"Charles Angelich" wrote to "Mike Ross" (08 Jul 03  02:46:02)
 --- on the topic of "Shuttle Columbia Tests"

 CA> Not to belittle your comments in any way but frankly who cares?

I share your anger and apathy. Actually perhaps the real problem is the
apathy. Apathy in particular from a government who just wants results,
such as budget cutbacks, or flashy headlines, without regard to the
possible endangering of the people involved. I'm not saying the
government deliberately causes this but the results are the same.


 CA> NASA keeps waving this as a huge mystery as though solving it
 CA> will make everything OK.

It wasn't a mystery to the engineers who complained about it and who
were ignored by the project manager.


 CA> There are contingency plans and there were requests made for
 CA> hires pix of the shuttle while it was in orbit to examine it
 CA> for damage and they were denied arbitrarilly by a person or
 CA> persons that I would put on trial for homicide if it was up to
 CA> me.

BTW the shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore resigned his job. He may
have been pushed out but he may simply have been whisked away into the
shadows from the embarassing scrutiny of the limelight.


 CA> NASA can't distract me with "watch Mr. Wizard" cr*p. They
 CA> _killed_ those people with their incompetent behaviour and
 CA> should be arrested and made to defend themselves for the crimes
 CA> they committted.

It isn't really fair to make a manager responsible for every single
little rivet that goes into making that spacecraft. Shit happens! But in
the case of Columbia clearly decisions were taken based on groundless
circumstantial assumptions. IOW just because there were no accidents
with previous foam falling events didn't mean there was no problem.
Whether the decisions taken were right or wrong doesn't really matter
now but the basis on which they were made was flawed. That's what the
manager's judgment or lack of is really responsible for.


 CA> NASA has outlived it's useful life and should be shut down
 CA> period.

I think you're going too far but NASA should be restructured as a
scientific overseeing agency rather than as an integrator of space
capabilities. The building and launching duties should belong to
separate "rocketry" agencies and the scientific goals and standards of
these overseen by NASA. In other words the 2nd "A" stands for
"Administration". As such NASA should remain involved in the training of
personel and steering of the space program, whatever it may be.

 Mike
 ****

... A fault tolerant system must report the faults even as it tolerates them
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