Re: Challenger

On 6/10/2024 2:34 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/9/2024 1:05 PM, Phil Hobbs wrote:

john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:

On Sun, 9 Jun 2024 13:28:58 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
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john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Story-Heroism-Disaster-Space/dp/198217661X
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This is a very well researched and written book, and a sad, ghastly
story.
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It reminds me that humans have no purpose in space but to die.
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Of course most folks here don’t really think that we have any purpose here
either.
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Cheers
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Phil Hobbs

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Whatever our purpose, killing astronauts probably doesn't help.
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Spending hundreds of billions on spam-in-a-can is a waste of resources
that could truly help.
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The book is fascinating. The fatheads that decided to launch cared
about power, money, and politics. The investigations after the
disaster, the same. A few very brave engineers runined their careers
to literally shout the truth. And Richard Feynman, who knew he was
dying of cancer.
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Sounds like an expanded rehash of the presidential commission report.  For
the other side of the story, I highly recommend Diane Vaughan’s “The
Challenger Launch Decision”.
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Cheers
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Phil Hobbs
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I think it's less about any particular individual's greed or will to
power but  more about the dangers of formal "processes" in large
organizations which have become so large and ossified that the processes
become circular and self-referential.
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In some particularly idiotic cases the processes don't have to become
particularly large or self-referential to cause disaster, the classic
"Well the designer signed off on the modifications to the plans so that
means they reviewed them and they're safe for the contractor to
implement.." "Wait, the designer signed off on them because they thought
the contractor had reviewed them...didn't they?" has definitely cost
lives before, and probably will again
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 Nah, it was much more careful and conscientious than that, and so even more
tragic.
 Vaughan was expecting to find misconduct and evil capitalism, but her
research showed the opposite. She’s an honest and intelligent woman, so she
presented what she found in a compelling way, despite it being sociology.
;)
 Folks like that don’t grow on trees, which is why I recommend the book so
highly.
 Cheers
 Phil Hobbs
 

" In retelling how the decision unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders, when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong, normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them."
I guess I'm not grasping from the summary of the Vaughan book how its conclusions greatly differ from the conclusions of Feynman et al.
Surely "normalization of deviance" counts as "misconduct" of some fashion.
As for "evil capitalism" that seems like a strange thing to look for in the Shuttle program given that IIRC it's one of those projects that's pointed to as a quintessential example of a government make-work project.
It surely made some paydays for some contractors but they were mostly companies like Thiokol, Rockwell and NAA who were heavily into the military-industrial pie to begin with. The design was compromised from the start due to DOD requirements for a thousand miles of crossrange for once-around polar missions to scare the Soviets, which it likely did, but it made a lousy space freighter or pure science vessel.
Under Lord Musk's guidance spaceflight has likely never been more profitable, or more generally uninteresting to the public-at-large.