Posted on 03/09/2021 6:04:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
Unless Critical Engineering Theory has achieved it’s icy grip on technical discussions within the organization in question, at which time such rational, science-based input will no longer be welcome and can safely be eliminated from the discussion.
White astronauts got Corvettes, negros PONTIACs, and acronym for:
Poor Old Negro Thinks Its A Cadillac
Wow, crazy—contemporaneous memory of a different cluster**** caused by the same cold weather snap?
I don’t see how President Reagan’s planned speech was coincidentally the same day as the launch.
It seems like a logical day to have it.
Here is a pdf. PowerPoint Is Evil
I don’t see how President Reagan’s planned speech was coincidentally the same day as the launch.
It seems like a logical day to have it.
I think so, it was really bizarre because later on it got sunny, it was just really strange like some devil came in wanting to destroy planes. To this day that was the heaviest snow storm I was ever in, and the shortest, just so heavy I couldn’t see 5 feet in front of me and it started just as the Fedex plane landed and after the wing was torn off it immediately stopped.
Check it out, I found the weather report that day Jan. 28th..... https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/2012/02/new-york-weather-highlights-1986.html
And weren’t these O rings/new kind of foam a consequence of a new “green” policy as well?
No. That was the foam insulation on the liquid fuel tank that would shed frozen foam and damage the orbiters tiles possibly leading to the Columbia re-entry breakup.
Math is now racist.
Since you bring up Columbia, one of the problems with the foam was the way it was installed. Most was robotically applied, but certain areas required manual application. It was those area that were non-uniform and tended to pop off during flight.
One of the redesign efforts was to reduce the amount of hand applied foam.
I used to be a world expert in my previous field.
There was an issue, that I brought to people’s attention, that was going to cost the company a large amount of money and legal issues.
Except that it was an activity many in upper management wanted to do.
I took Mr. McDonald’s example and went on record to oppose it. In my case the activity was stopped.
It also was the beginning of the end of my time in that field. I made the correct ethical, legal, and moral choice and paid a higher price personally then if I had just signed off on it (assuming the FDA never figured it out!).
I ended up leaving the field and finding more lucrative employment. But it could have resulted in my losing a lot more. Of course, if I hadn’t done it, it may have led to people dying from contaminated product.
That is the ultimate lesson of the Challenger. Doing the right, ethical, and moral thing is not easy. It will often mean you are sacrificing everything, while the ones who go along get rewarded and praised. Every one has to make the choice “Can I live with this!” For me, I long ago decided “I will do the right thing, even as it costs me!”
I use the example of Allan McDonald, and others, when I train new engineers.
People are visual, and don’t think in numbers like engineers do.
Engineers are not people.
Hardest lesson for me to learn in dealing with management types is that they see a table, they assume the engineer is lying. They see a Power Point slide, and it is the Truth even if it is madness.
I was working on another project with the company which made the solid rockets at the time of this failure and asked their engineer about this. He said that this poor man knew almost with a certainty that “his” seal would fail at these temperatures and stayed up all night trying to get through to someone - anyone - to stop the launch. He had not OK’ed this for launch but his non-engineer supervisor overrode him and gave the go ahead. I was told that the engineer was a complete wreck knowing his disign has caused these deaths.
Pitty . . .
Allan J. McDonald, an engineer who on a chilly January morning in 1986 tried to stop the launch of the Challenger space shuttle, citing the possible effect of the cold on its booster rockets, and who, after it broke apart on liftoff, blew the whistle when government officials tried to cover up his dissent, died on Saturday in Ogden, Utah. He was 83.
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