4 ms·

However, do keep in mind the principle you need to think about when designing such an organization, which is warning fatigue. Anything as complex as the shuttl

However, do keep in mind the principle you need to think about when designing such an organization, which is warning fatigue. Anything as complex as the shuttle is going to have any number of groups raising any number of warnings about any number of components. If you heeded all of them, you'd spend eternity investigating everything and nothing would ever fly (welcome to the SLS.) How many other warnings of similar perceived severity were ever raised but flew anyway and never resulted in anything catastrophic? Probably a lot. "Go fever" is a problem, but so is its opposite in warning fatigue. It's easy to condemn the organization, but that has to also come with some sense that the organization had a million problems to deal with, and we only knew to pick out this one after it happened.

fuzzfactor 2y ago
There had been delays and as a live TV watcher it could be seen there was pressure to launch as soon as conditions could be considered the least bit acceptable. IOW almost completely unfavorable, but not quite as bad as it was earlier. The media revealed some skepticism that a launch would be advisable that day, but once a lift-off time was set, then it became all systems go as usual. If there's a freezing day on that part of the Florida coast, that's an unusual year. You question everything that hasn't previously survived that kind of year in the past. I didn't feel optimistic for those reasons alone. >The “science” is that knowledge which was written down. The “art” is the knowledge that was not written down, usually because no one wanted to pay for the writing. That's so true why so much documentation is never made, you have to make the most of what you have and fill in the rest through experimentation. But O-rings are so boring, seems like nobody wants to take the time to even read the "free" literature. It's not any more complex than an average engineering semester. Now it would take more than a semester to get really deep into polymer properties that can be involved under different conditions, but engineers themselves are never expected to get very far in that direction if they're not even experts in the mechanical engineering of the o-ring dimensional enclosures. Once it was revealed that the Challenger was doomed by inadequate o-ring engineering, it reminded me of the day one blew out when I had my first gas lab, at over 10,000 psi the explosive force was easily noticeable. From quite a few doors down. The engineer who designed the cylinders had "copied them from XXXX lab" and we were using them no differently than they were doing, but it was always an accident waiting to happen because the tolerances and material selection were not given but a fraction of the attention necessary to avoid a mission-critical failure, much less a potentially hazardous aftermath. Quintessential technical debt. Anyway I had to redesign the cylinders and deal with the machinists and suppliers myself. I guess maybe it was a bit like artistic background that was helpful since I had already worked in one of the highest-precision machine shops during summer, and then after university full-time (12-hour days) at a polymer plant laboratory. What it brought to the table was greater than the available documentation which was essential too. Before it was over I had then spent time with a life-long o-ring expert who had built a company based on o-rings for severe service. There is no substitute for a large warehouse filled with nothing but millions of o-rings, and browsing around with the pro who has helpful advice at every turn and truly wants you to never have a blowout as if your life depended on it. So the o-ring blowout had been my initiation into a commercial laboratory startup back in 1980, building custom engineering laboratories to handle contract research projects. Definitely a single point of failure which is worse than others because it is so boring, it is much more likely to be overlooked. Things I won't work with: engineers that are not so great but think they are. Much better off handling things like benzene, methanol, or sulfuric acid in shorts and flip-flops which people know not to try this at home.
pixl97 2y ago
Eh, this is why the space shuttle sucked and was a stupid design that was going to kill people. It could never fly without people so every possible flight test was a fatal one. It was too expensive so no one wanted to 'test' it. It was such an incredibly complicated package that critical issues that would ground any other project got bypassed because of the sunk cost fallacy. SpaceX generally does the opposite of this for example. Their testing is very hardware rich. Then they'll have dozens of automated flights on very similar hardware. Then after the hardware has been used in a wide range of conditions we see it migrate to human ratings. NASA picked something too complicated, was warned it was too complicated, then lost human lives when it was too complicated.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  As I understand it, NASA basically was forced down that path, by the military. The military wanted a spacecraft that could take secret spy satellites to orbit, and also be able to retrieve them and bring them intact back to Earth. That forced the Shuttle design.

fuzzfactor 2y ago

There had been delays and as a live TV watcher it could be seen there was pressure to launch as soon as conditions could be considered the least bit acceptable. IOW almost completely unfavorable, but not quite as bad as it was earlier. The media revealed some skepticism that a launch would be advisable that day, but once a lift-off time was set, then it became all systems go as usual. If there's a freezing day on that part of the Florida coast, that's an unusual year. You question everything that hasn't previously survived that kind of year in the past. I didn't feel optimistic for those reasons alone. >The “science” is that knowledge which was written down. The “art” is the knowledge that was not written down, usually because no one wanted to pay for the writing. That's so true why so much documentation is never made, you have to make the most of what you have and fill in the rest through experimentation. But O-rings are so boring, seems like nobody wants to take the time to even read the "free" literature. It's not any more complex than an average engineering semester. Now it would take more than a semester to get really deep into polymer properties that can be involved under different conditions, but engineers themselves are never expected to get very far in that direction if they're not even experts in the mechanical engineering of the o-ring dimensional enclosures. Once it was revealed that the Challenger was doomed by inadequate o-ring engineering, it reminded me of the day one blew out when I had my first gas lab, at over 10,000 psi the explosive force was easily noticeable. From quite a few doors down. The engineer who designed the cylinders had "copied them from XXXX lab" and we were using them no differently than they were doing, but it was always an accident waiting to happen because the tolerances and material selection were not given but a fraction of the attention necessary to avoid a mission-critical failure, much less a potentially hazardous aftermath. Quintessential technical debt. Anyway I had to redesign the cylinders and deal with the machinists and suppliers myself. I guess maybe it was a bit like artistic background that was helpful since I had already worked in one of the highest-precision machine shops during summer, and then after university full-time (12-hour days) at a polymer plant laboratory. What it brought to the table was greater than the available documentation which was essential too. Before it was over I had then spent time with a life-long o-ring expert who had built a company based on o-rings for severe service. There is no substitute for a large warehouse filled with nothing but millions of o-rings, and browsing around with the pro who has helpful advice at every turn and truly wants you to never have a blowout as if your life depended on it. So the o-ring blowout had been my initiation into a commercial laboratory startup back in 1980, building custom engineering laboratories to handle contract research projects. Definitely a single point of failure which is worse than others because it is so boring, it is much more likely to be overlooked. Things I won't work with: engineers that are not so great but think they are. Much better off handling things like benzene, methanol, or sulfuric acid in shorts and flip-flops which people know not to try this at home.

pixl97 2y ago

Eh, this is why the space shuttle sucked and was a stupid design that was going to kill people. It could never fly without people so every possible flight test was a fatal one. It was too expensive so no one wanted to 'test' it. It was such an incredibly complicated package that critical issues that would ground any other project got bypassed because of the sunk cost fallacy. SpaceX generally does the opposite of this for example. Their testing is very hardware rich. Then they'll have dozens of automated flights on very similar hardware. Then after the hardware has been used in a wide range of conditions we see it migrate to human ratings. NASA picked something too complicated, was warned it was too complicated, then lost human lives when it was too complicated.

shiroiushi 2y ago
As I understand it, NASA basically was forced down that path, by the military. The military wanted a spacecraft that could take secret spy satellites to orbit, and also be able to retrieve them and bring them intact back to Earth. That forced the Shuttle design.