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NASA 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 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 ago
Agreed. 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 ago
  Agreed 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 ago
  There'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 ago
    It'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 ago
Can 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 ago
  Indeed. "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 ago
  WebEx 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 ago
  I 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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mlindner 4y ago

Agreed. 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 ago
Agreed 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 ago
There'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 ago
  It'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 ago

Can 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 ago
Indeed. "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 ago
WebEx 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 ago
I 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.