In each of the accidents there were people who believed that the programs were proceeding into unsafe territory. These people tried with varying degrees of success to alert the management of their concerns. In some cases, they fell silent quickly. In other cases, they were overruled and gave up. Later, in all three of the accidents, the top leaders unanimously said ‘we didn’t know anybody was concerned’.
The lesson to take away here is not to give up. If it is unsafe say so. If overruled, appeal. If denied appeal, make your case to the highest level manager you can find. Do not give up until you have been heard at the very top.
Because you might be the only one that sees what no one else can.
From someone who should know.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a nice piece from Nadia Drake.
Will anyone speak up that it is inherently unsafe to fly SLS as infrequently as is budgeted?
Squyres has, in NASA Advisory Council meetings. I did in the book.
Quick way to find yourself out of work. Sad but all too often true.
Nobody wants to hear that we shouldn’t do something.
Worse, there’s a persistent pattern (and not just in the space program) that no matter how many people try to raise the alarm, nothing actually happens until somebody dies. In my latest short story I speculate a little about whether a sufficient close call could be sufficient:
“The speed with which events had unfolded made it difficult to examine the timelines and determine the effects of slight changes. Even a minute too early and the flames didn’t have enough time to spread to the point that would convince the program managers that problem lay in the spacecraft, and not the attitudes of the astronauts. If they started before it actually ignited, there was a sweet spot of a few seconds when they could finishing opening the hatch just as everything was catching alight and the three of them would emerge with flames licking across their suits, a visual so dramatic no one could miss the message that they’d escaped a deathtrap. They’d bear the scars for the rest of their lives, but they’d get to have those lives, even go on to fly later missions.”
If a close call isn’t enough, this raises some interesting questions for a transhumanist future in which people who’ve taken “death is final” as a technological challenge have brought about the age in which death itself dies: what will be enough to get things to happen, in a world where the deaths of people’s bodies just means the hassle of needing to restore from backup into new bodies?
I didn’t leave my real name as I still work with NASA.
I have heard the same type of thing from other areas. It sounds great and I’m sure the author (and others) really mean it.
I’ve worked ‘for’ NASA since 1990. I have worked at most of the Centers and at off-site contractor sites. I have supported many missions, including the top manned and un-manned projects in that time. I would love to say that when people I worked with saw an issue, they were able to bring it to management’s attention and it was dealt with properly. Sadly, I can’t. Schedule, time crunch, MONEY, egos, and job security often over-ride even the best intentions. Want to stop a multi-million dollar test schedule – you better have 110% proof that the issue is positively going to have a negative impact. Even then, often times people are over-ruled. Pull that stunt a couple times, you get labeled as a trouble maker. And make no mistake, the space/satellite world is much smaller than it was 30 years ago – word gets around quickly and you will find yourself working at Home Depot or Sears (not that there is anything wrong with those places).
SpaceX is hiring.
I still believe NASA hasn’t learned that last lesson. I also understand many other entities fail to as well, but for some reason NASA gets a pass when failing to learn that lesson. But if there is a danger to image, NASA is on it.
Wait, I thought “Safe Is Not An Option”.
E.G.: After Challenger, I was involved in a shuttle safety issue that, due to a sensor upgrade we detected a signal that had always been there but never resulted in any kind of a system glitch for dozens of launches. Some engineer on the east coast, however, got his astronaut neighbor in Florida involved and soon we’re having dozens of meetings and tests and schedule delay etc etc etc. The final upshot after 6 months and several hundred K dollars was that it wasn’t like to be an issue.
After something really bad happens, there’s always people who brought up issues and were concerned. The problem is sorting out the noise of the issues that may be bad but really aren’t from the signal – and when you’re talking about a system as ridiculously complex that is operating on the edge of technology actually launching something is going to entail “shooting the engineers” from time to time and accepting the resultant occasional fuck up.