Originally Posted by
clevic
The Challenger reference resonates with a lot of us. What's remarkable is that after all the delays — hydrogen leaks, toilet issues, faulty sensors — the mission still came off clean. The free-return trajectory worked exactly as designed, and Integrity brought everyone home. After 50 years, humans have been back to the vicinity of the Moon.
I’m not a ‘space guy’, but I am a ‘risk guy’, and the thing that worries me - and it worries me a lot - about NASA, is that it’s the exact same areas in which the issues are occurring this time around. Now, in some, that’s because they are really difficult, and in the absence of breakthrough technology or new materials it always will be, but I’m not sure if that’s the case across them all. The outcome of this is that there are both controlled and uncontrolled risks at what aviation would perceive to be wholly unacceptable levels, and the possibility of tragedy is, to my risk-averse mind, horrifically high.
Now, as long as those involved and those around them understand and accept that, perhaps it’s tolerable, but this brings to mind parallels with those who are, after death, described as having departed this world, ‘doing what they loved’. It’s always been my opinion that if you could, in those cases, freeze time half a second before impact, and ask them, ‘how do you feel about dying now, is it worth it?’, their answers would be resoundingly, ‘no’. Where the endgame of a successful outcome is fame and fortune, I’m even less sure decisions are balanced.
But more worryingly, the recurring nature of the problem areas could - and note, only could - indicate that structural weaknesses in the agency’s practices, people, software and hardware, previously identified or hinted at in the aftermath of Challenger or elsewhere, may not have been thoroughly addressed, and the worst possible outcome would be a loss, followed by an investigation which found those things true. I do worry that that is a possibility.