9 ms·

My main unanswered question here (I admit I haven't looked particularly hard for the answer) is what the false positive rate was. How many times have similarly

My main unanswered question here (I admit I haven't looked particularly hard for the answer) is what the false positive rate was. How many times have similarly major concerns raised, about things that were not ultimately an issue? Where the NASA administrators bombarded with such concerns for every launch, or were reports a relatively rare occurrence? Designing processes to appropriately address such concerns seems to hinge on the answer. [edit for grammar]

ncmncm 8y ago
When the engineers are saying no, and the administrators are saying yes, you don't need to know much more.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  See: Chernobyl
  - tantalor 8y ago
    Eh? The root causes of Chernobyl disaster were bad design and operator error. There were no ignored warnings.
    - LanceH 8y ago
      Perhaps a strong culture of not raising objections?
    - khuey 8y ago
      There were plenty of organizational failures in the design and conduct of the (failed) experiment which triggered the Chernobyl disaster.
    - ancorevard 8y ago
      > There were no ignored warnings. In a socialist society, good luck to you and your family when raising objections.
      - nkrisc 8y ago
        I think that's more a function of an authoritarian regime than socialist economic policy.
        dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Has there ever been a case of the latter without the former?
        penagwin 8y ago
        They're two different things, although they are closely related they are distinctly different. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass EDIT: Essentially "socialism" is an economic status, while Authoritarianism deals with social freedoms. Historically most "communist" societies are also Authoritarian, but that's not always the case.
        dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        I know that. That's specifically why I'm asking if anyone has managed to implement socialism (or communism) without being authoritarian about it.
        ancorevard 8y ago
        History is the bane for anyone peddling the idea that a socialist society and authoritarianism are two separate things.
        nkrisc 8y ago
        History we also the bane of anyone who thought man could walk on the moon.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      IIRC the lead operator was saying "continue" despite several of the engineers at the consoles telling him that things where about to go nuclear.
- abledon 8y ago
  I raise this concern when people push Nuclear Energy as the solution we need everywhere. How will we deal with inevitable human error and conflict of interest in these events, especially when the fallout could be deadly for many living beings on the planet.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Sure, but this concern should not be seen as an argument against building nuclear power plants - the same way no reasonable people considered Challenger as an argument against human space flight in general. Challenger was about learning the lessons, and doing better the next time. In case of nuclear power, it's also worth pondering the disastrous consequences of failing to switch away from fossil fuel power generation. And as a side note: we have to somehow learn to deal with "inevitable human error and conflict of interest" in events where failure near population centers might be catastrophic. We either have to, or give up on a lot of progress. Quite a lot of interesting technologies and research areas involve managing higher and higher energies.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      First comment I've seen from you I don't agree with. Not at all comparable. A Challenger disaster causes very little collateral damage. (Except fiscal.) A lot of people's lack of objection hinges on, dare I say, on the attitude "let them launch their over sized fire crackers into the sky, I don't care as long as it doesn't fall down on my head". Nuclear has the potential to create a whole no-go area around it. And I have very little faith in us humans as a wider group to learn to deal with conflict of interest. I believe mitigation is better. Widespread solar and other distributed tech like that might not hold the raw promise of nuclear but I hope it will give us a more robust energy system in the world, harder to disrupt either by malice, conflict of interest or by accident. Personally I am in love with things like nuclear fission powered rockets (nuclear engines could be started from bases in high orbit to avoid spewing dirty stuff into the atmosphere), submarine derived nuclear mini electric generator stations towed to coastal cities, fusion research and all that. I hope humanity in the long run will make use of such things...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- GuB-42 8y ago
  Engineers will always say no. It's the administrator's job to decide which kind of "no" is acceptable. Here, the problem is not the engineers saying no. It is that for some reason, administrators weren't able to properly discern trivial matters from life threatening ones.
  - mcv 8y ago
    Why is it the administrator's job? Why is the expert who best understands the issues, empowered to say no? Engineers should be qualified to carry responsibility for their own work.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>administrators weren't able to properly discern trivial matters from life threatening ones That suggests a very serious flaw in the overall capability, seriousness and knowledge of the project of the person making that decision. The administrators are not that stupid. Reading the article carefully. These people were worried about the launch to be delayed by an year. That subsequently brings up the question about how that would work for their careers. Also what is the downside for these people. Say the Shuttle crashes, they are not going to be billed $2 billion or charged with manslaughter. Heck, all they get is a job transfer in the worst possible case(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham#Columbia_disaster_and_investigation_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham#Columbia_disaster_an...). If you have literally no repercussions for making wrong decisions. You have now incentivized the administrators to make whatever decisions works best for them personally. No amount and quality of engineering reports are going to work from here.
- SomeHacker44 8y ago
  Not really. Engineers may be best qualified to quantify and estimate the risks. That does not mean they are best to judge whether the risks are acceptable. It is fair to imbue that responsibility in another role. Real world examples include, for software engineers, risks due to security issues or reliability issues. The business (perhaps a non-technical CEO) has to decide the prioritization of effort and funds on those items that will be acceptable to them to meet business goals while maintaining an acceptable level of risk. Not line engineers.
  - invalidOrTaken 8y ago
    The two shouldn't be siloed. I'm coming to the conclusion that engineers have a responsibility to get themselves promoted to get someone with understanding into authority.
    - SomeHacker44 8y ago
      The only/final authority (day-to-day) is the CEO. Who, of course reports to the board, which reports to the shareholders - in a large majority of business entities. As a many-time CTO, several time CEO, several time Chairman, I have had plenty of promotions but in the end you always do what your boss tells you (or resign). :)
pdonis 8y ago
> what the false positive rate was My understanding is that it was basically zero: there was no instance where technical experts raised a concern of this magnitude (remember that Boisjoly explicitly said in a memo the previous July that there was a risk of loss of the spacecraft and loss of life) that was not valid. > Where the NASA administrators bombarded with such concerns for every launch, or were reports a relatively rare occurrence? Critical flight risks were reviewed before every launch, but the number of them at any given time was small: AFAIK the SRB O-ring issue was the only critical flight risk before the Challenger launch. Another crucial piece of back story that isn't often mentioned: Boisjoly and the other engineers at Thiokol had already tried, the previous summer (after the July memo that Boisjoly wrote) to get all shuttle flights stopped until the SRB issue could be understood and fixed. NASA refused. So when they were trying to convince NASA not to launch the Challenger, the night before the flight, they were already handicapped because of that previous response by NASA.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  I thought that the first manned Saturn launch was enormously risky because the engines were unreliable. NASA gambled and won, but it could have gone the other way easily.
  - russdill 8y ago
    They had pogo oscillations that could cause the engine to shut down. There were abort procedures for thrust failures.
    - WalterBright 8y ago
      I doubt anyone wanted to try out the abort procedures with their own bodies atop a tank of burning rocket fuel shaking itself to pieces :-)
      - pdonis 8y ago
        It doesn't seem like anyone was enthusiastic about trying them even for practice. According to the Wikipedia page on space shuttle abort modes (linked to from the apollo abort modes page), NASA considered making the first flight of Columbia a practice RTLS abort; but the mission commander, John Young, declined, saying "let's not practice Russian roulette".
TimTheTinker 8y ago
You might be interested in the Rogers report (the commissioned report on the causes of the Challenger disaster; the committee included notable luminaries such as Feynman). At the end of each chapter it summarizes the findings of the committee. It lays a lot of blame on (among other things) managers accepting escalating risk with each successive launch because "it was OK last time", managerial structures and reporting procedures that failed to communicate critical information upward, and lack of organizational separation between engineering and QA. PDF linked here: https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/SignificantIncidents/assets/rogers_commission_report.pdf https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/SignificantIncidents/a... The Challenger disaster is a commonly used case study in engineering classes, especially when discussing engineering ethics or communication with clients/managers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- consp 8y ago
  During my time as an engineering student doing certain projects we had a tile on the wall which read (translated) "Because it was like that last year ..." to remind us to always check everything and not assume they did it correctly previously or it was a good idea. Maybe in their understanding it was correct, but you should never assume it is good for you unless you have checked it and you can explain why it is a good idea. This was not related to the challenger disaster in any way, just to show the ideas of the report are more broadly applied. > The Challenger disaster is a commonly used case study in engineering classes, especially when discussing engineering ethics or communication with clients/managers. Yes, and so is the Mars Climate Orbiter to some extend, though no ethical questions there.
  - randlet 8y ago
    There's still an ethical component with the orbiter because of the amount of money involved.
    - consp 8y ago

ncmncm 8y ago

When the engineers are saying no, and the administrators are saying yes, you don't need to know much more.

rangibaby 8y ago
See: Chernobyl
- tantalor 8y ago
  Eh? The root causes of Chernobyl disaster were bad design and operator error. There were no ignored warnings.
  - LanceH 8y ago
    Perhaps a strong culture of not raising objections?
  - khuey 8y ago
    There were plenty of organizational failures in the design and conduct of the (failed) experiment which triggered the Chernobyl disaster.
  - ancorevard 8y ago
    > There were no ignored warnings. In a socialist society, good luck to you and your family when raising objections.
    - nkrisc 8y ago
      I think that's more a function of an authoritarian regime than socialist economic policy.
      - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        Has there ever been a case of the latter without the former?
        penagwin 8y ago
        They're two different things, although they are closely related they are distinctly different. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_compass EDIT: Essentially "socialism" is an economic status, while Authoritarianism deals with social freedoms. Historically most "communist" societies are also Authoritarian, but that's not always the case.
        dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        I know that. That's specifically why I'm asking if anyone has managed to implement socialism (or communism) without being authoritarian about it.
      - ancorevard 8y ago
        History is the bane for anyone peddling the idea that a socialist society and authoritarianism are two separate things.
        nkrisc 8y ago
        History we also the bane of anyone who thought man could walk on the moon.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    IIRC the lead operator was saying "continue" despite several of the engineers at the consoles telling him that things where about to go nuclear.
abledon 8y ago
I raise this concern when people push Nuclear Energy as the solution we need everywhere. How will we deal with inevitable human error and conflict of interest in these events, especially when the fallout could be deadly for many living beings on the planet.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Sure, but this concern should not be seen as an argument against building nuclear power plants - the same way no reasonable people considered Challenger as an argument against human space flight in general. Challenger was about learning the lessons, and doing better the next time. In case of nuclear power, it's also worth pondering the disastrous consequences of failing to switch away from fossil fuel power generation. And as a side note: we have to somehow learn to deal with "inevitable human error and conflict of interest" in events where failure near population centers might be catastrophic. We either have to, or give up on a lot of progress. Quite a lot of interesting technologies and research areas involve managing higher and higher energies.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    First comment I've seen from you I don't agree with. Not at all comparable. A Challenger disaster causes very little collateral damage. (Except fiscal.) A lot of people's lack of objection hinges on, dare I say, on the attitude "let them launch their over sized fire crackers into the sky, I don't care as long as it doesn't fall down on my head". Nuclear has the potential to create a whole no-go area around it. And I have very little faith in us humans as a wider group to learn to deal with conflict of interest. I believe mitigation is better. Widespread solar and other distributed tech like that might not hold the raw promise of nuclear but I hope it will give us a more robust energy system in the world, harder to disrupt either by malice, conflict of interest or by accident. Personally I am in love with things like nuclear fission powered rockets (nuclear engines could be started from bases in high orbit to avoid spewing dirty stuff into the atmosphere), submarine derived nuclear mini electric generator stations towed to coastal cities, fusion research and all that. I hope humanity in the long run will make use of such things...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
GuB-42 8y ago
Engineers will always say no. It's the administrator's job to decide which kind of "no" is acceptable. Here, the problem is not the engineers saying no. It is that for some reason, administrators weren't able to properly discern trivial matters from life threatening ones.
- mcv 8y ago
  Why is it the administrator's job? Why is the expert who best understands the issues, empowered to say no? Engineers should be qualified to carry responsibility for their own work.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kamaal 8y ago
  >>administrators weren't able to properly discern trivial matters from life threatening ones That suggests a very serious flaw in the overall capability, seriousness and knowledge of the project of the person making that decision. The administrators are not that stupid. Reading the article carefully. These people were worried about the launch to be delayed by an year. That subsequently brings up the question about how that would work for their careers. Also what is the downside for these people. Say the Shuttle crashes, they are not going to be billed $2 billion or charged with manslaughter. Heck, all they get is a job transfer in the worst possible case(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham#Columbia_disaster_and_investigation_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Ham#Columbia_disaster_an...). If you have literally no repercussions for making wrong decisions. You have now incentivized the administrators to make whatever decisions works best for them personally. No amount and quality of engineering reports are going to work from here.
SomeHacker44 8y ago
Not really. Engineers may be best qualified to quantify and estimate the risks. That does not mean they are best to judge whether the risks are acceptable. It is fair to imbue that responsibility in another role. Real world examples include, for software engineers, risks due to security issues or reliability issues. The business (perhaps a non-technical CEO) has to decide the prioritization of effort and funds on those items that will be acceptable to them to meet business goals while maintaining an acceptable level of risk. Not line engineers.
- invalidOrTaken 8y ago
  The two shouldn't be siloed. I'm coming to the conclusion that engineers have a responsibility to get themselves promoted to get someone with understanding into authority.
  - SomeHacker44 8y ago
    The only/final authority (day-to-day) is the CEO. Who, of course reports to the board, which reports to the shareholders - in a large majority of business entities. As a many-time CTO, several time CEO, several time Chairman, I have had plenty of promotions but in the end you always do what your boss tells you (or resign). :)

pdonis 8y ago

> what the false positive rate was My understanding is that it was basically zero: there was no instance where technical experts raised a concern of this magnitude (remember that Boisjoly explicitly said in a memo the previous July that there was a risk of loss of the spacecraft and loss of life) that was not valid. > Where the NASA administrators bombarded with such concerns for every launch, or were reports a relatively rare occurrence? Critical flight risks were reviewed before every launch, but the number of them at any given time was small: AFAIK the SRB O-ring issue was the only critical flight risk before the Challenger launch. Another crucial piece of back story that isn't often mentioned: Boisjoly and the other engineers at Thiokol had already tried, the previous summer (after the July memo that Boisjoly wrote) to get all shuttle flights stopped until the SRB issue could be understood and fixed. NASA refused. So when they were trying to convince NASA not to launch the Challenger, the night before the flight, they were already handicapped because of that previous response by NASA.

WalterBright 8y ago
I thought that the first manned Saturn launch was enormously risky because the engines were unreliable. NASA gambled and won, but it could have gone the other way easily.
- russdill 8y ago
  They had pogo oscillations that could cause the engine to shut down. There were abort procedures for thrust failures.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    I doubt anyone wanted to try out the abort procedures with their own bodies atop a tank of burning rocket fuel shaking itself to pieces :-)
    - pdonis 8y ago
      It doesn't seem like anyone was enthusiastic about trying them even for practice. According to the Wikipedia page on space shuttle abort modes (linked to from the apollo abort modes page), NASA considered making the first flight of Columbia a practice RTLS abort; but the mission commander, John Young, declined, saying "let's not practice Russian roulette".

TimTheTinker 8y ago

You might be interested in the Rogers report (the commissioned report on the causes of the Challenger disaster; the committee included notable luminaries such as Feynman). At the end of each chapter it summarizes the findings of the committee. It lays a lot of blame on (among other things) managers accepting escalating risk with each successive launch because "it was OK last time", managerial structures and reporting procedures that failed to communicate critical information upward, and lack of organizational separation between engineering and QA. PDF linked here: https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/SignificantIncidents/assets/rogers_commission_report.pdf https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/SignificantIncidents/a... The Challenger disaster is a commonly used case study in engineering classes, especially when discussing engineering ethics or communication with clients/managers.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
consp 8y ago
During my time as an engineering student doing certain projects we had a tile on the wall which read (translated) "Because it was like that last year ..." to remind us to always check everything and not assume they did it correctly previously or it was a good idea. Maybe in their understanding it was correct, but you should never assume it is good for you unless you have checked it and you can explain why it is a good idea. This was not related to the challenger disaster in any way, just to show the ideas of the report are more broadly applied. > The Challenger disaster is a commonly used case study in engineering classes, especially when discussing engineering ethics or communication with clients/managers. Yes, and so is the Mars Climate Orbiter to some extend, though no ethical questions there.
- randlet 8y ago
  There's still an ethical component with the orbiter because of the amount of money involved.
  - consp 8y ago