Post-Columbia NASA Hunkers Down - Officials’ view of shortcomings is a bad omen for future clash

MSNBC ^ | July 23, 2003 | James Oberg

[anymouse]

Space ping.

[RightWhale]

they couldn’t have done anything wrong because of their pure intentions.

Way to go, Oberg. We know karma is unaffected by intention. The action counts, nothing else matters.

Results matter, NASA. You didn't want to kill the astronauts?

Page One news. NOT.

[mrb1960]

“Kraft or Kranz would never have let it go by,” one of them told MSNBC.com by e-mail, referring to the legendary Apollo-era flight directors Christopher Kraft and Gene Kranz. “They would have demanded to know on what basis this impact was considered safe — or demanded a way to determine whether there was any damage or not.”

Both these guys are class acts.

[hopespringseternal]

“None of us felt that the analysis was faulty,” Ham said Tuesday. “We do rely on the systems experts. That is the way that we operate.”

There was a time when this sort of thing ended careers. What you feel is moot, what you know and what happens counts.

Now, all we care about is subjectives like sincerity and intentions.

No wonder NASA thinks getting off the ground qualifies as an eighth wonder of the world. They are midgets standing on the shoulders of giants imagining themselves to be giants. Without the foundation and framework laid down by their predecessors, they would have as much chance of getting to space as an eighth grade B-team has of winning the superbowl.

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

“We lost the crew and we lost the vehicle,” he conceded, “... but it is not because of lack of good intent or lack of effort on anybody’s part. ... It’s really difficult to me to attribute blame to any individual personalities or people. We can find mistakes in analyses and we can find places where we weren’t good enough. But it’s not because of malice or ill intent.”

"Aviation in and of itself, is not inherently dangerous. But, to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

[SteveH]

"None of us felt that the analysis was faulty,” Ham said Tuesday. “We do rely on the systems experts. That is the way that we operate."

This philosophy would never get anyone close to the moon. It would not even get anyone safely airborne above their belly button.

This is indicative of a design philosophy that came into vogue during the '80s IMHO, in which development time and costs were cut via cutting safety and system testing, effectively letting the customer be the beta tester. This philosophy has a proven track record for companies such as Microsoft, but then no one proposed using DOS or Windows to control anything life-critical on the order of shuttle flights or nuclear reactors.

It definitely represents IMHO a change in design philosophy, and a change for the worse.

[mabelkitty]

Bring it on! The POLITICALLY CORRECT culture of NASA is what is wrong.

That foam was changed to a more ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE composite in order to satisfy the special interest flunkies who run this country from behind the curtain.

Will the public be allowed to see what really goes on at NASA, or will they be lied to again.

[dasboot]

Kranz would have said "I screwed up; no excuses: here's my resignation."

[Helms]

Posted by dasboot to anymouse; TLBSHOW

TLBSHOW can be found in the Valley of the Damned/Banned at Liberty Post

[Movemout]

The crux of the problem is easy to understand. Insulating foam from an external tank was never meant to peel off and strike the shuttle. This is an anomaly. It should have been addressed as an anomaly that presents a risk to the shuttle. NASA convinced itself that such an anomaly was harmless. Kraft or Kranz would have been on it in an instant. Anything that deviates from predictive analyses warrants corrective action. The fact that it wasn't recognized as such is indicative of where NASA is today.

Bill Readdy promulgated a letter last week to shore up the troops. It essentially said, "Don't be defensive. Do your job and lets get on with the process." The whole tone of the letter was defensive. Anybody see anything wrong with this picture?

[Boundless]

“I don’t believe anyone is at fault for this,” said Ham.

Translation: "I just saw a draft of the CAIB report"

“Nobody wanted to do any harm to anyone.
Obviously, nobody wants to hurt the crew.”

Translation: "We aren't malicious, just incompetent,
but we don't even know it."

_________

If we don't fire managers for losing two orbiters,
and two crew, for the same reason*, then what DO
we fire managers for?

* "same reason": continuing to fly with out-of-spec
launch anomalies, and not bothering to accurately
assess the risks (until fully realized).

[dasboot]

NASA: DEBRIS NOT TO BLAME

Posted by dasboot to dtel

On News/Activism 02/06/2003 8:09 AM EST #24 of 54

They knew that there were problems with impact damage from foam and/or ice tearing off. They knew that there was some amount of damage that could be tolerated.

They knew that there was an amount of damage that , dependent upon location and depth, would possibly doom the re-entry.

They knew that in order to initiate abort (acknowledged to be risky , but safer that re-entry with compromised heat-shielding), the damage would have to be assessed, real-time, pre-orbit.

And finally, I understand they knew that significant damage to the tiles would be indicated by white areas where the hard surface had been shed.

The simple and obvious solution is to place monitoring cameras on the tank-struts, facing the underside of the vehicle, hard-wired to the cockpit, and visible to the ommander and pilot, who can then make the decision to continue to orbit or abort, based upon something better than guess-work and wishful thinking. The determination then rests where it should: with the commander and pilot.

They don't know for certain what brought the thing down; and because of this goof, we may never know.

Can anyone tell me that the solution was beyond the reasonable consideration or discovery of the NASA Brain Trust?

Can anyone tell me that cameras were impossible? I've seen film of launches, taken by just such "fisheye" cameras, that were mounted on the exterior of Saturn rockets, right in the slipstream.

Can anyone tell me that this kind of mistake would have been given a pass by the early NASA pilots?

Bad. Very bad.

With a little foresight, this thing might have been avoided, the crew and vehilce saved, if indeed the tiles were the cause. At least the commander and pilot would have been given a fair shot at recovering themselves.

I don't think it matters a whit what the cause was, with regard to the poor quality of mission ops.

Sprites, elfs, and metiorites are acts of God; the fact that they couldn't assess the space-worthiness of the vehicle--in light of what was known before-hand--is, I think, inexcusable.

One last thing: a few are discounting the force with which 'exfoliated' foam or ice could have on the tiles because of the relative velocity and short distance to the wing. But I want you to think about the last time you were doing 65 on the highway, and a sheet of ice lifted from the hood of your car and smacked the windshield. Very short distance; same relative velocity; big bang, and sometimes a cracked windshield.

[dasboot]

Gee, I never recall TLBSHOW to be the sort to git hisself BANNED! (looks over own shoulder)

Liberty Post?? Pretender to FR?

[thepainster]

The officials also said they thought it was important that they had good intentions and tried hard.

Sounds like the PC pablem that current generations are being spoon fed in our public school systems. As demonstrated by this trajedy, good intentions will get you killed in space flight.

[thepainster]

Nasa knew about the problems with the "environmentally correct" foam. When they switched to it, they beagn seeing much larger number of tiles being damaged by the foam breaking off during liftoff.

They even went so far as to take some data at the Southwest Research Institute by firing the foam at tiles. This data was never released to the public. They obviously rationalized this data away.

After the Columbia crash, the investigative team repeated this test with foam of the same size that was seen breaking off in the liftoff video. This was data was released to the public and it has become the smoking gun.

NASA is in severe CYA mode. Heads need to roll. Major changes need to be made. If NASA continues with business as usual, more disasters will occur.

[dasboot]

Right along with the memory of where I was when JKK was shot will be the memory of the gasps of the engineers and observers in the film of the recent foam-shooting test.

BTW , you did notice the "Debris" post was from February? A few folks on that and other threads, were poo-pooing about the foam, and defending the McEngineers in the current program. I feel a little vindicated. Pardon the 'I told you so."

[gwmoore]

ping.... your comments are invited.

Greg

[snopercod]

Sure...throw red meat in front of a starving dog.

Back in a while to respond.

[XBob]

thanks for the ping.

"“None of us FELT that the analysis was faulty,” Ham said Tuesday."

Here is the crux of the problem,

How does the song go: "Feelings ...."

we are trying to run a space program on 'feelings and good intentions', just so long as no one 'feels' bad.

As far as the analysis went, I would have flunked any of my 10th grade math students who turned in such a crappy spread sheet, she 'felt' wasn't faulty. Just a quick glance at it shows how pathetically inadequate it was, if she had any 'sense'. Next time we need to put pictures on the keyboards 'hot dog', 'hamburger','big mac', 'whopper'.

about 15 years ago, my brother, NASA engineer, was trying to hire a new, young engineer, right out of college. He was having trouble, because most of them didn't even know what an 'iso' (isometric drawing) was, or how to make one.

HAM must be one of the 'feely' managers, as that apparently is her whole defense.

We couldn't get to the moon again to save our asses.