11 ms·

I wonder how often things like that happen. The launch could have gone right, and no one would have known anything about the decision process besides a few ins

by GuB-42 2y ago

I wonder how often things like that happen. The launch could have gone right, and no one would have known anything about the decision process besides a few insiders. I am sure that on project as complex and as risky as a Space Shuttle, there is always an engineer that is not satisfied with some aspect, for some valid reason. But at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains. How many projects luckily succeeded after a reckless decision? In many accidents, we can point at an engineer who foreshadowed it, as it is the case here. Usually followed by blaming those who proceeded anyways. But these decision makers are in a difficult position. Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. So, whose "no" to ignore? Not Allan's apparently.

jajko 2y ago
> But at some point, one needs to launch the thing Do they? Even if risks are not mitigated and say risk for catastrophe can't be pushed below ie 15%? This ain't some app startup world where failure will lose a bit of money and time, and everybody moves on. I get the political forces behind, nobody at NASA was/is probably happy with those, and most politicians are basically clueless clowns (or worse) chasing popularity polls and often wielding massive decisive powers over matters they barely understand at surface level. But you can't cheat reality and facts, not more than say in casino.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  Maybe it's a bad analogy given the complexity of a rocket launch, but I always think about European exploration of the North Atlantic. Huge risk and loss of life, but the winners built empires on those achievements. So yes, I agree that at some point you need to launch the thing.
  - whyever 2y ago
    This sounds like you are saying colonialism was a success story?
    - lkbm 2y ago
      For the ones doing the colonizing? Overwhelmingly yes. A good potion of the issues with colonizing is about how the colonizing nations end up extracting massive amounts of resources for their own benefit.
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        In context, it sounds like you think that the genocide of indigenous peoples was totally worth it for European nations and that callous lack of concern for human life and suffering is an example to be followed by modern space programs. I'd like to cut you the benefit of the doubt and assume that's not what you meant; if that's the case, please clarify.
        bigstrat2003 2y ago
        You are not reading the context correctly. The original point was that establishing colonies was very risky, to which whyever implied that colonialism was not a success story. But in fact it was extremely successful from a risk analysis point of view. Some nations chose to risk lives and it paid off quite well for them. The nuance of how the natives were treated is frankly irrelevant to this analysis, because we're asking "did the risk pay off", not "did they do anything wrong".
        kerkeslager 2y ago
        I am not participating in amoral risk/reward analysis, and you should not be either. If the cost was genocide or predictable and avoidable astronaut deaths, the risk didn't pay off; there's no risk analysis. This isn't "nuance" and there is no ambiguity here, it's literally killing people for personal gain.
        lkbm 2y ago
        > In context, it sounds like you think that the genocide of indigenous peoples was totally worth it for European nations and that callous lack of concern for human life and suffering is an example to be followed by modern space programs. Can you provide a quote of where I said this is an example to be followed"? (This is a rhetorical question: I know you can't because I said nothing remotely akin to that.) > I'd like to cut you the benefit of the doubt and assume that's not what you meant; if that's the case, please clarify. Sure, to clarify: I meant precisely what I said. I did not mean any of the completely different nonsense you decided to suggest I was actually saying. If you see "colonization benefited the people doing the colonizing" and interpret it as "colonization is an example to be followed", that's entirely something wrong with your reading comprehension. You're not "cutting me some slack" by putting words in my mouth and then saying "but maaybe didn't mean that", and it's incredibly dishonesty and shitty of you to pretend you are.
  - jajko 2y ago
    I would somewhat agree with first launch, first moon mission and so on, but N-th in a row ain't building no new empires. Its business as usual.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      Great point and I agree. Balancing the need to launch the thing is the need to improve over time, else the human cost begins to outweigh the benefit.
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    I think ultimately the problem is of accountability If the risks are high and there are a lot of warning signs, there needs to be strong punishment for pushing ahead anyways and ignoring the risk It is much too often that people in powerful positions are very cavalier with the lives or livelihoods of many people they are supposed to be responsible for, and we let them get away with being reckless far too often
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    > Maybe it's a bad analogy given the complexity of a rocket launch, but I always think about European exploration of the North Atlantic. Huge risk and loss of life, but the winners built empires on those achievements. > So yes, I agree that at some point you need to launch the thing. This comment sounds an awful lot like you think the genocide of indigenous peoples is justified by the fact that the winners built empires, but I'd like to assume you intended to say something better. If you did intend to say something better, please clarify.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      This is dishonest. I am not engaging with your red herrings.
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        If the fact that entire nations were murdered is a "red herring" to you, you have no business talking about colonialism. That's not a distraction, it's the headline.
        ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
        You are debating your own delusions, not me.
ufmace 2y ago
That's the thing I always wonder about these things. It's fun and easy to provide visibility into whoever called out an issue early when it does go on to cause a big failure. It gives a nice smug feeling to whoever called it out internally, the reporters who report it, and the readers in the general public who read the resulting story. The actual important thing that we hardly ever get much visibility into is - how many potential failures were called out by how many people how many times. How many of those things went on to cause a big, or even small, failure, and how many were nothingburgers in the end. Without that, it's hard to say whether leaders were appropriately downplaying "chicken little" warnings to satisfy a market or political need, and got caught by one actually being a big deal, or whether they really did recklessly ignore a called-out legitimate risk. It's easy to say you should take everything seriously and over-analyze everything, but at some point you have to make a move, or you lose. You don't get nearly as much second-guessing when you spend too much time analyzing phantom risks and end up losing to your competitors.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > The actual important thing that we hardly ever get much visibility into is - how many potential failures were called out by how many people how many times. I'm not sure that's important at all. Every issue raised needs to be evaluated independently. If there is strong evidence that a critical part of a space shuttle is going to fail there should be zero discussion about how many times in the past other people thought other things might go wrong when in the end nothing did. What matters is the likelihood that this current thing will cause a disaster this time based on the current evidence, not on historical statistics The point where you "have to make a move" should only come after you can be reasonably sure that you aren't needlessly sending people to their deaths.
dylan604 2y ago
Can't we apply the same logic to the current Starliner situation. There's no way it should have launched, but someone brow beat others into saying it was an acceptable risk with the known issues to go ahead with the launch. Okay, so the launch was successful, but other issues that were known and suspect then caused problems after launch to the point they are not positive it can return. So, should it have launched? Luckily, at least to this point, nobody has been hurt/killed, and the vehicle is somewhat still intact.
- themadturk 2y ago
  There are mitigations (of a sort) for the Starliner. It probably should not have launched, but now that it has, the flight crew is no longer in danger and can be brought down via Crew Dragon if necessary (as if Boeing needs any more embarrassment). If I was NASA, I'd take that option; though actual danger to the astronauts coming down in the Starliner seems minimal, having SpaceX do the job just seems safer. As it is, NASA is keeping the Starline in orbit to learn as much as possible about what's going on with the helium leaks, which are in the service module, which won't be coming back to earth for examination.
lolinder 2y ago
> Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. Saying "no" is easy and safe in a world where there are absolutely no external pressures to get stuff done. Unfortunately, that world doesn't exist, and the decision makers in these kinds of situations face far more pressure to say "yes" than they do to say "no". For example, see the article: > The NASA official simply said that Thiokol had some concerns but approved the launch. He neglected to say that the approval came only after Thiokol executives, under intense pressure from NASA officials, overruled the engineers.
HankB99 2y ago
> at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks I'm wondering how the two astronauts on the ISS feel about that while Boeing decides if/when it is safe to return then to Earth. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/science/boeing-starliner-astronaut-mission-return-delay-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/science/boeing-starliner-astr...
- recursive 2y ago
  Presumably about the same as they did prior to their first launch. Space travel is not like commercial air travel. This is part of the deal.
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. Astronauts (and anyone intelligent who intentionally puts themselves in a life-threatening situation) have a more nuanced understanding of risk than can be represented by a single % risk of death number. "I'm going to space with the best technology humanity has to offer keeping me safe" is a very different risk proposition from "I'm going to space in a ship with known high-risk safety issues".
    - iamthirsty 2y ago
      > Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. It's definitely built in. The Apollo LM was .15mm thick aluminum, meaning almost any tiny object could've killed them. The Space Shuttle flew with SSRB's that were solid-fuel and unstoppable when lit. Columbia had 2 ejection seats, which were eventually taken out and not installed on any other shuttle. Huge risk is inherently the deal with space travel, at least from its inception until now.
      - kerkeslager 2y ago
        Without links to more information on these engineering decisions, I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate whether these are serious risks, and I don't believe you are either. I tend to listen to engineers.
afavour 2y ago
> at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks Do they though? If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? I do get your general point but in this specific example it seems the urgency to launch wasn’t particularly warranted.
- mathgradthrow 2y ago
  you need to establish which complaints can delay a launch. The parent comment is arguing that you need to set some kind of threshold on that. In practice, airplanes fly a little bit broken all the time. We have excellent data and theory and failsafes which allow that to be the case, but it's written in blood.
- ben_jones 2y ago
  > If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? An administrator would’ve missed a promotion.
  - runlaszlorun 2y ago
    I think it’s not even a missed promotion but a perceived risk of one- which may or may not be accurate.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    That is a very uncharitable thing to say unless you have proof. What was the public sentiment of the Shuttle at the time? What was Congress sentiment? Was there organizational fear in NASA that the program would be cancelled if launches were not timely?
- jstanley 2y ago
  > If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? The point is it's not just the Challenger launch. It's every launch.
ein0p 2y ago
> Saying "no" is easy and safe Not in my experience. Saying no to something major when others don’t see a problem can easily be career-ending.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  > easily be career-ending. Easily be career ending? That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?. Someone who continuously says no to things will surely not thrive and probably eventually leave the organization, one way or the other, that's probably right.
  - madaxe_again 2y ago
    Not even slightly dramatic. I have seen someone be utterly destroyed for trying to speak out on something deeply unethical a state was doing, and is probably still doing. He was dragged by the head of state in the press and televised announcements, became untouchable overnight - lost his career, his wife died a few days later while at work at her government job in an “accident”. This isn’t in some tinpot dictatorship, rather a liberal western democracy. So - no. Career-ending is an understatement. You piss the wrong people off, they will absolutely fuck you up.
    - quacked 2y ago
      I have long thought that there ought to be an independently funded International Association for the Protection of Whistleblowers. However, it would quickly become a primary target of national intelligence agencies, so I don't know how long it would last.
    - trompetenaccoun 2y ago
      A "liberal democracy" where the head of state can have random citizens murdered? And I guess despite being an internet anon, you won't name that country because they will come after you and kill your family as well? That's either a very tall tale or the state is anything but liberal.
ReptileMan 2y ago
>Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. True, but that is for cases where you take the risk yourself. If the challenger crew knew the risk and were - fuck it - it's worth it it would have been different than a bureaucrat chasing a promotion.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Especially when that bureaucrat probably suffered no consequences for making the wrong call. Essentially letting other people take all of the risk while accepting none. No demotion, no firing, and even if they did get fired they probably got some kind of comfy pension or whatever It's a joke
ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
I've always thought the same, that something like space travel is inherently incredibly dangerous. I mean surely someone during the Apollo program spoke out about something. Like landing on the moon with an untested engine being the only way back for instance. Nixon even had a 'if they died' speech prepared, so someone had to put the odds of success not at 100.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Neil Armstrong figured that he only had a 50% chance of making it back from the moon alive.
- chasd00 2y ago
  I think the deal was there was already a pretty high threshold for risk. I don't know the percentage exactly but the problem was the o-ring thing put it over the threshold which should triggered a a no-go. For example, you could say "we'll tolerate a 30% chance of loss of life on this launch" but then an engineer comes up and says "an issue we found puts the risk of loss of life at 65%". That crosses the limit and procedure means no launch. What should not happen is "well, we're going anyway" which is what happened with Challenger.
former_navy 2y ago
Often. I used to run the nuclear power plant on a US Navy submarine. Back around 2006, we were sailing somewhere and Sonar reported that the propulsion plant was much, much louder than normal. A few days later we didn't need Sonar to report it, we could hear it ourselves. The whole rear half of the ship was vibrating. We pulled into our destination port, and the topside watch reported that oil pools were appearing in the water near the rear end of the ship. The ship's Engineering Officer and Engineering Department Master Chief shrugged it off and said there was no need for it to "affect ship's schedule". I was in charge of the engineering library. I had a hunch and I went and read a manual that leadership had probably never heard of. The propeller that drives the ship is enormous. It's held in place with a giant nut, but in between the nut and the propeller is a hydraulic tire, a toroidal balloon filled with hydraulic fluid. Clearly it had ruptured. The manual said the ship was supposed to immediately sail to the nearest port and the ship was not allowed to go back out to sea until the tire was replaced. I showed it to the Engineer. Several officers called me in to explain it to them. And then, nothing. Ship's Schedule was not affected, and we continued on the next several-week trip. Before we got to the next port, we had to limit the ship's top speed to avoid major damage to the entire propulsion plant. We weren't able to conduct the mission we had planned because the ship was too loud. And the multiple times I asked what the hell was going on, management literally just talked over me. When we got to the next port, we had to stay there while the propeller was removed and remachined. Management doesn't give a shit as long as it doesn't affect their next promotion. Don't even get me started on the nuclear safety problems.
- orblivion 2y ago
  Is this a different phenomenon though? It seems that there's a difference between an informed risk assessment and not giving a fuck or letting the bureaucratic gears turn and not feeling responsible. Like there's a difference between Challenger and Chernobyl. But, maybe someone can make a case that it's fundamentally the same thing?
  - quacked 2y ago
    I would make the case that it's fundamentally the same thing. In both cases, there were people who cared primarily about the technical truth, and those people were overruled by people who cared primarily about their own lifestyle (social status, reputation, career, opportunities, loyalties, personal obligations, etc.) In Allan McDonald's book "Truth, Lies, and O-Rings" he outlines how Morton Thiokol was having a contract renewal held over their head while NASA Marshall tried to maneuver the Solid Rocket Booster production contract to a second source, which would have seriously affect MT's bottom line and profit margins. There's a strong implication that Morton Thiokol was not able to adhere to proper technical rationale and push back on their customer (NASA) because if they had they would have given too much ammunition to NASA to argue for a second-source for the SRB contracts. (In short: "you guys delayed launches over issues in your hardware, so we're only going to buy 30 SRB flight sets from you over the next 5 years instead of 60 as we initially promised." I have worked as a NASA contractor on similar issues, although much less directly impacting the crews than the SRBs. You are not free to pursue the smartest, most technically accurate, quickest method for fixing problems; if you introduce delays that your NASA contacts and managers don't like, they will likely ding your contract and redirect some of your company's work to your direct competitors, who you're often working with on your projects.
caseyy 2y ago
A lot of people are taking issue with the fact that you need to say yes for progress. I don’t know how one could always say no and expect to have anything done. Every kind of meaningful success involves negotiating risk instead of seizing up in the presence of it. The shuttle probably could have failed in 1,000 different ways and eventually, it would have. But they still went to space with it. Some risk is acceptable. If I were to go to the moon, let’s say, I would accept a 50% risk of death. I would be happy to do it. Other people would accept a risk of investment and work hour loss. It’s not so black or white that you wouldn’t go if there’s any risk.
- lolinder 2y ago
  The key thing with Challenger is that the engineers working on the project estimated the risk to be extremely high and refused to budge, eventually being overruled by the executives of their company. That's different than the engineers calculating the risk of failure at some previously-defined-as-acceptable level and giving the go-ahead.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  > Some risk is acceptable. If I were to go to the moon, let’s say, I would accept a 50% risk of death. I would be happy to do it. Other people would accept a risk of investment and work hour loss. It’s not so black or white that you wouldn’t go if there’s any risk. It's possible you're just suicidal, but I'm reading this more as false internet bravado. A 50% risk of death on a mission to space is totally unacceptable. It's not like anyone will die if you don't go now; you can afford to take the time to eliminate all known risks of this magnitude.
  - caseyy 2y ago
    Not bravado at all, if I was given those odds today, I would put all my effort into it and go. There are many people who are ideologically-driven and accept odds of death at 50% or higher — revolutionary fighters, political martyrs, religious martyrs, explorers and adventurers throughout history (including space), environmental activists, freedom fighters, healthcare workers in epidemics of serious disease...
nurbl 2y ago
What makes you say it "could have gone right"? From what came out about the o-rings behavior at cold temperatures, it seems they were taking a pretty big risk. Your perspective seems to be that it's always a coin toss no matter what, and I don't think that is true. Were there engineers speaking up in this way at every successful launch too?
- JoshuaRogers 2y ago
  I think what they were saying, especially given the phrasing “How many projects luckily succeeded after a reckless decision?” is that, if things hadn’t failed we would never have known and thus how many other failures of procedure/ ethics have we just not seen because the worst case failed to occur.
  - wormius 2y ago
    Good ol' survivorship bias...
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  Actually, had it been winder that day it might have gone right. There were 8 joints. Only one failed, and only in one place. The spot being supercooled by boiloff from the LOX tank. And the leak self-sealed (there's aluminum in the fuel--hot exhaust touching cold metal deposited some of it) when it happened--but the seal wasn't robust enough and eventually shook itself apart.
elviejo79 2y ago
It happens extremely frequently because there is almost no downside for management to override the engineers decision. Even in the case of the Challenger, no single article say WHO was the executive that finally approved the launch. No body was jailed for gross negligence. Even Ricahrd Feynman felt that the investigative comission was biased from the start. So, since there is no "price to pay" to make this bad calls they are continuously made.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > No body was jailed for gross negligence Jailing people means you'll have a hard time finding people willing to make hard decisions, and when you do, you may find they're not the right people for the job. Punishing people for making mistakes means very few will be willing to take responsibility. It will also mean that people will desperately cover up mistakes rather than being open about it, meaning the mistakes do not get corrected. We see this in play where manufacturers won't fix problems because fixing a problem is an admission of liability for the consequences of those problems, and punishment. Even the best, most conscientious people make mistakes. Jailing them is not going to be helpful, it will just make things worse.
  - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
    Jailing people means you'll have a hard time finding people willing to make hard decisions, Why do you think you want it? You don't want it.
  - Calamitous 2y ago
    > Punishing people for making mistakes means very few will be willing to take responsibility. That’s what responsibility is: taking lumps for making mistakes. If I make a mistake on the road and end up killing someone, I can absolutely be held liable for manslaughter. I don’t know if jail time is the right answer, but there absolutely needs to be some accountability.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
pseudosavant 2y ago
My understanding of the Space Shuttle program is that there were a lot of times they knew they probably shouldn't fly, or try to land, and they lucked out and didn't lose the orbiter. It is shocking they only lost two ships out of the 135 Space Shuttle missions. The safety posture of that whole program, for a US human space program, seemed bad. That they chose to use solid rocket motors shows that they were willing to compromise on human safety from the get-go. There are reasons there hasn't ever been even one other human-rated craft to use solid rocket motors.
- floating-io 2y ago
  Except SLS? Not that I think it's a good thing, but...
  - pseudosavant 2y ago
    I forgot about the SLS until after I wrote that. SLS makes most of the same mistakes, plus plenty of new expensive ones, from the Space Shuttle program. SLS has yet to carry a human passenger though. Its mind boggling that SLS still exists at all. At least $1B-$2B in costs whether you launch or not. A launch cadence measured in years. $2B-$4B if you actually launch it. And it doesn't even lift more than Starship, which is launching almost quarterly already. This before we even talk about reusability, or that a reusable Starship + Super Heavy launch would only use about $2M of propellent.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  > There are reasons there hasn't ever been even one other human-rated craft to use solid rocket motors. That's about to not be true. Atlas V + starliner has flown two people and has strap-on boosters, I think it only gets the rating once it returns from the test flight though. The shuttle didn't have a propulsive launch abort system, and could only abort during a percentage of its launch. The performance quoted for starliner's abort motor is "one mile up, and one mile out" based on what the presenter said during the last launch. You're plenty safe as long as you don't intersect the SRB's plume.
- dblohm7 2y ago
danesparza 2y ago
Destin (from Smarter Every Day Youtube channel fame) has concerns about the next NASA mission to the moon (named Artemis): https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU Read the comments (especially from NASA engineers). It's pretty interesting that sometimes it takes courageous engineers to break the spell that poor managers can have on an organization.
brandall10 2y ago
What would be interesting to know is how many people tried to puts the brakes on all the successful missions.
felipelemos 2y ago
> But at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains. Or: at some point, one decides to launch the thing. You are reducing the complaints of an engineer as something inevitable and unimportant, as if it happened in every lunch, and in every lunch someone decided to went ahead, because it was what was needed.
pdonis 2y ago
> at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains There's a big difference between "complaints" because something is not optimal, and warnings that something is a critical risk. The Thiokol engineers' warnings about the O-rings were in the latter category. And NASA knew that. The summer before the Challenger blew up, NASA had reclassified the O-rings as a Criticality 1 flight risk, where they had previously been Criticality 1R. The "1" meant that if the thing happens the shuttle would be lost--as it was. The "R" meant that there was a redundant component that would do the job if the first one failed--in this case there were two O-rings, primary and secondary. But in (IIRC) June 1985, NASA was told by Thiokol that the primary O-ring was not sealing so there was effectively no redundancy, and NASA acknowledged that by reclassifying the risk. But by the rules NASA itself had imposed, a Criticality 1 (rather than 1R) flight risk was supposed to mean the Shuttle was grounded until the issue was fixed. To avoid that, NASA waived the risk right after reclassifying it. > at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done Taking calculated risks when the potential payoff justifies it is one thing. But taking foolish risks, when even your own decision making framework says you're not supposed to, is quite another. NASA's decision to launch the Challenger was the latter.
bayouborne 2y ago
I doubt in a bureaucracy as big and political as NASA saying "no" is never easy or safe. In an alternate timeline (one where the Challenger launch succeeded) it would have been interesting to track McDonald's career after refusing to sign.
iancmceachern 2y ago
Often, I've personally been that engineer, been ignored, and of not for simple dumb luck a death would have happened. Phillips, Boeing, ...
jollofricepeas 2y ago
It’s a shame. We don’t see software engineers behave ethically in the same way. Software is filled with so much risk taking and there’s few if any public pushback where engineers are saying the software we’ve created is harmful. Here’s a few examples: - Dark patterns in retail - Cybersecurity flaws in sensitive software (ie. Microsoft) - Social media and mental health - Social media and child exploitation / sex trafficking - Social media and political murder (ie. Riots, assassinations) This stuff is happening and it’s just shrugs all-around in the tech industry. I have a ton of respect for those whistleblowers in AI who seem to be the small exception to this rule.

by GuB-42 2y ago

jajko 2y ago

> But at some point, one needs to launch the thing Do they? Even if risks are not mitigated and say risk for catastrophe can't be pushed below ie 15%? This ain't some app startup world where failure will lose a bit of money and time, and everybody moves on. I get the political forces behind, nobody at NASA was/is probably happy with those, and most politicians are basically clueless clowns (or worse) chasing popularity polls and often wielding massive decisive powers over matters they barely understand at surface level. But you can't cheat reality and facts, not more than say in casino.

ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
Maybe it's a bad analogy given the complexity of a rocket launch, but I always think about European exploration of the North Atlantic. Huge risk and loss of life, but the winners built empires on those achievements. So yes, I agree that at some point you need to launch the thing.
- whyever 2y ago
  This sounds like you are saying colonialism was a success story?
  - lkbm 2y ago
    For the ones doing the colonizing? Overwhelmingly yes. A good potion of the issues with colonizing is about how the colonizing nations end up extracting massive amounts of resources for their own benefit.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      In context, it sounds like you think that the genocide of indigenous peoples was totally worth it for European nations and that callous lack of concern for human life and suffering is an example to be followed by modern space programs. I'd like to cut you the benefit of the doubt and assume that's not what you meant; if that's the case, please clarify.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        You are not reading the context correctly. The original point was that establishing colonies was very risky, to which whyever implied that colonialism was not a success story. But in fact it was extremely successful from a risk analysis point of view. Some nations chose to risk lives and it paid off quite well for them. The nuance of how the natives were treated is frankly irrelevant to this analysis, because we're asking "did the risk pay off", not "did they do anything wrong".
        kerkeslager 2y ago
        I am not participating in amoral risk/reward analysis, and you should not be either. If the cost was genocide or predictable and avoidable astronaut deaths, the risk didn't pay off; there's no risk analysis. This isn't "nuance" and there is no ambiguity here, it's literally killing people for personal gain.
      - lkbm 2y ago
        > In context, it sounds like you think that the genocide of indigenous peoples was totally worth it for European nations and that callous lack of concern for human life and suffering is an example to be followed by modern space programs. Can you provide a quote of where I said this is an example to be followed"? (This is a rhetorical question: I know you can't because I said nothing remotely akin to that.) > I'd like to cut you the benefit of the doubt and assume that's not what you meant; if that's the case, please clarify. Sure, to clarify: I meant precisely what I said. I did not mean any of the completely different nonsense you decided to suggest I was actually saying. If you see "colonization benefited the people doing the colonizing" and interpret it as "colonization is an example to be followed", that's entirely something wrong with your reading comprehension. You're not "cutting me some slack" by putting words in my mouth and then saying "but maaybe didn't mean that", and it's incredibly dishonesty and shitty of you to pretend you are.
- jajko 2y ago
  I would somewhat agree with first launch, first moon mission and so on, but N-th in a row ain't building no new empires. Its business as usual.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    Great point and I agree. Balancing the need to launch the thing is the need to improve over time, else the human cost begins to outweigh the benefit.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  I think ultimately the problem is of accountability If the risks are high and there are a lot of warning signs, there needs to be strong punishment for pushing ahead anyways and ignoring the risk It is much too often that people in powerful positions are very cavalier with the lives or livelihoods of many people they are supposed to be responsible for, and we let them get away with being reckless far too often
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  > Maybe it's a bad analogy given the complexity of a rocket launch, but I always think about European exploration of the North Atlantic. Huge risk and loss of life, but the winners built empires on those achievements. > So yes, I agree that at some point you need to launch the thing. This comment sounds an awful lot like you think the genocide of indigenous peoples is justified by the fact that the winners built empires, but I'd like to assume you intended to say something better. If you did intend to say something better, please clarify.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    This is dishonest. I am not engaging with your red herrings.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      If the fact that entire nations were murdered is a "red herring" to you, you have no business talking about colonialism. That's not a distraction, it's the headline.
      - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
        You are debating your own delusions, not me.

ufmace 2y ago

That's the thing I always wonder about these things. It's fun and easy to provide visibility into whoever called out an issue early when it does go on to cause a big failure. It gives a nice smug feeling to whoever called it out internally, the reporters who report it, and the readers in the general public who read the resulting story. The actual important thing that we hardly ever get much visibility into is - how many potential failures were called out by how many people how many times. How many of those things went on to cause a big, or even small, failure, and how many were nothingburgers in the end. Without that, it's hard to say whether leaders were appropriately downplaying "chicken little" warnings to satisfy a market or political need, and got caught by one actually being a big deal, or whether they really did recklessly ignore a called-out legitimate risk. It's easy to say you should take everything seriously and over-analyze everything, but at some point you have to make a move, or you lose. You don't get nearly as much second-guessing when you spend too much time analyzing phantom risks and end up losing to your competitors.

autoexec 2y ago
> The actual important thing that we hardly ever get much visibility into is - how many potential failures were called out by how many people how many times. I'm not sure that's important at all. Every issue raised needs to be evaluated independently. If there is strong evidence that a critical part of a space shuttle is going to fail there should be zero discussion about how many times in the past other people thought other things might go wrong when in the end nothing did. What matters is the likelihood that this current thing will cause a disaster this time based on the current evidence, not on historical statistics The point where you "have to make a move" should only come after you can be reasonably sure that you aren't needlessly sending people to their deaths.

dylan604 2y ago

Can't we apply the same logic to the current Starliner situation. There's no way it should have launched, but someone brow beat others into saying it was an acceptable risk with the known issues to go ahead with the launch. Okay, so the launch was successful, but other issues that were known and suspect then caused problems after launch to the point they are not positive it can return. So, should it have launched? Luckily, at least to this point, nobody has been hurt/killed, and the vehicle is somewhat still intact.

themadturk 2y ago
There are mitigations (of a sort) for the Starliner. It probably should not have launched, but now that it has, the flight crew is no longer in danger and can be brought down via Crew Dragon if necessary (as if Boeing needs any more embarrassment). If I was NASA, I'd take that option; though actual danger to the astronauts coming down in the Starliner seems minimal, having SpaceX do the job just seems safer. As it is, NASA is keeping the Starline in orbit to learn as much as possible about what's going on with the helium leaks, which are in the service module, which won't be coming back to earth for examination.

lolinder 2y ago

> Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. Saying "no" is easy and safe in a world where there are absolutely no external pressures to get stuff done. Unfortunately, that world doesn't exist, and the decision makers in these kinds of situations face far more pressure to say "yes" than they do to say "no". For example, see the article: > The NASA official simply said that Thiokol had some concerns but approved the launch. He neglected to say that the approval came only after Thiokol executives, under intense pressure from NASA officials, overruled the engineers.

HankB99 2y ago

> at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks I'm wondering how the two astronauts on the ISS feel about that while Boeing decides if/when it is safe to return then to Earth. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/science/boeing-starliner-astronaut-mission-return-delay-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/science/boeing-starliner-astr...

recursive 2y ago
Presumably about the same as they did prior to their first launch. Space travel is not like commercial air travel. This is part of the deal.
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. Astronauts (and anyone intelligent who intentionally puts themselves in a life-threatening situation) have a more nuanced understanding of risk than can be represented by a single % risk of death number. "I'm going to space with the best technology humanity has to offer keeping me safe" is a very different risk proposition from "I'm going to space in a ship with known high-risk safety issues".
  - iamthirsty 2y ago
    > Hard disagree. The idea that the machinery your life will depend on might be made with half-assed safety in mind is definitely not part of the deal. It's definitely built in. The Apollo LM was .15mm thick aluminum, meaning almost any tiny object could've killed them. The Space Shuttle flew with SSRB's that were solid-fuel and unstoppable when lit. Columbia had 2 ejection seats, which were eventually taken out and not installed on any other shuttle. Huge risk is inherently the deal with space travel, at least from its inception until now.
    - kerkeslager 2y ago
      Without links to more information on these engineering decisions, I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate whether these are serious risks, and I don't believe you are either. I tend to listen to engineers.

afavour 2y ago

> at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks Do they though? If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? I do get your general point but in this specific example it seems the urgency to launch wasn’t particularly warranted.

mathgradthrow 2y ago
you need to establish which complaints can delay a launch. The parent comment is arguing that you need to set some kind of threshold on that. In practice, airplanes fly a little bit broken all the time. We have excellent data and theory and failsafes which allow that to be the case, but it's written in blood.
ben_jones 2y ago
> If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? An administrator would’ve missed a promotion.
- runlaszlorun 2y ago
  I think it’s not even a missed promotion but a perceived risk of one- which may or may not be accurate.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  That is a very uncharitable thing to say unless you have proof. What was the public sentiment of the Shuttle at the time? What was Congress sentiment? Was there organizational fear in NASA that the program would be cancelled if launches were not timely?
jstanley 2y ago
> If the Challenger launch had been pushed back what major effects would there have been? The point is it's not just the Challenger launch. It's every launch.

ein0p 2y ago

> Saying "no" is easy and safe Not in my experience. Saying no to something major when others don’t see a problem can easily be career-ending.

barbazoo 2y ago
> easily be career-ending. Easily be career ending? That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?. Someone who continuously says no to things will surely not thrive and probably eventually leave the organization, one way or the other, that's probably right.
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  Not even slightly dramatic. I have seen someone be utterly destroyed for trying to speak out on something deeply unethical a state was doing, and is probably still doing. He was dragged by the head of state in the press and televised announcements, became untouchable overnight - lost his career, his wife died a few days later while at work at her government job in an “accident”. This isn’t in some tinpot dictatorship, rather a liberal western democracy. So - no. Career-ending is an understatement. You piss the wrong people off, they will absolutely fuck you up.
  - quacked 2y ago
    I have long thought that there ought to be an independently funded International Association for the Protection of Whistleblowers. However, it would quickly become a primary target of national intelligence agencies, so I don't know how long it would last.
  - trompetenaccoun 2y ago
    A "liberal democracy" where the head of state can have random citizens murdered? And I guess despite being an internet anon, you won't name that country because they will come after you and kill your family as well? That's either a very tall tale or the state is anything but liberal.

ReptileMan 2y ago

>Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. True, but that is for cases where you take the risk yourself. If the challenger crew knew the risk and were - fuck it - it's worth it it would have been different than a bureaucrat chasing a promotion.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
Especially when that bureaucrat probably suffered no consequences for making the wrong call. Essentially letting other people take all of the risk while accepting none. No demotion, no firing, and even if they did get fired they probably got some kind of comfy pension or whatever It's a joke

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago

I've always thought the same, that something like space travel is inherently incredibly dangerous. I mean surely someone during the Apollo program spoke out about something. Like landing on the moon with an untested engine being the only way back for instance. Nixon even had a 'if they died' speech prepared, so someone had to put the odds of success not at 100.

WalterBright 2y ago
Neil Armstrong figured that he only had a 50% chance of making it back from the moon alive.
chasd00 2y ago
I think the deal was there was already a pretty high threshold for risk. I don't know the percentage exactly but the problem was the o-ring thing put it over the threshold which should triggered a a no-go. For example, you could say "we'll tolerate a 30% chance of loss of life on this launch" but then an engineer comes up and says "an issue we found puts the risk of loss of life at 65%". That crosses the limit and procedure means no launch. What should not happen is "well, we're going anyway" which is what happened with Challenger.

former_navy 2y ago

Often. I used to run the nuclear power plant on a US Navy submarine. Back around 2006, we were sailing somewhere and Sonar reported that the propulsion plant was much, much louder than normal. A few days later we didn't need Sonar to report it, we could hear it ourselves. The whole rear half of the ship was vibrating. We pulled into our destination port, and the topside watch reported that oil pools were appearing in the water near the rear end of the ship. The ship's Engineering Officer and Engineering Department Master Chief shrugged it off and said there was no need for it to "affect ship's schedule". I was in charge of the engineering library. I had a hunch and I went and read a manual that leadership had probably never heard of. The propeller that drives the ship is enormous. It's held in place with a giant nut, but in between the nut and the propeller is a hydraulic tire, a toroidal balloon filled with hydraulic fluid. Clearly it had ruptured. The manual said the ship was supposed to immediately sail to the nearest port and the ship was not allowed to go back out to sea until the tire was replaced. I showed it to the Engineer. Several officers called me in to explain it to them. And then, nothing. Ship's Schedule was not affected, and we continued on the next several-week trip. Before we got to the next port, we had to limit the ship's top speed to avoid major damage to the entire propulsion plant. We weren't able to conduct the mission we had planned because the ship was too loud. And the multiple times I asked what the hell was going on, management literally just talked over me. When we got to the next port, we had to stay there while the propeller was removed and remachined. Management doesn't give a shit as long as it doesn't affect their next promotion. Don't even get me started on the nuclear safety problems.

orblivion 2y ago
Is this a different phenomenon though? It seems that there's a difference between an informed risk assessment and not giving a fuck or letting the bureaucratic gears turn and not feeling responsible. Like there's a difference between Challenger and Chernobyl. But, maybe someone can make a case that it's fundamentally the same thing?
- quacked 2y ago
  I would make the case that it's fundamentally the same thing. In both cases, there were people who cared primarily about the technical truth, and those people were overruled by people who cared primarily about their own lifestyle (social status, reputation, career, opportunities, loyalties, personal obligations, etc.) In Allan McDonald's book "Truth, Lies, and O-Rings" he outlines how Morton Thiokol was having a contract renewal held over their head while NASA Marshall tried to maneuver the Solid Rocket Booster production contract to a second source, which would have seriously affect MT's bottom line and profit margins. There's a strong implication that Morton Thiokol was not able to adhere to proper technical rationale and push back on their customer (NASA) because if they had they would have given too much ammunition to NASA to argue for a second-source for the SRB contracts. (In short: "you guys delayed launches over issues in your hardware, so we're only going to buy 30 SRB flight sets from you over the next 5 years instead of 60 as we initially promised." I have worked as a NASA contractor on similar issues, although much less directly impacting the crews than the SRBs. You are not free to pursue the smartest, most technically accurate, quickest method for fixing problems; if you introduce delays that your NASA contacts and managers don't like, they will likely ding your contract and redirect some of your company's work to your direct competitors, who you're often working with on your projects.

caseyy 2y ago

A lot of people are taking issue with the fact that you need to say yes for progress. I don’t know how one could always say no and expect to have anything done. Every kind of meaningful success involves negotiating risk instead of seizing up in the presence of it. The shuttle probably could have failed in 1,000 different ways and eventually, it would have. But they still went to space with it. Some risk is acceptable. If I were to go to the moon, let’s say, I would accept a 50% risk of death. I would be happy to do it. Other people would accept a risk of investment and work hour loss. It’s not so black or white that you wouldn’t go if there’s any risk.

lolinder 2y ago
The key thing with Challenger is that the engineers working on the project estimated the risk to be extremely high and refused to budge, eventually being overruled by the executives of their company. That's different than the engineers calculating the risk of failure at some previously-defined-as-acceptable level and giving the go-ahead.
kerkeslager 2y ago
> Some risk is acceptable. If I were to go to the moon, let’s say, I would accept a 50% risk of death. I would be happy to do it. Other people would accept a risk of investment and work hour loss. It’s not so black or white that you wouldn’t go if there’s any risk. It's possible you're just suicidal, but I'm reading this more as false internet bravado. A 50% risk of death on a mission to space is totally unacceptable. It's not like anyone will die if you don't go now; you can afford to take the time to eliminate all known risks of this magnitude.
- caseyy 2y ago
  Not bravado at all, if I was given those odds today, I would put all my effort into it and go. There are many people who are ideologically-driven and accept odds of death at 50% or higher — revolutionary fighters, political martyrs, religious martyrs, explorers and adventurers throughout history (including space), environmental activists, freedom fighters, healthcare workers in epidemics of serious disease...

nurbl 2y ago

What makes you say it "could have gone right"? From what came out about the o-rings behavior at cold temperatures, it seems they were taking a pretty big risk. Your perspective seems to be that it's always a coin toss no matter what, and I don't think that is true. Were there engineers speaking up in this way at every successful launch too?

JoshuaRogers 2y ago
I think what they were saying, especially given the phrasing “How many projects luckily succeeded after a reckless decision?” is that, if things hadn’t failed we would never have known and thus how many other failures of procedure/ ethics have we just not seen because the worst case failed to occur.
- wormius 2y ago
  Good ol' survivorship bias...
LorenPechtel 2y ago
Actually, had it been winder that day it might have gone right. There were 8 joints. Only one failed, and only in one place. The spot being supercooled by boiloff from the LOX tank. And the leak self-sealed (there's aluminum in the fuel--hot exhaust touching cold metal deposited some of it) when it happened--but the seal wasn't robust enough and eventually shook itself apart.

elviejo79 2y ago

It happens extremely frequently because there is almost no downside for management to override the engineers decision. Even in the case of the Challenger, no single article say WHO was the executive that finally approved the launch. No body was jailed for gross negligence. Even Ricahrd Feynman felt that the investigative comission was biased from the start. So, since there is no "price to pay" to make this bad calls they are continuously made.

WalterBright 2y ago
> No body was jailed for gross negligence Jailing people means you'll have a hard time finding people willing to make hard decisions, and when you do, you may find they're not the right people for the job. Punishing people for making mistakes means very few will be willing to take responsibility. It will also mean that people will desperately cover up mistakes rather than being open about it, meaning the mistakes do not get corrected. We see this in play where manufacturers won't fix problems because fixing a problem is an admission of liability for the consequences of those problems, and punishment. Even the best, most conscientious people make mistakes. Jailing them is not going to be helpful, it will just make things worse.
- Anotheroneagain 2y ago
  Jailing people means you'll have a hard time finding people willing to make hard decisions, Why do you think you want it? You don't want it.
- Calamitous 2y ago
  > Punishing people for making mistakes means very few will be willing to take responsibility. That’s what responsibility is: taking lumps for making mistakes. If I make a mistake on the road and end up killing someone, I can absolutely be held liable for manslaughter. I don’t know if jail time is the right answer, but there absolutely needs to be some accountability.
  - WalterBright 2y ago

pseudosavant 2y ago

My understanding of the Space Shuttle program is that there were a lot of times they knew they probably shouldn't fly, or try to land, and they lucked out and didn't lose the orbiter. It is shocking they only lost two ships out of the 135 Space Shuttle missions. The safety posture of that whole program, for a US human space program, seemed bad. That they chose to use solid rocket motors shows that they were willing to compromise on human safety from the get-go. There are reasons there hasn't ever been even one other human-rated craft to use solid rocket motors.

floating-io 2y ago
Except SLS? Not that I think it's a good thing, but...
- pseudosavant 2y ago
  I forgot about the SLS until after I wrote that. SLS makes most of the same mistakes, plus plenty of new expensive ones, from the Space Shuttle program. SLS has yet to carry a human passenger though. Its mind boggling that SLS still exists at all. At least $1B-$2B in costs whether you launch or not. A launch cadence measured in years. $2B-$4B if you actually launch it. And it doesn't even lift more than Starship, which is launching almost quarterly already. This before we even talk about reusability, or that a reusable Starship + Super Heavy launch would only use about $2M of propellent.
jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
> There are reasons there hasn't ever been even one other human-rated craft to use solid rocket motors. That's about to not be true. Atlas V + starliner has flown two people and has strap-on boosters, I think it only gets the rating once it returns from the test flight though. The shuttle didn't have a propulsive launch abort system, and could only abort during a percentage of its launch. The performance quoted for starliner's abort motor is "one mile up, and one mile out" based on what the presenter said during the last launch. You're plenty safe as long as you don't intersect the SRB's plume.
dblohm7 2y ago

danesparza 2y ago

Destin (from Smarter Every Day Youtube channel fame) has concerns about the next NASA mission to the moon (named Artemis): https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU Read the comments (especially from NASA engineers). It's pretty interesting that sometimes it takes courageous engineers to break the spell that poor managers can have on an organization.

brandall10 2y ago

What would be interesting to know is how many people tried to puts the brakes on all the successful missions.

felipelemos 2y ago

> But at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains. Or: at some point, one decides to launch the thing. You are reducing the complaints of an engineer as something inevitable and unimportant, as if it happened in every lunch, and in every lunch someone decided to went ahead, because it was what was needed.

pdonis 2y ago

> at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains There's a big difference between "complaints" because something is not optimal, and warnings that something is a critical risk. The Thiokol engineers' warnings about the O-rings were in the latter category. And NASA knew that. The summer before the Challenger blew up, NASA had reclassified the O-rings as a Criticality 1 flight risk, where they had previously been Criticality 1R. The "1" meant that if the thing happens the shuttle would be lost--as it was. The "R" meant that there was a redundant component that would do the job if the first one failed--in this case there were two O-rings, primary and secondary. But in (IIRC) June 1985, NASA was told by Thiokol that the primary O-ring was not sealing so there was effectively no redundancy, and NASA acknowledged that by reclassifying the risk. But by the rules NASA itself had imposed, a Criticality 1 (rather than 1R) flight risk was supposed to mean the Shuttle was grounded until the issue was fixed. To avoid that, NASA waived the risk right after reclassifying it. > at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done Taking calculated risks when the potential payoff justifies it is one thing. But taking foolish risks, when even your own decision making framework says you're not supposed to, is quite another. NASA's decision to launch the Challenger was the latter.

bayouborne 2y ago

I doubt in a bureaucracy as big and political as NASA saying "no" is never easy or safe. In an alternate timeline (one where the Challenger launch succeeded) it would have been interesting to track McDonald's career after refusing to sign.

iancmceachern 2y ago

Often, I've personally been that engineer, been ignored, and of not for simple dumb luck a death would have happened. Phillips, Boeing, ...

jollofricepeas 2y ago

It’s a shame. We don’t see software engineers behave ethically in the same way. Software is filled with so much risk taking and there’s few if any public pushback where engineers are saying the software we’ve created is harmful. Here’s a few examples: - Dark patterns in retail - Cybersecurity flaws in sensitive software (ie. Microsoft) - Social media and mental health - Social media and child exploitation / sex trafficking - Social media and political murder (ie. Riots, assassinations) This stuff is happening and it’s just shrugs all-around in the tech industry. I have a ton of respect for those whistleblowers in AI who seem to be the small exception to this rule.