I would agree.

But taking a risk regarding an unknown or to expand knowledge or actually accomplish something is one thing. Ignoring known and mitigable risks just to save money, save face, meet a deadline or please a bureaucrat is another.

Anyway these clowns even fail your criterion, because by covering up the results of the first launch/experiment, they are not being up front about a risk.

In my opinion this is a top-down, human hierarchy thing. CEOs and agency administrators create and set an organization's culture and expectations.

The irony is that a faulty heat shield is an engineering challenge that real engineers would love to tackle; all you have to do is turn them loose on the problem, let them fix it. They live for that. I find it actually aesthetically offensive that the organization and its culture has instead taught them venal, circumspect careerism, which is cowardice of a different kind.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#397

Post by pas »

njovin wrote: post #379
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fundamentally a human coordination problem that cannot be solved The more populated and complex an organization gets it becomes impossible to maintain a singular value vector (get these people around the moon safely) Everyone finds meta vectors (keep my job, reduce my own accountability) that maintain their own individual stability, such that if the whole thing fails they won’t feel liable

It can't be solved 100%, but it can be _mostly_ solved with systemic buy-in to the safety culture. Commercial aviation is a great example IMO. We've spent the last several decades making sure that every single person trained to participate in commercial aviation (maintenance, pilots, attendants, ATC, ground crew) knows their role in the safety culture, and that each of them not only has the power but the _responsibil…

Safety culture requires the ability to learn from mistakes, the capability to ground planes (without that turning into a political problem), and someone to foot the bill. (Which did not always happen, Boeing MCAS with a SPoF AoA sensor without retraining. A chain of cost-cutting decisions. And of course there were usual problems with market distorting subsidies to both Boeing and Airbus.)

NASA's missions are way too big, because the science payloads are unique, so they "can't do" launch early, launch often. And then things sit in storage for years, waiting for budget. (And manned flights are in an even worse situation of course, because they are two-way.)

And there's too much sequential dependency in the marquee projects (without enough slack to be able to absorb problems if some earlier dependent outcome is unfavorable), or in other words because of time and cost constraints the projects did not include enough proper development, testing, verification.

NASA is doing too many things, and too much of it is politics. It should be more like a grant organization, rewarding cost-efficient scientific (and engineering) progress, in a specific broad area ("spaaace!"), like the NIH (but hopefully not like the NIH).

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#398

Post by pruetj »

nikanj wrote: post #291
turtletontine wrote: post #74

Someone please answer my obvious question. We sent successful missions to the moon sixty years ago. What heat shield material was used for the Apollo capsules, and why would we need something different now? Are the Artemis mission parameters totally different in a way that requires a new design? Or was Apollo incredibly dangerous and we got lucky they didn’t all fail catastrophically? The article mentions Orion is mu…

The very first Apollo attempt killed three astronauts. We would need something different now because the cold-war-crazy days are behind us, and we don't push ahead with missions that might end up in casualties.

We do push ahead with missions that might end up in casualties. It's just a matter of risk tolerance.

It's impossible to say a space flight mission has 0% chance of casualty. It might be impossible to say that for virtually any activity involving humans.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#399

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

wongarsu wrote: post #283
shadowofneptune wrote: post #276

A lot of the discussion overlooks or wishes to avoid an uncomfortable problem with the Artemis program: Artemis III's hardware will not be ready for the forseeable future. The program has had multiple shakeups so far. This is a program heading for cancellation. The flight risk is surely acceptable if this is not the first flight of many but the last.

The threat of a Chinese moon landing keeps the Artemis program alive. As long as Artemis is slowly working towards the goal of eventually landing Americans on the surface of the moon and eventually building a habitat they can be injected with money and manpower whenever geopolitical or ideological demands arise. If it was canceled outright it would be much harder to react to any Chinese success

>The threat of a Chinese moon landing keeps the Artemis program alive.

I don't disagree but I also don't really get it. The US performed the feat almost 60 years ago when the technology to do it didn't exist at the beginning of the program, and people didn't even know if it would be possible.

Today it's pretty well understood as a funding challenge more than anything. And sending people with the level of automation we have available today is essentially just a political move.

Re: Artemis II is not safe to fly

#400

Post by rglover »

> That context is a moon program that has spent close to $100 billion and 25 years with nothing to show for itself, at an agency that has just experienced mass firings and been through a near-death experience with its science budget. The charismatic new Administrator has staked his reputation on increasing launch cadence, and set an explicit goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before President Trump’s term expires in January of 2029.

So, rushing, to fulfill an arbitrary PR schedule dictated by further chasing of the yesteryears of America instead of calmly evaluating "what did we screw up, what needs to be fixed, and what can we do about it in order to bring this into reality, safely?"

"Things of quality have no fear of time" should be carved into the walls at NASA.

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