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The core of the argument is in the response to the incident: > To calm things down, official NASA spokesmen provided very preliminary underestimates in how big

The core of the argument is in the response to the incident: > To calm things down, official NASA spokesmen provided very preliminary underestimates in how big and how fast the station's spin had been. These were presented without any caveat that the numbers were unverified—and the real figures turned out to be much worse. The Russian side, for its part, dismissed the attitude deviation as a routine bump in a normal process of automatic docking and proclaimed there would be no formal incident investigation, especially any that would involve their American partners. Indeed, both sides seemed to agree that the sooner the incident was forgotten, the better. The author, who worked in Mission Control operations in the 1980s, argues that similar signs of degrading safety standards and minimizing mistakes led up to the Challenger tragedy.

webreac 5y ago
Degrading safety is a very plausible explanation. Another one is that they know exactly what went wrong and they cover for each other because the mistake is so ridiculous that it would tarnish their reputation.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That's the same explanation, as thoroughly explained in the article -- politics is degrading and overriding safety.
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    I disagree - if they are covering for a minor, understood and embarrassing mistake, then it does not mean they haven't learned lessons or that they aren't improving those standards and changing processes internally. It simply means they don't want to talk about it to the public, and want to keep it off the 6pm news. I'm not saying they *have* learned any lesson or that there isn't incompetence/laziness somewhere. I'm just saying that trying to keep the incident low-key is not itself an indication of that. As someone who has worked in IT operations, there are plenty of times where I have seen a near-outage occur because of a bad process. And many times, the offending team would quietly get their shit together but also not publicize their mistake, so as not to incur the wrath of execs.

webreac 5y ago

Degrading safety is a very plausible explanation. Another one is that they know exactly what went wrong and they cover for each other because the mistake is so ridiculous that it would tarnish their reputation.

alisonkisk 5y ago
That's the same explanation, as thoroughly explained in the article -- politics is degrading and overriding safety.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  I disagree - if they are covering for a minor, understood and embarrassing mistake, then it does not mean they haven't learned lessons or that they aren't improving those standards and changing processes internally. It simply means they don't want to talk about it to the public, and want to keep it off the 6pm news. I'm not saying they *have* learned any lesson or that there isn't incompetence/laziness somewhere. I'm just saying that trying to keep the incident low-key is not itself an indication of that. As someone who has worked in IT operations, there are plenty of times where I have seen a near-outage occur because of a bad process. And many times, the offending team would quietly get their shit together but also not publicize their mistake, so as not to incur the wrath of execs.