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Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

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Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#41

Post by wdurden »

wdurden wrote: post #40
dmix wrote: post #14

> this foam, falling nine times faster than a fired bullet Wouldn’t the foam initially be travelling as fast as the spacecraft? So it’s just the time between it’s release and hitting the wing to accelerate.

Don't dare try to question the narrative with physics and science. A Feynman and an O ring in ice water or a Tufte on visualizations will always be hired in at certain levels. For heaven's sake never go down the rabbit hole about how often the shuttles lost heat tiles. It was the foam, unforeseen and unforeseeable.

Oh, but yes, that PP slide was bad. Symantic's More on a Mac Plus would have allowed a better job 15 years earlier.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#42

Post by dekhn »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

You're being downvoted because the entire process that lead to this decision has been massively analyzed and the root causes were determined.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#43

Post by ubercore »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

I came in knowing the outcome, and roughly the point being made, but still found the conclusion of the slide hard to suss out. There were other failures in the chain as well for sure, but I don't think this is just a hit job on NASA vendors.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#44

Post by zelos »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

Maybe, but I don't think anyone can deny that it is an appalling slide. I count 3 spelling and grammatical errors alone.

It looks like the bad "before" example in a presentation skills workshop. This was created by engineers working on life and death issues involving billions of dollars of hardware.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#45

Post by giantg2 »

tgflynn wrote: post #27

> There were a number of options. The astronauts could perform a spacewalk and visually inspect the hull. NASA could launch another Space Shuttle to pick the crew up. Or they could risk re-entry. That's not how I remember it being presented to the public. The official word at the time was that there were no feasible rescue options. Yes, they could have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage but if it had been bad the…

I agree. I think there is a disconnect on what was known at the time vs what this retrospective article is assuming was known at the time.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#46

Post by einpoklum »

commandlinefan wrote: post #36

> Imagine if the engineers had put up a slide with just: “foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data.” Then they would have been fired unceremoniously and replaced with engineers that knew better than to make their bosses look bad. (who themselves would then, of course, been held responsible for apparently preventable deaths). Stop blaming the engineers for this stuff. This is the fault of the timeline cha…

> Then they would have been fired unceremoniously and replaced with engineers that knew better than to make their bosses look bad

More engineers need to risk this and raise red flags, publicly, about potential lethal faults. Yes, you will suffer if you get fired; but our education as engineers (if I may include myself among those ranks despite being a software guy...) must be such that we would find _not_ raising the red flag shameful and despicable. So much so that it would seem far worse than losing one's job.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#47

Post by gambiting »

tgflynn wrote: post #27

> There were a number of options. The astronauts could perform a spacewalk and visually inspect the hull. NASA could launch another Space Shuttle to pick the crew up. Or they could risk re-entry. That's not how I remember it being presented to the public. The official word at the time was that there were no feasible rescue options. Yes, they could have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage but if it had been bad the…

Yeah I definitely remember reading a full analysis about what would be required to actually launch a second shuttle in time to rescue them, and it would require nothing less than war effort for an operation never attempted before, and of which literally every single part would have to work first try, with no delays, and even then there was barely enough time to do it.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#48

Post by lostcolony »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

Tufte is not an employee of NASA. He is an employee of Yale, and a thought leader in information design. HE was the one saying the slide design is poor, and doing so not in the interest of assigning blame, but in the interest of highlighting ways to communicate better.

To say that "the slide doesn't have any issues" is laughable on the face of it. But it's immaterial; your claim is that "NASA just ignored the engineers from Boeing" rather than "NASA didn't understand the engineers from Boeing". Communication is a two party process, and believe it or not, NASA isn't actually incentivized to take risks that lead to loss of life and damages public perception of them; it's far more likely they didn't understand the stakes, and looking at the slide from that perspective, it's very easy to see why they would not have understood the stakes even if the Boeing engineers did.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#49

Post by einpoklum »

jimmaswell wrote: post #25

> This allowed NASA managers to imply a hierarchy of importance in their head: the writing lower down and in smaller font was ignored These managers were REALLY that braindead? These are NASA managers in charge of life-or-death decisions, and their dull eyes glaze over as spittle puddles underneath them because they're too stupid to read one whole entire paragraph worth of text without ignoring subheadings because th…

> These managers were REALLY that braindead? These are NASA managers in charge of life-or-death decisions

If you're in charge of 10000 life-or-death decisions, and are on a tight schedule, you are unlikely to give each of them its proper attention.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#50

Post by giantg2 »

ubercore wrote: post #43
giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

I came in knowing the outcome, and roughly the point being made, but still found the conclusion of the slide hard to suss out. There were other failures in the chain as well for sure, but I don't think this is just a hit job on NASA vendors.

The title of this post is claiming this slide killed 7 people. That's a pretty bold and accusatory claim that seems to leave out the other failures, right?
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