Free Republic

Thank you for correcting my statement Jim 0216. You got it right. NASA management could readily measure Faster and Cheaper with days and dollars. NASA management could not easily measure Better. This deficiency resulted in an accumulation of the risk of a major failure in the Columbia space exploration shuttle System.

There is an excellent book on the Challenger Disaster by Dianne Vaughn: “The Challenger Launch Decision - Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA,” published by The University of Chicago Press. I met several times with Dr Vaughn when she was writing the chapters that addressed the effects of the ‘Engineering Culture’ on causation of the Challenger Disaster.

Based on what I have learned about causation of the failures of the recent Oroville Dam Primary and Emergency Spillways, there are many important similarities with those factors that caused the Challenger Disaster. Key similarities include the “Normalization of Deviance” and the effects of the Engineering Culture addressed in this excellent book.

please send me an email address so i can send the Google Document link. i do not know how to post the link on FreeRepublic.

i worked for NASA Ames...Complex Systems Group. my assignment was to provide consulting expertise on System Risk Assessment that addressed human and organizational uncertainties. during that assignment, while i was in Houston with NASA, the Columbia Space shuttle was ‘brought back’. my work was then focused by NASA to helping with their investigation of the reasons for the crash of the Columbia shuttle. i was part of the NASA internal investigation group. in the end, a primary ‘root cause’ (there were many) was traced to a mantra that the head of the Johnson Space Center had issued:”Better, Faster, Cheaper.”NASA could accurately measure Faster and Better. they could not accurately measure Better. The thermal insulation tiles on the leading edges of the wings proved not to be ‘robust’...they were intolerant of damage from things like foam that was breaking off of the launch vehicle. all known before they received the photographs from space of the missing tiles. tiles had been missing before. so they decided to ‘bring the bird back home.’

much of this experience re-surfaced at Oroville in early February of this year.

i tried to send a response to you earlier today. i have not seen it posted, so i will try again.

you are correct in my observations of my ‘errors of commission’ regarding the citations of sources to photographs included in my report. i attributed them to Metabunk, and not to Free Republic.

please accept my apology for my attribution errors. i was hurrying too much on Sunday afternoon when i was trying to finish the revisions.

i have corrected the attribution errors. if you can provide directions, i can provide a Google Document link to the revised report - revision 3.

bob bea

your observations of my citation ‘errors of omission’ are correct. i have produced an updated document (Revision 3) that has proper citations to the graphics you developed. please send me an email address to which i can send a Google Document link to the revised report. please accept my apology for my errors of omission..trying to do to much on a late Sunday afternoon. your contributions to my understanding of what and why this happened are very much appreciated. Bob Bea