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> It was a lesson NASA would have to learn again after the space shuttle Challenger disaster. And again after the space shuttle Columbia disaster. So... it's a

• brazzy 10y ago
  It happens basically everywhere, including politics.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• digi_owl 10y ago
  I can't help but wonder if it comes down to a generational thing. Each of these happened with roughly 20 years between them. Enough time for the senior engineers and such that experienced the last one to have left for some reason or other. And as computers gets involved everywhere, expect software issues to have ever more fatal consequences.
• robryk 10y ago
  Another interesting point is that ease of opening the hatch was a tradeoff that was pushed back and forth by (near) accidents. Mercury had a pyrotechnic hatch release mechanism. That triggered accidentally on Mercury-Redstone 4, which caused the approach to be changed for Apollo. The hatch on Apollo 1 had mechanical latching mechanism and was moved manually. Apollo 1 accident caused the hatch on later Apollos to have still mechanical latches, but easier to operate, and pneumatic mechanism that lifted the hatch.
• robryk 10y ago
  Another interesting point is that ease of opening the hatch was a tradeoff that was pushed back and forth by (near) accidents. Mercury had a pyrotechnic hatch release mechanism. That triggered accidentally on Mercury-Redstone 4, which caused the approach to be changed for Apollo. The hatch on Apollo 1 had mechanical latching mechanism and was moved manually. Apollo 1 accident caused the hatch on later Apollos to have still mechanical latches, but easier to operate, and pneumatic mechanism that lifted the hatch.
• robryk 10y ago
  Another interesting point is that ease of opening the hatch was a tradeoff that was pushed back and forth by (near) accidents. Mercury had a pyrotechnic hatch release mechanism. That triggered accidentally on Mercury-Redstone 4, which caused the approach to be changed for Apollo. The hatch on Apollo 1 had mechanical latching mechanism and was moved manually. Apollo 1 accident caused the hatch on later Apollos to have still mechanical latches, but easier to operate, and pneumatic mechanism that lifted the hatch.
• bvm 10y ago
  I think the term for this phenomenon is the 'normalisation of deviance'.
• woliveirajr 10y ago
  I don't think that Challenger and Columbia suffered the same problems. They weren't even close. Unless the problem is "there was some lack of understanding in the potential danger of it, and everything should be aborted setting a lower acceptable risk", or something like that. Which would not only impacted and prevented Challenger and Columbia, but would have stopped probably all other missions, since it's impossible to know for sure how high or low the acceptable-risk-bar should be put.
  • Waterluvian 10y ago
    Didn't Feynman famously conclude that Challenger was largely to the blame of a culture that didn't respect safety over timeline and budget? That part felt a lot like Apollo 1. I recall reading that there was a fundamental ignorance at critical levels of management t on how risk is even measured.
    • woliveirajr 10y ago
      Yes, in the end it can be disrespect for safety... but in the long run, it's easy to miss details that can lead to problems or disasters. Sometimes one person misses reporting something that seemed to be small, but have consequences. Sometimes one reports so much because, well, "hey I warned", but it gets lost on many others warnings that were issued and didn't happen, and people aren't sensitive to warnings anymore. It's not easy to set the limit on where everybody should be worried and where it's just acceptable or even noticed.