Many years ago when I first went to work on a NASA facility I was amazed at the complexity of their testing programs. There is an old saying about rocket science that inversely describes the complexity of rocket design by claiming that (insert the field here) is “not rocket science.” It’s not unusual in Huntsville to see bumper stickers that proudly proclaim “Actually…. I AM a rocket scientist.” Putting things into space and maintaining them there is hard. It is complicated and the environment is unforgiving of mistakes.
NASA learned early that small mistakes and minor miscalculations lead to large disasters. Throughout the early years we learned at an accelerated pace that we must minimize the unknowns and maximize the testing to cover every possible variable. Vehicle designs are redundant for all critical failure possibilities. We simply can’t afford to lose a vehicle, more especially a vehicle with people on board because of one component failure especially when we understand that there are a vast number of components in each vehicle.
I was not working at NASA when the Challenger accident occurred but I was here when the Columbia accident occurred. One basic cultural problem led to both failures; schedule pressure overrode technical concerns. It really is that simple. NASA works off of an annually renewable budget that has to be approved by Congress. It is a special executive branch agency similar to the CIA in that the president appoints the director and largely controls its main directives. The head of the agency is approved by the Senate and the budget is controlled by Congress.
Both Shuttle disasters were caused by schedule pressure that was brought to bear based upon funding concerns. NASA’s funding is a political football that is regularly booted about when it comes time to pass a federal budget. At its funding peak during the Apollo buildup NASA received about 4% of the federal budget. In 1975 this fell to below 1% where it has remained since that time. In the early 2000’s it began falling again to the point where by 2012 it has fell below .5%. It has languished there since that time.
The schedule pressure that caused the accidents came from trying to meet projections that had been agreed to with Congress. NASA has learned by experience that delays and slips of projected schedules come at a dear expense. Congress regularly defunds programs that fall behind schedule. NASA reacts by doing the same thing on a smaller scale. When a large program falls behind projected schedule, small programs are defunded on a regular basis.
As the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report that came out after Columbia crashed points out, it is this schedule pressure that led to this accident and the Challenger accident before. Unfortunately, we seem to have taken this report and concentrated on the technical aspects of what caused the actual vehicle to crash without fully comprehending that the larger budgetary concerns are what led to the decision making process that crashed Columbia. In other words, it wasn’t a technical issue that caused the accident; but rather a whole series of decisions before and after the technical issue that were overwhelmingly driven by budgetary concerns at the top levels of NASA.
There is a smoking gun involved but it was loaded, primed, and fired by a budgetary weakness at the heart of NASA’s existence. Annually renewable budgets based upon projections of research and development are inherently inaccurate entities. No amount of Congressional scrutiny is going to change that. If we intend on continuing to evolve our presence in space, and I would suggest that as a matter of national security we don’t really have a choice in that matter, we are going to have to understand that it is research and development. Research and development is by its very nature unpredictable.
Leaving that aside for a moment, I would like to point out that we have not changed the process that caused both accidents. As a matter of fact, budgetary concerns for every increasingly smaller amounts of funding have tended to sharpen and increase that pressure. In other words, we have not only not alleviated the problem, we have made it worse.
Currently, NASA is being redirected to concentrate on interplanetary exploration. Lower Earth Orbit space is being handed off to private industry. This includes satellite launch capabilities and Space Station access. Make no mistake about it, NASA is still tasked with funding the research and development necessary to accomplish this but the money is going to private industry. People seem to think a lot of private investors are ponying up the money for Space Ex, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing to handle these concerns but nothing could be further from the truth.
Developing launch vehicles and systems is still research and development. The only difference for private entities is that there is nothing to offset the schedule pressure. In other words, the competitive process wherein the winner takes all has led to even more schedule pressure. The prize is government funding. The loser gets to lose both their funding and their reputation. We have seen the results of this process, both at Wallops Island when the Antares rocket of Orbital Sciences blew up shortly after takeoff and at Cape Canaveral in June when a Space Ex Falcon exploded two minutes into its flight. We can add to that a Russian Progress 59 freighter that burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on May 7, 2015 to present a clear picture of just how hard space flight actually happens to be.
Private companies exist for one reason and one reason only; to make a profit. No other concern is even a close second. It is ludicrous to suppose that schedule pressure based upon budgetary concerns that have caused a government agency to make bad decisions will somehow be better handled by a private concern solely driven by profit. It is just not possible for a private company to react in any other way.
Having been intimately involved in this industry for thirty years now, I have seen a lot of NASA programs come and go. All of them were feasible. All of them were well thought out plans for getting to the next step, for continuing the process of astounding technological advancement that has been the hallmark of the US space program from its inception. All of them were killed by budgetary concerns.
Until we get a handle on how to fund research and development for long term goals I don’t see much possibility that things will change. Private space is not the answer now and it never will be. There is no profit in private space. There is a profit in the indirect and usually unknowable advancement that such technology produces but that is long term and unforeseeable.
The technological advancements that have come from NASA’s efforts are vast and quite astounding as to how they have affected the every-day life of every human on earth. I suspect this will continue for a long as NASA exists. It’s a shame that they are currently being limited by the narrowness of vision that doesn’t allow us to see the whole picture. We don’t seem to recognize the vast Forrest of opportunity that space exploration has produced because we are too concerned with what matchsticks cost.
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Red Devils and Munchkins
Years ago I worked with a crane operator who had his own pronunciation system. JN was an excellent crane operator and a smart guy besides. He ran several successful little side businesses at the same time he worked in our technician crew. He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed help but would also squeeze the last nickel out of every business transaction. I liked him immediately when I met him.
JN used some of the strangest words I have ever heard anyone use. It wasn’t that he couldn’t enunciate he just enunciated differently. Every one of the words he struggled with sounded like the correct word but they were always just a little bit off. A computer was a suputer in JN’s language. He drove an old El Camino truck that had been pristinely restored. It was not an El Camino but an El Torino to JN. There was a long list of things that JN just didn’t seem to want to take the time to pronounce correctly. I could never figure out if he just wasn’t interested in pronunciation or if he just favored his own way of doing it over that used by everyone else.
He soon was a little famous in our shop for his use of non-words. People would ask him to tell stories about things just to catch the string of alternate pronunciations that always spewed force when he did. Sometimes people would correct him but he paid it no mind at all when they did. One of our engineers carefully corrected him on his usage of the term computer during a scheduling meeting.
JN: “We couldn’t get the funtroller for the suputer working on that new pump engine so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “Uh…. you mean the controller?”
JN: “Yes…. Ricky said there was something wrong with the communication manual or funtroller so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “The communication manual?”
JN: “Yes…. the manual that talks to the suputer.”
Engineer: “You mean computer?”
JN: “Yes… the supputer has to talk to the communication manual to run by itself so we ran it in automanual.”
Engineer: “You mean communication module?”
JN: “I already told you that.”
Engineer: “Did you run in automatic or manual mode?”
JN: “We ran it by hand, you know… the old fashioned way.”
You could easily get on a redundant regressive loop of growing confusion talking with JN unless you understood his language. We took to calling it “JN speak” and the best thing to do was learn to make associations between what he said and what he actually meant. Once you got used to it, it wasn’t too bad but initially it could throw a monkey wrench into communication that was pretty frustrating; especially if you were in a hurry.
As careless as JN was in his use of language, he was the polar opposite in his fastidiousness in almost every other aspect of his life. He worked in one of the pumphouses that supplied cooling water to the test stands at NASA when he wasn’t operating cranes. Since most of the parts of the big locomotive diesels required careful crane handling control in putting them in place during engine rebuilds he was invaluable to the head mechanic. He always insisted on JN being the operator when he was rebuilding engines as he JN was amazingly deft in handling and moving things with a crane.
When the pumphouse was running supporting tests, JN was an operator who ran the control system that ramped the engines and operating the valve systems in the pumphouse. He took this same level of exacting fastidiousness to this pursuit as well. He was an excellent operator who knew the system backwards and forwards and was always one step ahead in his mind when following operating procedures.
On days where the test stands experienced delays, the pumphouse would go into standby mode with engines idling; simply maintaining water pressure on the coolant and fire control systems until whatever was wrong on the test stand could be worked out. Some of these delays were pretty long and boring. On those days, JN always had some sort of home project in his car to work on. He would bring silverware in to polish or kitchen knives to sharpen; something along those lines while he waited. During one such delay I was working on repairing some of the large 54” water valve controllers on the system while we were in delay so I was in constant communication with the pumphouse. As we finished our repairs and had JN cycle test the valves to check limit switch positions, the test stand came online to tell us we were 20 minutes from test.
We got in our truck and drove back to the pumphouse to wait out the test. It was a short cycle test which was supposed to run for 3 minutes; after which we could resume our system repairs. When we got back to the pumphouse control room I noticed JN was busily polishing some metal pieces that he had wrapped in a shop rag. Curious, I looked over his shoulder to see what looked like a brass door hinge in his hands and several more still wrapped in the shop rag.
Me…. “Is that a door hinge?”
JN…. “Yes” he said as nonchalant as ever.I noticed he also had a can of Brasso and was steadily making the hinge shine to a high polish.
Me… “Why are you polishing door hinges?”
JN…. “It’s just that time. I polish all of them once a year,” as if every sane person pulled their door hinges off to polish them annually.
Me….”uh…. ok.” What could I say? I am not exaggerating when I say that if I live to be a hundred I would likely never have thought of such a thing. I looked over at Clinton who also worked in the pumphouse and he was just smiling broadly as he shrugged his shoulders. That was JN to a tee. Fastidious and at the same time incomprehensible.
Some months later as we were all eating lunch one day JN launched into an angry explanation that something was tearing up his new manicured lawn. JN had just paid a lot of money to a landscaping company to redo his lawn to his exacting standards. JN hated to part with money to begin with but money wasted was a cardinal sin in his eyes. He was quite incensed about the whole thing, grumbling about how much money he spent and how it was all thrown away.
JN… “I may as well burn a wet dog.”
Me…. “What??”
JN… “I spent enough money on that yard to burn a wet dog and all I got to show for it is a bunch of panholes.”
Me…. “Panholes?”
JN… “Critter holes.”
Me…. “Is something digging in your yard, digging potholes?”
JN… “Yes. Panholes; I’m going to get my rifle and shoot the little bastards.”
Me… “What are you going to shoot?”
JN… “The little bastards digging holes; Munchkins.”
Me…. thinking…. “Uh…. you mean chipmunks?”
JN…. “Yes… the little bastards are tearing up my yard and I am going to start shooting them.”
I knew JN lived in a very nice area of Huntsville but it was also very crowded with houses and completely in the middle of town. Shooting a rifle inside the city limits was not a good idea.
Me… “JN…. You can’t be shooting a rifle in your front yard. The cops will come arrest you.”
JN…. “Well then…. THEY can come shoot the little bastards but I ain’t going to let them tear my whole yard up after I spent a fortune getting it that way I want it.”
Me…. “I don’t think they will do that either. But you need to talk to them before you get a rifle out in the front yard and go to blasting away at Chipmunks.”
JN drew a puff on his pipe and seemed to mull that over for a few minutes.
JN… “Aye god, you might be right. I think I’ll call the sheriff’s department and tell them.”
JN walked over to the desk in the shop and got out the phone book to call the Sheriff’s department. He was still mad but at least he was not likely to get arrested by calling them first. Besides, I thought they might have a suggestion of someone who could get rid of the chipmunks as well. The conversation that followed was one that I could only hear one side of. I can well imagine what went on at the other end of it but could only judge it by how loud the tone got from the sound that escaped the earpiece.
JN…. “Hello… I have a problem and need to speak to someone about it.”
After a brief pause…
JN…. “Well… I just paid a lot of money to get my yard redone and now some munckins are digging it up. I want to just get my rifle and shoot the little devils but my friend tells me that I can’t do that in this city.”
Another pause….
JN….”Yes maam….. they are digging holes in my yard.”
Another pause…
JN…. “I don’t know why; it’s just the kind of thing munchkins like to do I guess.”
Another pause…
JN…. “You know MUNCHKINS,” as if saying it louder should clear up the misconception. “Little red devils. I’m going to get my rifle and light their little butts up the next time I see one in my yard.”
Another pause followed by a rising tone coming from the other end of the phone.
JN… “Never mind where I live. I would shoot them for tearing up your yard too. I hate the little devils.”
By this time I was trying to catch his attention…
Me…. “JN…. Tell them chipmunks! Say CHIPMUNK!”
JN… “That’s what I told her, MUNCHKINS.”
More rising tone on the other end of the phone….
JN… “I’ll shoot the little devils if I want. You can come bury their little butts if I catch any more of them in my yard.” He was yelling into the phone.
Me…. “CHIPMUNKS, CHIPMUNKS “
I was trying to yell loud enough so that whoever was on the other end of the phone could hear so they wouldn’t think a lot of local neighborhood children were getting ready to be assassinated by some crazed lawn care fanatic.
JN… “OK… then YOU can come kill them, but they are NOT going to tear up my lawnscaping anymore; I can gay-run-tee you that.”
Before anyone could say anything else, JN hung up the phone. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t have caller ID in those days. I tried to explain to JN the difference between chipmunks and the vision most people get in their head when you say “munchkin” but he had no interest in my explanation. The Sheriff’s department probably gets their fair share of strange calls to begin with but I could tell from the rising tone escaping the earpiece that someone got a good story to tell later on that morning; probably in horror.
JN used some of the strangest words I have ever heard anyone use. It wasn’t that he couldn’t enunciate he just enunciated differently. Every one of the words he struggled with sounded like the correct word but they were always just a little bit off. A computer was a suputer in JN’s language. He drove an old El Camino truck that had been pristinely restored. It was not an El Camino but an El Torino to JN. There was a long list of things that JN just didn’t seem to want to take the time to pronounce correctly. I could never figure out if he just wasn’t interested in pronunciation or if he just favored his own way of doing it over that used by everyone else.
He soon was a little famous in our shop for his use of non-words. People would ask him to tell stories about things just to catch the string of alternate pronunciations that always spewed force when he did. Sometimes people would correct him but he paid it no mind at all when they did. One of our engineers carefully corrected him on his usage of the term computer during a scheduling meeting.
JN: “We couldn’t get the funtroller for the suputer working on that new pump engine so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “Uh…. you mean the controller?”
JN: “Yes…. Ricky said there was something wrong with the communication manual or funtroller so we ran it automanually.”
Engineer: “The communication manual?”
JN: “Yes…. the manual that talks to the suputer.”
Engineer: “You mean computer?”
JN: “Yes… the supputer has to talk to the communication manual to run by itself so we ran it in automanual.”
Engineer: “You mean communication module?”
JN: “I already told you that.”
Engineer: “Did you run in automatic or manual mode?”
JN: “We ran it by hand, you know… the old fashioned way.”
You could easily get on a redundant regressive loop of growing confusion talking with JN unless you understood his language. We took to calling it “JN speak” and the best thing to do was learn to make associations between what he said and what he actually meant. Once you got used to it, it wasn’t too bad but initially it could throw a monkey wrench into communication that was pretty frustrating; especially if you were in a hurry.
As careless as JN was in his use of language, he was the polar opposite in his fastidiousness in almost every other aspect of his life. He worked in one of the pumphouses that supplied cooling water to the test stands at NASA when he wasn’t operating cranes. Since most of the parts of the big locomotive diesels required careful crane handling control in putting them in place during engine rebuilds he was invaluable to the head mechanic. He always insisted on JN being the operator when he was rebuilding engines as he JN was amazingly deft in handling and moving things with a crane.
When the pumphouse was running supporting tests, JN was an operator who ran the control system that ramped the engines and operating the valve systems in the pumphouse. He took this same level of exacting fastidiousness to this pursuit as well. He was an excellent operator who knew the system backwards and forwards and was always one step ahead in his mind when following operating procedures.
On days where the test stands experienced delays, the pumphouse would go into standby mode with engines idling; simply maintaining water pressure on the coolant and fire control systems until whatever was wrong on the test stand could be worked out. Some of these delays were pretty long and boring. On those days, JN always had some sort of home project in his car to work on. He would bring silverware in to polish or kitchen knives to sharpen; something along those lines while he waited. During one such delay I was working on repairing some of the large 54” water valve controllers on the system while we were in delay so I was in constant communication with the pumphouse. As we finished our repairs and had JN cycle test the valves to check limit switch positions, the test stand came online to tell us we were 20 minutes from test.
We got in our truck and drove back to the pumphouse to wait out the test. It was a short cycle test which was supposed to run for 3 minutes; after which we could resume our system repairs. When we got back to the pumphouse control room I noticed JN was busily polishing some metal pieces that he had wrapped in a shop rag. Curious, I looked over his shoulder to see what looked like a brass door hinge in his hands and several more still wrapped in the shop rag.
Me…. “Is that a door hinge?”
JN…. “Yes” he said as nonchalant as ever.I noticed he also had a can of Brasso and was steadily making the hinge shine to a high polish.
Me… “Why are you polishing door hinges?”
JN…. “It’s just that time. I polish all of them once a year,” as if every sane person pulled their door hinges off to polish them annually.
Me….”uh…. ok.” What could I say? I am not exaggerating when I say that if I live to be a hundred I would likely never have thought of such a thing. I looked over at Clinton who also worked in the pumphouse and he was just smiling broadly as he shrugged his shoulders. That was JN to a tee. Fastidious and at the same time incomprehensible.
Some months later as we were all eating lunch one day JN launched into an angry explanation that something was tearing up his new manicured lawn. JN had just paid a lot of money to a landscaping company to redo his lawn to his exacting standards. JN hated to part with money to begin with but money wasted was a cardinal sin in his eyes. He was quite incensed about the whole thing, grumbling about how much money he spent and how it was all thrown away.
JN… “I may as well burn a wet dog.”
Me…. “What??”
JN… “I spent enough money on that yard to burn a wet dog and all I got to show for it is a bunch of panholes.”
Me…. “Panholes?”
JN… “Critter holes.”
Me…. “Is something digging in your yard, digging potholes?”
JN… “Yes. Panholes; I’m going to get my rifle and shoot the little bastards.”
Me… “What are you going to shoot?”
JN… “The little bastards digging holes; Munchkins.”
Me…. thinking…. “Uh…. you mean chipmunks?”
JN…. “Yes… the little bastards are tearing up my yard and I am going to start shooting them.”
I knew JN lived in a very nice area of Huntsville but it was also very crowded with houses and completely in the middle of town. Shooting a rifle inside the city limits was not a good idea.
Me… “JN…. You can’t be shooting a rifle in your front yard. The cops will come arrest you.”
JN…. “Well then…. THEY can come shoot the little bastards but I ain’t going to let them tear my whole yard up after I spent a fortune getting it that way I want it.”
Me…. “I don’t think they will do that either. But you need to talk to them before you get a rifle out in the front yard and go to blasting away at Chipmunks.”
JN drew a puff on his pipe and seemed to mull that over for a few minutes.
JN… “Aye god, you might be right. I think I’ll call the sheriff’s department and tell them.”
JN walked over to the desk in the shop and got out the phone book to call the Sheriff’s department. He was still mad but at least he was not likely to get arrested by calling them first. Besides, I thought they might have a suggestion of someone who could get rid of the chipmunks as well. The conversation that followed was one that I could only hear one side of. I can well imagine what went on at the other end of it but could only judge it by how loud the tone got from the sound that escaped the earpiece.
JN…. “Hello… I have a problem and need to speak to someone about it.”
After a brief pause…
JN…. “Well… I just paid a lot of money to get my yard redone and now some munckins are digging it up. I want to just get my rifle and shoot the little devils but my friend tells me that I can’t do that in this city.”
Another pause….
JN….”Yes maam….. they are digging holes in my yard.”
Another pause…
JN…. “I don’t know why; it’s just the kind of thing munchkins like to do I guess.”
Another pause…
JN…. “You know MUNCHKINS,” as if saying it louder should clear up the misconception. “Little red devils. I’m going to get my rifle and light their little butts up the next time I see one in my yard.”
Another pause followed by a rising tone coming from the other end of the phone.
JN… “Never mind where I live. I would shoot them for tearing up your yard too. I hate the little devils.”
By this time I was trying to catch his attention…
Me…. “JN…. Tell them chipmunks! Say CHIPMUNK!”
JN… “That’s what I told her, MUNCHKINS.”
More rising tone on the other end of the phone….
JN… “I’ll shoot the little devils if I want. You can come bury their little butts if I catch any more of them in my yard.” He was yelling into the phone.
Me…. “CHIPMUNKS, CHIPMUNKS “
I was trying to yell loud enough so that whoever was on the other end of the phone could hear so they wouldn’t think a lot of local neighborhood children were getting ready to be assassinated by some crazed lawn care fanatic.
JN… “OK… then YOU can come kill them, but they are NOT going to tear up my lawnscaping anymore; I can gay-run-tee you that.”
Before anyone could say anything else, JN hung up the phone. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t have caller ID in those days. I tried to explain to JN the difference between chipmunks and the vision most people get in their head when you say “munchkin” but he had no interest in my explanation. The Sheriff’s department probably gets their fair share of strange calls to begin with but I could tell from the rising tone escaping the earpiece that someone got a good story to tell later on that morning; probably in horror.
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