Success Driven Mentality - a 'Can Do' attitude . . . Leads to Potential Castostrophic Results. (Space Shuttle Disaster)

[CaptnKirk]

The release of the 'Root Cause' analysis for the Columbia Space Shuttle (USA TODAY)
and the Bush Administrations 'Close Minded Approach' to the Dificulties in Iraq
(Both articles from the same USA TODAY Headliners)

Reveal the same flawed thinking and approach.
Information that is passed upward is filtered as to what content meets the criteria of 'Acceptable to the Policy Makers'
but real concerns are rejected since they don't fit the pre-conceived agenga.

Business Management Mentality, which is unwilling to compromise with others,
has no business running that company, let alone a Countries Government.

 

[burnedout]

Captn': Would you say that this attitude carried over from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs?

 

[CaptnKirk]

Actually no, it was a product of Cheaper - Faster, where well trained workers were replaced with
first job out of college kids, with no expertise that had unrelated degrees in whatever.
The experienced people were either retired or RIF-ed out to make way for younger workers
and without training the young engineers - they were left to sink or swim in technologies they
neither understood nor appreciated the risk of project, and job dici[pline follow-through.
That is the fault of the upper senior managers who didn't want to hear facts,
but it was compounded by Congress who kept cutting funding for projects.
Quality cutbacks led to unacceptable compromise of leaving too much to others
and it became a self-check thing incumbunt upon the untrained workers.
They then thought others had already done a task that never was completed.

Examples - The Foam Analysis was a damn Excell spread sheet working with pieces of
foam that ranged from 2" square to 6" square that hit at approx. 100 MPH in studies.
The foam that struck Columbia was the size of a suitcase, loaded with ice traveling 500 MPH.

The Mars Lander calculated in feet and inches instead of the metric centimeters drove the
lander into the planet at some 34,000 miles per hour, speed & distance calculations were wrong.

 

[burnedout]

Great analogy. Makes good sense too. Hopefully NASA learns from its mistakes.