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To: Ronaldus Magnus
Thank you for bringing up the Return to Launch Site and Transoceanic Abort Landing contingencies. I had been wondering about them myself. I would wager these will become standard operating procedure anytime ANYTHING even LOOKS wrong on any future shuttle launch.

I'll bet you they won't -- and *shouldn't*.

Except in the case of an obvious major malfunction, the abort procedure is likely to be far more dangerous (and untested) than just continuing with the flight plan. It would be irresponsibly risky to do an abort just because something "looks" unusual. It would be like having everyone parachute out of a commercial 747 whenever the pilot gets an unexpected warning light -- *way* overreaction, and more risky than the actual problem in most cases, not to mention damned expensive.

241 posted on 02/03/2003 1:48:41 AM PST by Dan Day
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To: Dan Day
I'll bet you they won't -- and *shouldn't*.

Sadly, "should" will not be the main issue in how NASA responds to this tragedy since technical righteousness has little to do with how organizations adapt to disasters. Assuming that tile damage is found to be a contributing factor to this loss, it would likely be determined that this was a fluke accident and that current procedures are within acceptable risk tolerances and should not be changed. However rational this conclusion would be, it would not be the outcome. Something substantial will have to change before another shuttle is launched.

No manager will accept a risk of repeated failure, no matter how remote the possibility. This heightened aversion to repeated risk has been studied extensively. The incident investigation panel will find something that could have been done to prevent this loss and procedures will be changed to avert this same type of incident in the future, no matter how irrational the solution may be. The outcome of this investigation will be chosen by the managers or even the politicians, not by the engineers.

251 posted on 02/03/2003 9:20:12 AM PST by Ronaldus Magnus
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