Xref: utzoo sci.space:8452 sci.space.shuttle:2051
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Morton Thiokol (blame etc.)
Message-ID: <1988Nov24.195930.16569@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Nov4.065730.10761@utzoo.uucp> <7594@dasys1.UUCP> <1988Nov14.214139.1892@utzoo.uucp> <7734@dasys1.UUCP> <1988Nov18.182613.1823@utzoo.uucp> <7825@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 88 19:59:30 GMT

In article <7825@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>... If
>we want to dump the contractor system as a whole, OK; if not, NASA has
>to be held responsible for managing that system effectively...

Right.  And one very important part of managing it effectively is to make
it clear to contractors that appropriate behavior will be rewarded and
inappropriate behavior will be punished.  Do we really want to prevent
a recurrence of Challenger?  If so, the next time a contractor is faced
with the decision of whether to cut corners or not, and the engineers
say it's not safe, and the management is tempted to overrule them, what
can the engineers say?  Remember, management is MBAs and stuffed shirts,
whose notions of honor and professional ethics and duty could be inscribed
on the head of a pin in large type:  what matters to them is money.  Will
the engineers be able to say "but look what it *cost* Thiokol when they
cut corners"?  If they can't say that, then management will overrule them.
And right now, you better believe that they can't say that.  Thiokol made
large profits out of killing seven astronauts, not least the indefinite
postponement of the second-sourcing issue.

The right thing to do would have been to bring other contractors in on
the SRB fixes, since Thiokol had demonstrated that it values money over
safety, and shift production away from Thiokol as quickly as possible.
And lay some criminal charges against those directly responsible (in NASA
as well as Thiokol) too.  That might perhaps send the right message.  What
was actually done sure hasn't.

>Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, next April?"  The virtuous
>answer to Mulloy's question would have been "yes, if necessary." You
>would have to be a Keebler Elf to believe that any NASA contractor
>could have been expected to give that answer.  The crime is that the
>question was even asked.

By the same argument, though, would you really expect that low-level
NASA management, under the pressures they were under, would have asked
the question any differently?  That argument can be applied to almost
any length, leading to the conclusion that nobody is responsible.  Which
is certainly the implicit conclusion that was reached this time, to judge
by the results.  But if nobody was responsible for Challenger, nobody is
really, personally responsible for making sure it doesn't happen again.
What we want is for *everybody* to feel responsible.  That means holding
*all* involved parties responsible when something screws up.  And doing
more to them than just slapping their fingers in public, too.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu