Author Topic: Shooting the Engineers  (Read 9284 times)

Offline Dobbins

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Shooting the Engineers
« on: 01/28/2006 02:33 pm »
There is an old adage "In every project there comes a time to shoot the engineers and start production". The key is knowing when to shoot the engineers, and that is a point that is often overlooked in discussions regarding  the Challenger accident. It's more complex than the "NASA didn't listen to the engineers" that most people talk about regarding Challenger. If the management did heed everything the engineers said they never would have built the shuttles or anything else, and if they somehow did build something they would never launch it. Engineers are never happy, they can always find something wrong, some reason not to start bending metal or to launch. That is part of their job. Engineers don't like surprises.

NASA didn't listen to the engineers, but why not? The Thiokol engineers knew there was a problem with the seals long before that cold morning 20 years ago, they had expressed concerns to Thiokol management. However it stopped there. The problem stayed internal at Thiokol for months with company management dragging it's feet. Then the day before the launch NASA suddenly got blindsided by a stop from Thiokol. Was this a case when the engineers needed to be shot or listened to? It all depended on how compelling a case the Thiokol engineers could make. They had about 15 minutes to gather data for a conference call, and they weren't ready to go after calling for a halt. They made a mad dash to gather what they could. They were close to getting a scrub, but NASA was sending subtitle threats back down the line. Thiokol Management backed down, then came the last question from NASA. "Is everyone in agreement?". The engineers didn't speak up and that was a tacit agreement to go for a launch despite what any of the Thiokol engineers said after the fact.

"The Challenger accident was caused by a broken culture at NASA", yes that is true, but simply stating that avoids a deeper problem. What broke the culture? That can be summed up in three words, "safe, economical, routine". That was what NASA had been telling the American people about the Shuttle for over a decade. From the start of the program we were told the Shuttle would provide safe, economical, and routine access to space. It had become a mantra. By 1985 it had become apparent that the Shuttle would never be capable of routine launches, that preparation was going to be far harder than the most pessimistic estimates when it was being developed. That meant it would never archive the flight rates that were needed to make it economical. The Air Force was already looking for an excuse to bail out of a Shuttle that showed no signs of being able to launch on the schedule they needed to maintain, and that would have wrecked any chances of making it economically viable.

By the 27th of January, 1986 NASA was struggling to avoid admitting that the shuttle would never be routine or economical, two of the project justifications they had used for years, then suddenly out of the blue Thiokol was telling then the thing wasn't safe in cold weather.

STS-51L was the highest visibility launch since Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, the teacher in space program had resulted in this launch attracting far more attention than most shuttle missions. Now NASA was faced with not only publicly admitting there was a safety problem, but doing so on a very high profile mission. Even worse it was a safety problem that would wreck havoc on  maintaining the routine launch schedule they wanted, and do so right after a very humiliating scrub earlier that day.

NASA had become a prisoner of it's own propaganda, and this made them more willing to shoot any engineer that told them the shuttle wasn't ever going to be safe, economical, or routine. That is what broke the culture.

John B. Dobbins

Offline Flightstar

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #1 on: 01/28/2006 07:20 pm »
An excellent post.

Culture has changed. More power is given down the line to speak up and stand in front of that train, as Lovingood said. But it's no where near enough yet. That's the problem you'll have with 10s of thousands of people involved in one single aim. I don't think it'll ever change enough.

Offline Avron

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #2 on: 01/28/2006 11:20 pm »
Quote
Flightstar - 28/1/2006  3:20 PM

An excellent post.

Culture has changed. More power is given down the line to speak up and stand in front of that train, as Lovingood said. But it's no where near enough yet. That's the problem you'll have with 10s of thousands of people involved in one single aim. I don't think it'll ever change enough.

And that is why great managers are required, there is allways a chance of failure, the question to management is the risk level in acceptable tollerance range.. But when managers get paid to make these calls.

W.R.T. Johns comment
"By the 27th of January, 1986 NASA was struggling to avoid admitting that the shuttle would never be routine or economical, two of the project justifications they had used for years, then suddenly out of the blue Thiokol was telling then the thing wasn't safe in cold weather. "

I see nothing wrong with saying that that conditions are out of design tollerance and stopping the "bus" so to speak...  The problem was other engineers, who should know better, pressed on... if its out of tollerance.. thats it.. STOP..

Engineers are problem solvers, and not allways good managers, managers worry about risk levels and Engineers lower these risks in an Ideal world... Don't shoot the Engineers..

Offline Dobbins

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #3 on: 01/29/2006 07:14 am »
Engineers can always find something wrong, some problem. An engineer could find some problem at the pearly gates and yell stop, don't enter heaven.

NASA certainly had a "don't give me any bad news" attitude that made them less willing to listen than they should have been, but the Thiokol engineers didn't have hard data to back up their assertions that there was a cold temperature problem. They had damn good reasons to do a study on the effects of temperature on the o-rings, but they didn't have the cold hard data that would have come out of even simple tests.
 
John B. Dobbins

Offline Rocket Nut

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #4 on: 01/29/2006 10:09 am »
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Dobbins - 29/1/2006  3:14 AM

Engineers can always find something wrong, some problem. An engineer could find some problem at the pearly gates and yell stop, don't enter heaven.


I worked on a program that used state of the art communications.  We had an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) date set.  Senior management had signs posted saying that said "better is bad".  I hated those signs when the customer was present.  As an engineer, I didn't understand that it was time to field an operational system that worked.  We could tweek it later...it worked now the way the customer wanted it.  Later, as a senior manager myself, I learned the value of that concept.  It is true that if you left it in engineering, it would continually be tweeked and never be built.

Regards,

Larry

Offline publiusr

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #5 on: 02/03/2006 05:27 pm »
I think Engineers should be treated better. Scientists think too much of payloads while not caring about rockets. We saw what happened with this mindset aboard a couple of Volna's the Planetary Society lost.

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RE: Shooting the Engineers
« Reply #6 on: 02/17/2006 10:03 pm »
They lost not one but two volnas--and now they attack Griffin like TPS is some kind of expert. Let them launch one probe as well as New Horizons--then they have the right to speak. Until then they should shut their traps.

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