Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 14, October 27, 2003

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I would suppose that the majority of those reading this newsletter are not especially fond of the space program. You'd probably regard it as a waste of time and money. Indulge me for a minute.

The report on the Columbia accident of February 1st is in (as well as a significant article in the current Atlantic Magazine). The story is a sad one: warnings ignored, arrogance, and long standing problems not dealt with.

The comparisons to the Challenger accident of 1986 are obvious. Back then there were ample warnings ignored and NASA was hit for its arrogance.

But NASA has had three fatal accidents, not two. The first one was the fire on the launch pad that killed three astronauts in January of 1967. And looking at all three, the causes are very much the same. Pushing to meet arbitrary schedules, corners being cut, warnings from the troops ignored.

We talk of these being failures of technology, but I don't see that in any of the three. No unknown aspect of science surfaced in the wake of the accidents. It wasn't as if any of them occurred because people miscalculated their numbers or used the wrong formula. Each were failures of people, and in particular, the people at the top of the organization. The people at the top are not technology people. In all three cases the technicians, the nerds, the engineers, the geeks were warning of problems and the managers, the executives, the politicians, the bureaucrats shut them down. I don't see that as a technology problem.

So there are three accidents, all the same. But there is one, no two, fundamental differences that separate the 1967 accident from the 1986 and 2003 accidents. The first is what happened to the machine afterward. After the Apollo fire revealed shoddy work in the capsule, it was fixed. The revised capsule performed flawlessly and above its design - surviving being hit by lightning on Apollo 12 and, most impressively, coming through the Apollo 13 crisis with flying colors.

The second difference is what Gene Krantz, head of flight control, did after the first accident. Without waiting for the investigation he summoned his team of flight controllers and announced that he had reached his own conclusions about what was responsible: they were. They had the job of keeping the astronauts safe and they weren't kept safe, therefore, they were to blame. And they'd never shirk that duty again.

I don't think that either such action happened after accident two, nor do I expect them after accident three. Lawyers, lawsuits, wouldn't be safe. Can't fix something without admitting you didn't fix it before. Kafka was right, and the revolution of NASA has long since evaporated. Unfortunately, it has parallels in the rest of our society.

Protest against the U.S./ U. N. occupation of Kosovo is increasing as there appears to be no plan for returning the area to local rule, reports the Guardian Weekly, Oct. 23, p.3.

"It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe." General. George C. Marshall, in 1947 commenting on "nation building", quoted in the New York Times, Oct. 24. p. A23.

"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true - I no longer know how to use my telephone." -- Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ programming language.

The total number of settlers in illegal settlements in the west bank totals 230,000, double what it was ten years ago, reports The New York Times, Oct. 3, p.A11.

Compared to a year ago, 1.7 million more Americans live in poverty. Median household income has declined by 1 %, reports the New York Times, Oct. 3, p. A27.

Occupation of Iraq is costing, in constant dollars, as much as the Vietnam war did, reports The Nation, Sept. 29, p. 3.

The Bush Administration will be funding free universal health care - for Iraq, reports the Nation, Sept. 29. p. 6

"Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said military planners when to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. He said the Air Force sometimes used less powerful bombs than it would like and conducted most air strikes in residential areas during the day, when children are away at school." New York Times, Sept., 26, p. A6

"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind the slime of a new bureaucracy." - Franz Kafka

"To achieve [certainty] we tend to be scientific and critical and so dispel the mystery, or to imitate those patterns of certitude in religious absolutism that crush the mystery." Walter Brueggemann, in Interpretation and Obedience, 1991, p. 28.

A personal story. A friend of friend lost her daughter to illness this week after a long struggle. Chrissie was 32 and her heart failed. Chrissie was also severely retarded, so impared that she had never spoken a single word her entire life. Death, of course, is not the good news. The good news was her life. Like many retarded people, she was a good-natured source of inexhausitable love to her parents and all who met her, an angel, as many said. And many are rejoicing that Chrissie is now in a world with less pain and one where she can communicate better and those there before her can know what, in this world, she was unable to share about herself. All that is good news.