| [Well, this week's editorial was going to be a discussion of what needs to
be done to save the Space Station project, but that will have to wait. An
article in Spectrum has reminded me that it's time for an editorial on the
first anniversary of the Challenger disaster. (Okay, okay, so it's a bit
late, since when have my AW&ST summaries been on time?)
The article is the cover article in the February issue of Spectrum (which is
the all-members magazine of the IEEE). It is, surprise surprise, a post-
mortem on the Challenger disaster. The technical discussion doesn't contain
any surprises for those who read this newsgroup. However, Spectrum has a
long-standing editorial interest in matters of engineering ethics,
whistleblowing, etc., and they went into that side of things somewhat.
Hans Mark: "The only cricitism that I have of the [Rogers] report is
that they laid more blame on the lower-level engineers and less blame on the
upper-level management than they should have. As with most of those
commissions, the guys on the bottom took the rap. They quote Moore and
Beggs and a few others saying they didn't know about the O-ring problems,
which I find awfully hard to believe. I mean, hell, I knew about it two
years before the accident and even wrote a memo about it. I just find it
very hard to believe."
Roger Boisjoly, Thiokol: "I had my say... So there was no point in me doing
anything any further." Ben Powers, NASA: "You don't override your chain
of command..." Spectrum: "At least two others, asked by the Rogers
Commission why they did not voice their concerns to someone other than
their immediate superior, replied in virtually identical language: 'That
would not be my reporting channel.'"]
[So...
First anniversary editorial: What Happens Next Time?
Those who were reading this newsgroup shortly after the Challenger disaster
may remember me insisting that regardless of what organizational flaws were
present, specific people were responsible for the disaster, and that they
should be identified and punished. This wasn't a real popular viewpoint,
especially when I pointed to the Morton Thiokol engineers as a probable case
in point. I was roundly criticized for attacking people who were "just
following orders" and covering up dangerous flaws in order to save their
own jobs.
Spectrum: "When no penalty is foreseen for being careless or doing wrong,
the very behavior that should be prevented is actually enforced. Thus
penalties have to be clarified and exacted, said attorney Robert Levin.
'One of the things that's clear to me is that engineers do not speak the same
language as managers,' he said, 'and engineers as a group are not politically
savvy. What I would very much like to come out of all this -- legislatively
or otherwise -- is that the next time this kind of dispute comes up, one of
those engineers can say "Damn it! Look what it *cost* Thiokol." Now you're
talking the language those folks understand'."
Well, it's a year later. Have the guilty been punished? Fat chance.
The good little boys and girls, loyal to their organizations (instead of
their professions, their country, and their species) have survived and even
been rewarded. Myron Peretz Glazer, Smith College: "If one looks at the
costs involved and the risks people took, it was the most disastrous thing
that could have happened, yet they walked away okay." The most that has
happened to the top people at NASA was slightly early retirement -- at full
pension, naturally, since there was nothing wrong with *their* performance.
By contrast, the people who made attempts -- however feeble -- to speak out
have generally been punished for it. Boisjoly, the man who objected (at
least, until he did as he was told and "put on his management hat") to
the launch, is on "permanent leave" from his job at Morton Thiokol.
Allan McDonald, the man at the Cape who tried to get the launch postponed,
just missed losing his job with M-T, and his career prospects are doubtful
at best.
And Morton Thiokol, whose management deliberately overruled the judgement
of its engineers that the launch was not safe, apparently mostly because
they wanted to safeguard their position as the SRB supplier?
They are fighting the payment of a $10M penalty required by their NASA
contract. They are *receiving* million after million for the redesign
and testing work to fix the problem. And to put the icing on the cake, the
issue of alternate suppliers for the SRBs is now on hold, probably for five
years or more. "Look what it *cost* Thiokol."??? Morton Thiokol is
*PROFITING* *HEAVILY* from gross and willful negligence that killed seven
astronauts, destroyed billions of dollars worth of equipment, and endangered
the entire manned space program!
What happens *next* time? When another engineer is asked to decide whether
he should keep quiet when his management is making a terrible mistake?
When another non-technical manager has to decide between backing his
engineers and keeping his customer happy?
I can't predict it for sure, of course. Courage and honor turn up in the
most surprising places. Maybe even inside Morton Thiokol. But that's not
the way it happened last January, and that's not the way to bet.
The way to bet is that when -- not if -- such a decision comes up again, it
will be made the same way. The engineer will shut up when his management
tells him to shut up. The manager will keep the customer happy and to hell
with whether he's doing the right thing. Both will cross their fingers and
pray that what they know to be a wrong decision won't be a disaster. And
if the praying and finger-crossing don't work, and the shit hits the fan,
more astronauts will die -- and maybe the manned space program with them.
Why?
Because when Challenger and its crew disappeared into a ball of fire,
nobody was to blame.
-- HS]
--
"We must choose: the stars or Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
the dust. Which shall it be?" {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
|
| [Editorial: The Great Failure.
(I should preface this by saying that this represents me in a rather black
mood, and I'm not sure I am entirely prepared to defend it. I'm printing
it nevertheless, because I think it needs saying. [Eugene, you'd better
start gritting your teeth, this one is nasty.] I had intended to save this
for the July 20th editorial -- anybody reading this group who doesn't know
why that date is special should be ashamed -- but I can't wait that long.)
Remember when the West's space program looked good, back on July 20, 1969?
Long time ago, wasn't it?
Although it perhaps wasn't undertaken in quite the right way, and its
motives were perhaps less noble than one would like, Project Apollo still
stands as the supreme achievement of mankind. And it was accompanied by
a number of lesser programs, not as spectacular but also valuable. That
was the golden age of Western spaceflight.
Since then it's been all downhill. And Lord, what a long, sad way down...
Today, the quickest way to get scientific experiments launched is to get
them onto the Soviet space station. True, the situation is particularly
bad right now because of recent launch failures, but note that it wouldn't
be *lots* better EVEN IF ALL THOSE LAUNCHES HAD SUCCEEDED.
Except for certain very narrow and specific military and scientific goals,
the West's space program is a failure. Not just a partial success, but a
complete, abysmal failure.
In general, it is actually harder to get things launched today than it was
twenty years ago. It's not just that progress has been limited -- progress
has actually been NEGATIVE! When it comes to the general exploration and
development of space, we are worse off today than we were in 1967. What's
more, the various proposals to do something about it are not addressing the
fundamental problems. There is no obvious reason why Shuttle 2, or Hermes,
or the Aerospace Plane, will be any cheaper or easier to get payloads onto
than the Shuttle. The Shuttle, which promised to be vastly cheaper than
the expendables, isn't and won't be. It is now fashionable to claim that
the expendables are cheaper and easier to use than the shuttle, but try
to book a Titan 4, or even a Scout, and you'll find out the real story.
It's no cheaper, and even allowing for the transient problems of today, not
much easier. Ariane isn't any better. The new-technology commercial
launch firms that are at all close to success are pushing very modest
improvements only... and they are still at the mercy of the US government,
with their future uncertain at best. Nobody is even talking about "routine
access to space" any more, much less promising to deliver it.
Except the Soviets, that is. On their terms, as their junior partners only.
It's time to face facts. The situation is beyond repair with band-aids,
which is the only sort of response the current system can produce.
It's time to give the West's dying space program a decent burial, so we can
start over -- from scratch -- and do it right.
-- HS]
[Next editorial: some thoughts on how to do it right.]
--
"If you want PL/I, you know Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
where to find it." -- DMR {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
|
| [Editorial: Starting Over and Doing It Right, Part 1: Who's In Charge?
NASA employees are warned to have fire extinguishers and rabies vaccine handy
before reading this editorial.
In my previous editorial, I said "It's time to give the West's dying space
program a decent burial, so we can start over -- from scratch -- and do it
right." Before I start on the "do it right" part, I should comment that I
don't favor scrapping the existing systems instantly. This would be another
repetition of an all-too-frequent past mistake: trading working hardware
today for promises tomorrow. However, we must recognize that the working
hardware of today is a dead end that urgently needs scrapping, even though
we need to keep it operational until the replacements arrive.
Okay, so how do we do it right?
Well, this begs the question: "do *what* right?". What do we want? I'll
discuss this at greater length later, but for now I'll sum it up with a
phrase that was common in the early history of the Shuttle, but is rarely
heard today: "routine access to space". "Routine" means it doesn't cost
an arm and a leg, it doesn't require ten years of advance planning, it isn't
subject to arbitrary cancellation because some bureaucrat gets up on the
wrong side of the bed, and it doesn't require that one's objectives be
politically correct. (Those who think this last refers only to the Soviet
Union should consider that the US Office of Commercial Space Transportation
can veto any private launch which is "not in the national interest", even
if it meets safety requirements and is fully paid for.) In short, subject
to obvious safety rules, when we want to put something into space, we can
depend on being able to plunk down a modest amount of cash and do it.
As I observed in the previous editorial, we are far away from that today.
I further commented that the current system won't get us there, either.
Which brings me to a radical observation:
*Getting routine access to space absolutely requires getting NASA out of
the space-transportation business completely.*
This may sound a little drastic. After all, didn't I praise NASA's Apollo
program as mankind's highest achievement?
Yes, I did. But that wasn't today's NASA. That was the NASA of the early
1960s: a new agency, relatively small and streamlined, capable of making
fast decisions and getting results. That was the agency in which Del
Tischler could write the spec for the F-1 engine -- still the most powerful
liquid-fuel engine ever flown -- himself in 24 hours, have it reviewed and
out to contractors in a week, and have contracts signed and work underway
within a few months. That was the agency in which Mariner 1 went from a
back-of-the-envelope sketch to the launch pad in 11 months. That was the
agency in which Wernher von Braun's crews built the first Saturn Vs in NASA
facilities, with production shifting to contractors only after the problems
were ironed out. That was the agency in which Kurt Debus -- director of KSC
and one of von Braun's original Peenemunde bunch -- could cancel a scrub of
a Saturn 1 launch and order the launch to proceed despite problems, not
because he was a bureaucrat under schedule pressure but because he knew what
he was doing and assessed the problems as unimportant (he was right). That
was the agency that put a man on the moon in 8 years.
Doesn't sound much like today's NASA, does it?
A large part of the reason why the space program is dying is that NASA is
senile. To some extent this is due to external factors, to wit the lack of
a well-defined mission with high-level backing. That could be fixed. But
more serious problems would remain. Bureaucracies ossify. Decisions have
to be made by committee, because that way no one person ever has to risk
taking the blame for a mistake. Preferably they should be mulled over for
a few years first, and run past everyone who might possibly object, just
in case. Upper management has to review every detail, because otherwise
they might actually have to defend a subordinate who made a mistake. And
of course upper management then needs another platoon of paper-pushers
to do all this reviewing. Nobody, anywhere in this glorious edifice, has
the slightest incentive to simplify procedures and remove obstacles. Well,
except for the poor people trying to get work done, and they have no say!
Bureaucracies, and indeed most organizations, make most of their real
contributions to mankind early, before the rot sets in. The rot set in
quite some time ago at NASA.
Anyone who thinks this can be fixed should remember what an uproar it
caused when NASA tried to make some modest management changes in the space
station. We're not talking about moving a few lines on the chart; fixing
the overall problem means turning NASA upside down and shaking vigorously,
and getting rid of a lot of what falls out. (Ever try to fire a civil
servant?) Forget it, no hope.
The implications of all this ossification are profound, and bad. The drive
to reduce uncertainty and risk means that competition cannot be allowed.
NASA pushed awfully hard to get the shuttle declared to be the only official
US launcher, remember? Less overtly, NASA did its level best to harass,
discourage, and scuttle plans to develop private launch systems. (It was
not an accident that a private-enterprise-minded administration setting up
a single regulatory agency for private spaceflight took pains to separate
the Office of Commercial Space Transportation from NASA completely, despite
NASA's objections.) (NASA is quite upset that NOAA wants to buy expendables
direct from the suppliers instead of going through NASA. One major reason
why NOAA wants to do this is to reduce the manpower and paperwork needed.)
Oh sure, NASA wants private companies in space... as junior partners to NASA.
Another way to reduce risk, of course, is to deal only with people you know.
That is, aerospace contractors. The people who can't build anything in less
than a year or for less than fifty million dollars. Especially if they're
doing it for the government. Guess who NASA is buying the space station from.
NASA also has another problem, a more subtle one. NASA was founded as an
R&D agency, in the footsteps of its highly-successful predecessor NACA.
And this orientation goes deep. Deep down in its heart, NASA does not want
to build on its past successes -- it wants to do new things, not do the old
ones better. (The aerospace contractors are all in favor of this, because
they get to pad the bills more that way.) NASA wants to *develop* things.
What's wrong with that, you ask? Nothing, in isolation. NACA followed
that philosophy, and did a powerful lot of good for aviation. But notice
that it isn't enough, by itself. What the space program most needs today
is *not* new launchers, *not* aerospace planes, *not* aerocapture systems,
*not* fifteen-billion-dollar space stations that will be ever so much better
than those silly Soviet tin cans.
The space program needs somebody who can FLY MISSIONS. And fly them
cheaply and often. The Soviets do it pretty well. And you know something?
Most of the hardware they use for it is twenty or thirty years old. The
booster that launches the Soyuz missions is a somewhat souped-up version
of the one that launched Sputnik 1. Their standard unmanned recoverable
vehicle is a minor variant of the Vostok capsule that carried Gagarin.
They never develop anything they don't have to. That's a large part of
why they've got a much more successful space program. They build on their
successes, instead of dismantling them.
NASA simply is not oriented towards flying operational missions. It is
an R&D agency. But NASA wants control and will not give up the operational
role. Notice how every attempt at getting NASA cooperation for a privately-
funded orbiter has failed, not rejected outright but stalled until it died?
Notice how reluctant NASA is to buy expendables, rather than using its own
in-house launcher? NASA is determined to stay in the driver's seat, even
though it can't drive worth beans.
NASA is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem.
If we want a solution, we must keep NASA out of it. -- HS]
[Next: Doing It Right, Part 2: The Government Does Have A Role.]
--
"The average nutritional value Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
of promises is roughly zero." {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
|