Fligth Safety Risk
Shame I'm rather too far away to be able to go to that symposium. I wonder if there will be any discussion on the negative aspects of risk analysis. I've been involved in far too many scenarios where the analysis only focusses on what might go wrong with the testing (or, more usually, the design that affects the testing) and on how to mitigate that, but fully ignores the positive safety or knowledge benefits of doing that testing. We rarely make any debate or concession to the bleedin' obvious truth that - sometimes - if you want to make progress you have to accept some level of risk. Put another way, risk is relative and needs to be balanced against the requirements and objectives: in my experience, that rarely happens. Anyone who was at the LA SETP annual symposium in 1999 or 2000 (can't remember, it's an age thing) and heard Scott Crossfield at the Friday lunch will recall a brilliant summation of the dangers of unbalanced risk analysis and the resulting loss of capability and excellence. I challenge anyone going to the Oct RAeS symposium to try raising that challenge and see how far you get.