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NASA puts jet propulsion lab on blast over Psyche mission failures
- cardamomo 4y agoNASA put out a press release as well. It has similar details and a link to the report itself. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/as-psyche-mission-moves-forward-nasa-responds-to-independent-review https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/as-psyche-mission-moves-f...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mlindner 4y agoAgreed. Your link is the better link. "Put on blast" is wording that shouldn't really be used on hacker news for a technical subject. Also here's the pdf link that's at the bottom of that page to the full set of comments along with NASA's responses: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_irb_report_and_response_nov_2022.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_... Unfortunately it's a PDF of raw image scans.
- geuis 4y agoAgreed about the wording. I understand adapting reporting to appeal to a wider, younger audience, but it also cheapens and lessens the importance of the reporting.
- kbenson 4y agoThere's a long history in news of using a play on words for your story title to make it more catchy. I wonder if it's just that it's a less common term in your own experience that makes it more objectionable? I could see Ars Technica making the same pun, and I wonder if they would get as much flak.
- smolder 4y agoIt's not just a less common term, it's a recently minted one, as in maybe 20 years ago. It's vernacular that made its way into spaces like twitter to get more widespread and mainstream adoption. I'm sure people who aren't part of those adoptive subcultures are frequently puzzled when they encounter the phrase, because it's grammatically obtuse.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoCan that be made the official link? I really don’t like the other site (we’re not supposed to complain about that kind of thing, so I won’t).
- everybodyknows 4y agoIndeed. "Put on blast" is first of all slang and therefore anti-intellectual, ageist, and soon to become antiquated itself. Worse, it's ambiguous: A web search turns up alternate meanings, either public vilification, or publicizing of personal details (aka "doxxing).
- edlinfan 4y ago> Important for these COVID-19-related findings was the lack of informal communication that the project team suffered in the absence of face-to-face interactions. In the past, JPL's success typically relied on senior members of projects and technical line organizations "walking the floor", dropping in for conversations at office doorways, or chatting in the cafeteria. Without these informal communication mechanisms, contextual clues and situational awareness were lost. Team members working the floor found it difficult to report problems up the chain over Webex, especially when attendees kept their cameras off." > ... The lockdown conditions contributed significantly to the question of why Psyche and JPL leadership did not know of the severity of the problems with GNC and V&V until it was too late to correct course. > ... The IRB recommends that, given these exceptional circumstances, the team should minimize remote work conditions. JPL has been suffering a brain drain over the last few years, and it sounds like the remaining cadre of managers are not so competent. Remote work is a convenient scapegoat, but it is far more likely that the problem is an ossified chain of command and a lackluster set of communication tools (Webex, shudder).
- tjr225 4y agoWebEx does exactly the same thing as any of the other video chat clients. At least it did the last time I used it.
- quacked 4y agoI worked at NASA JSC for three years in the ISS cargo division; although I never interacted with the JPL teams, I did coordinate with a ton of people across SpaceX, Northop-Grumman, JAXA, ESA, Boeing, etc. I simply cannot explain the level of organizational dysfunction in that institution. In many cases there were thoughtful and talented people in the job roles, but there were many blinding, glaring failures of basic information storage and availability across the entire org. My favorite example is having a hard time finding all of the requested cargo transactions for resupply flights in the cargo database because the "desired flight" field was a free-text entry instead of a drop-down menu connected to a central list of NASA flight title strings. I hammered on that issue for fifteen months straight and got absolutely nowhere with it, and I had a list of similar issues about seventy items long. If all of my issues had been addressed we probably could have reduced the number of people in the loop in cargo logistics by half. The article is talking about leadership "walking the floor"--we had something similar happen, where I couldn't convince any of the major ISS divisions to fix their cargo data so we didn't have to interact face-to-face, but their higher-ups would call and email me to double check the status of a cargo request. They were "walking the floor" and "staying in touch", but only because they wouldn't (or couldn't) adopt any policies to make a streamlined system work. I don't know if the same thing is happening at JPL, but I have to assume that it is, given the pathological nature of the repeated communication failures I saw. A well-organized institution should be able to provide clear visibility into their data and projects just through smart organization of their digital assets. If they don't have that basic competence, then they would be extra screwed by remote work.
- avalys 4y ago“Put on blast”? Never heard this idiom.
- iepathos 4y agoI think it comes from british slang where to blast someone means to exclaim annoyance at them. May have heard the exclamation like "oh blast it" when something goes wrong.
- sammalloy 4y agoThanks. I’ve never heard this in the states.
- blamazon 4y agoI've only ever heard it in the episode "I will put your kids on blast" of the podcast Harmontown: https://old.reddit.com/r/Harmontown/comments/80z0w6/episode_278_i_will_put_your_kids_on_blast/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Harmontown/comments/80z0w6/episode_...
- SoftTalker 4y agoDon't watch Family Guy then? "Blast!" is one of Stewie's favorite expletives.
- detaro 4y agohttps://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+someone+on+blast https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/put+someone+on+blast
- version_five 4y agoput me on blast on MTV "Yeah, he's cute, but I think he's married to Kim, hee-hee!" https://genius.com/Eminem-the-real-slim-shady-lyric https://genius.com/Eminem-the-real-slim-shady-lyric From an eminem song, from ~the year 2000. That's the only place I'd heard it before
- 4y ago
- clnq 4y agoThe culture of ignoring clearly-voiced problems has killed so many projects and companies.
- cardamomo 4y agoI'm curious which projects and companies you're thinking of. Would you mind sharing?
- saagarjha 4y agoProbably easier to make a list of products that don’t suffer from this.
- fragmede 4y agoIt would take a college class on the subject to do the topic justice, but the one that comes to mind readily for me is the Space shuttle O-ring disaster.
- dylan604 4y agoColumbia insulation damage as well. I'm not as familiar with the results of investigations with Columbia though to know if there was advice being ignored there too.
- bumby 4y agoI don’t think there were the comparable warnings like Challenger. They actually struggled to recreate the impact in the lab afterwards. Talking to someone working on it, when they did finally recreate the effect, it was using parameters outside the test scope. From that perspective, it sounds very much like it was an unknown. * You can find the investigation report online [1] * yes, they knew of the foam shedding, and knew it was out of spec. But they didn’t realize it could puncture the tiles in that manner. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html
- joshuahedlund 4y agoI don’t have any insight about the delay but this year I read A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, a memoir of the project manager behind the original proposal for this mission. While not exclusively about Psyche it was a great book with an interesting behind-the-scenes into the NASA mission selection process. It got me excited for the mission and sad about the delay.
- colordrops 4y agoScifi story: private interests bribed management at JPL to scuttle the mission so they could send a secret mission to collect the loot for themselves... or protect their precious metal cartel from devaluation.
- hobs 4y agoThis is already the plot of - spoilers - Don't Look Up.
- colordrops 4y agoI watched it, and either my memory sucks, or that wasn't the plot.
- ahepp 4y agoFrom Wikipedia: > When news of Orlean's sex scandal with her Supreme Court nominee Sheriff Conlon is exposed, she distracts from the bad publicity by finally confirming the threat and announcing a project to strike and divert the comet using nuclear weapons. >The mission successfully launches, but Orlean abruptly aborts it when Peter Isherwell, the billionaire CEO of BASH Cellular and another top donor, discovers that the comet contains trillions of dollars worth of rare-earth elements. The White House agrees to commercially exploit the comet by fragmenting and recovering it from the ocean, using technology proposed by BASH in a scheme that has not undergone peer review. >Orlean cuts Russia, India, and China out of the comet-mining deal, so they prepare a joint effort to deflect the comet, only for their spacecraft to explode. BASH's attempt at breaking the comet apart also goes awry and everyone realizes that humanity is doomed.
- snapetom 4y agoIt was a major plot driver, but not the whole plot. You probably forgot it because the movie itself was forgettable. The plot and writing was low-effort and lazy.
- xqcgrek2 4y agoDifferent NASA centers have very different cultures, with their pros and cons. JPL is known to have a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver.
- lisper 4y agoI used to work at JPL and I have been a vocal critic of theirs at times but I think you are completely off the mark here. Most of the time JPL delivers. (It's actually pretty amazing when you have seen how the sausage gets made.)
- gateorade 4y agoThis is kind of a weird take. I used to work at JPL but I didn't stay due to it not being the right cultural fit for me. With that said, my perspective as a former NASA insider is that JPL is known for the exact opposite, underperforming and overdelivering. I mean, they have a nearly perfect track record of mission success (sorry Beagle) and when the missions do succeed they often persist for many times over the original lifetime requirement. Additionally, and yes this is a vast oversimplification, if you just look generally at space exploration missions, they are far more prolific than any other NASA center.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago> This is kind of a weird take. I used to work at JPL but I didn't stay due to it not being the right cultural fit for me. Any war stories you want to share?
- Kukumber 4y ago- no effort - no responsibility - overpaid with free money The society you deserve.. This team of former NASA employees are a relic of the past unfortunately, they should investigate other companies too, including Microsoft, that would be fun :)
- stefan_ 4y agoWell the review board found that senior executives failed in their responsibilities and had no project insight (but remain today), so on that part you are correct, but they also found that the actual engineers were understaffed and underpaid in face of aggressive hiring from space startups. The solution they propose, of course, is to cancel remote work, the root of all problems when the worker bees won't budge.
- oses 4y agothat part definitely stood out to me as well. I mean, clearly there are some parts of spacecraft / mission design that are best done in person, but the recommendations of the IRB definitely won't help the staffing issues.
- fakethenews2022 4y agoThat is bias on your part. The review also found that lack of informal communication was a factor and recommended minimizing remote and hybrid work. Pages 32, 33 https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_irb_report_and_response_nov_2022.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_...
- Nomentatus 4y agobut who's job is it to make sure that communication is happening, again; and to structure the workplace or culture so that happens? Mostly the bosses.
- Animats 4y agoSurprising that Musk doesn't have a self-funded project to check out that asteroid and bring samples back. Looks profitable.
- pencilguin 4y agoWouldn't be. The "$ quintillion" figure is just clickbait. Ore on Earth is worth a lot more, and is right here, ready to be dug up.
- imiric 4y ago> Wouldn't be. The "$ quintillion" figure is just clickbait. Source? At this point we can't know for sure, which this mission is supposed to determine. But we know its size, and estimating its composition puts it into trillion or quadrillion dollar territory, which is still a crazy amount. And we're talking about a _single_ asteroid. The possible value found in the asteroid belt is—literally—astronomical. > Ore on Earth is worth a lot more, and is right here, ready to be dug up. Not quite. Ore on Earth is limited, and increasingly difficult to mine, requiring costly processing, deep sea expeditions, and producing toxic side effects for the environment. It's also politically problematic, as countries control access and exportation. Asteroid mining would be much more expensive, but the ROI could potentially be much more lucrative. Once the space operation is setup, costs would eventually come down, and it opens up many further space exploration opportunities. SpaceX is in a unique position to be one of the first companies to launch such missions, that I'm also surprised that Musk is not jumping at the opportunity. It would still be a political challenge, and it creates new conflict arenas, but this is inescapable human nature. Asteroid mining is inevitable and we'll get there eventually. Beltalowda!
- Georgelemental 4y agoThere is a limited market for stuff. If you manage to massively increase the supply the price will go down.
- imiric 4y ago
- dmix 4y ago> VERITAS Venus Mission is going to have to be delayed from 2028 to 2031 due to issues caused by JPL's failure to launch Psyche That's extremely disappointing. Venus is easily the 2nd most interesting planet "close" to us besides Mars. I was really looking forward to that one. > From the standpoint of total mass delivered to Venus, the best launch opportunities occur in 2029 and 2031. It's too bad Russia's ambitious space programs are mosty vaporware. They pinoeered Venus exploration and have their own (pretend) Venus program that AFAIK isn't going anywhere. > a proposed Russian space mission to Venus that would include an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2029. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera-D?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera-D?wprov=sfti1
- pencilguin 4y agoVenus is more interesting to me than Mars. We already know more about Mars than I cared to know. Venus is still packed with mystery. Hot mystery, yes.
- dmix 4y agoIt's also really interesting purely from a physics or human adventure perspective. The way it crushes anything that goes near the surface. Mars seems like an introductory class to Venus' horror story. But yes there's plenty to learn, especially from a statistical analysis for finding life in interstellar space type of thing.
- pencilguin 4y agoAt cloud-top level, temperature, pressure, and gravity are all close to Earth-normal, and breathing-air is buoyant. Numerous materials can be extracted from the outside air, including oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulfur, nitrogen, and even some metals. A day/night cycle is about 100 hours, depending on how close you are to a pole. A nuclear reactor is as simple as a big fabric tube suspended vertically with a naked atomic pile hanging near the bottom, and a wind turbine turning in an opening at the top, the only moving part. You need something non-solar because nights are long. Alternatively, you can store energy with a weight on a cable attached to a generator. Play it out to discharge, winch it back up to charge. Or maybe different layers of atmosphere circulate at different rates. If so, you can hang a wind turbine in the next layer below.
- dehrmann 4y ago> which is set to investigate a rare metal asteroid that could be worth a reported $10 quintillion dollars if mined. World GDP is ~100T per year. I'm guessing that estimate was just the amount of rare earth metals times the current price, but the magnitude it ignored economic realities is comedic.
- kragen 4y agoThe asteroid is 16 Psyche, which is a 220-km-diameter M-type asteroid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche doesn't say what metals it's supposed to be comprised of, but rare-earth metals are not very likely and not suggested by the article. A more likely set of "rare metals" is platinum-group metals. 16 Psyche is 2.3e19 kg, according to WP, so 10 quintillion dollars works out to 43¢ per kg. It's pretty plausible that any kind of metal would be worth at least 43¢ per kg, it wouldn't even have to be very rare. Even steel is worth abut that much. If you're going to use it on Earth you'd be better off mining iron ore on Earth, but you can't do that with platinum-group metals, and if you want to use steel for construction in space, it's a huge advantage if it's already there instead of having to be lifted out of a gravity well. I don't think there's an obviously correct way to compare economic value across generations' worth of time. 100 years ago people didn't have antibiotics, so death from infected wounds was common, even wounds that would be minor today. But old-growth lumber was abundant.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zeristor 4y agoWhilst a salient point, it wouldn't be as though they turn up one day with $10Qn of metals to sell on the market. It might take decades, even centuries to return that to Earth, and of course how would they be able to do that, the amount of fuel required itself would mean that the price of that would be huge. I doubt solar sails would be that viable, and the idea of the oceans going dry in order to produce the fuel to return metals would be a tad far fetched.
- TobyTheDog123 4y agoSome context - Laurie Leshin, the director of the JPL, recently joined the lab after resigning from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Some say she resigned as suicides rocked the school and complaints about mismanagement flooded in [1]. I'm curious if there's any sort of pattern here, and how much of the blame can fall on the director. [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/02/03/multiple-suicides-leave-wpi-reeling https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/02/03/multiple-suic...
- vietjtnguyen 4y agoHard to put much blame on her I think. She only joined JPL this year. Psyche was selected back in 2017.
- acyou 4y agohttps://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_irb_report_and_response_nov_2022.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/psyche_... I was impressed with the report, it seemed comprehensive. I think all of the answers are in there if you read carefully and read a little into what is said. The depletion and lack of availability of experienced technical personnel is repeatedly cited as the leading cause of the failure to develop quality software on schedule. The paper's authors don't explicitly discuss the possibility that the issues might not just be administrative problems, but that there could also be technical and system design issues with the project. On a superficial level, the report's recommendations are evaluating and solving problems in administrative ways: hire more people, improve communication, reduce remote work, improve retention (hard to do those last two at the same time). If the overall lack of experienced technical personnel were such an issue, why are the project failures on the software side, with zero issues reported on the mechanical side? From a system design perspective, a key issue is running into a problem and deciding to "deal with it with the software". This is done without thinking through the issue, effectively kicking the can down the road. Problem solving is postponed. Once the software is being written, it's too late to solve the problem at a system design level. Another way to see it is that deep structural system design flaws, or any other reason to suspect that the project would fail, could have prompted an exodus of experienced personnel that saw project failure coming early on in the project. The report doesn't explicitly evaluate the system design, but has a good overview of the project fundamentals. One hint is the slide talking about how they shouldn't be trying to integrate a third-party commercial orbiter designed for Earth operations for their deep-space operation. That would be an example of a top-down system design flaw, where it would be (and probably was for many) easier to just get another job or transfer to a different department than to try to fix the holes. One of the most telling comments is calling for a more rigorous annual review of the JPL Director's performance, right there in the report. I cannot believe they did that, talk about speaking truth to power. Good for them! Then the JPL director's signature is on the document, right at the top. It's an unfortunate situation, I'm sure they all know exactly what convening a 15-person council and releasing a public report will do to project and organizational morale. Here are my suggestions: 1. Project leaders (and organization leaders) should able to convince everyone around them that success will be achieved, see "Reality Distortion Field" 2. Complex and dynamic functionality needs to be replaced where possible with simple and static functionality. 3. It sounds like there are cultural issues coming from the top (and unfortunately, probably from above the top). 4. Technicians and leaders should be competent first and experienced or senior second. 5. If no one competent and experienced with a Reality Distortion Field wants to touch a project, then probably better to just cancel it. 6. On any project aspect, individual contributors would work best with clearly defined requirements and without distractions. Writing the requirements properly is probably most of the work.
- UberFly 4y agoThe possibility that the Psyche asteroid might be the ancient core of a long lost solar system planet is very cool. We won't know until it's visited, so the delay is unfortunate.
- KeyXiote 4y agoOpinion: NASA puts JPL on Blast, maybe a more proactive approach should be putting themselves on blast for not having the ability to take responsibility for joint project failures, enough with blame games, this is suppose to be a collaborative endeavor to explore and advance our collective knowledge. We f'd it up as a partner with beurocractic mismanagement, time to own our own mistakes and learn from them instead of finger pointing all the time. Reminds me of that time we decided to code imperial and metric into a system that accidentally and successfully tested how to plow a large amount of money into the surface of Mars. Let's all do better together.
- aaron695 4y ago
- mk81 4y ago