Will NASA Ever Learn?

I'm still trying to figure out what made Mike Griffin, the new head of NASA (who, by the way had one of the shortest confirmation hearings ever) say that the decision to launch the next shuttle mission would be his, regardless of what the Return to Flight board says. Does he want NASA to be run out of the space-faring business? Has he forgotten Challenger and Columbia, and even the Apollo 1 fire? (well, he may have forgotten the Apollo fire, since NASA refers to it as the Apollo 204 fire, as part of the forgetting process) Maybe he failed to read Diane Vaughns book, "The Challenger Launch Decision," an extremely detailed examination of the flaws in the decision making system at NASA. Maybe he failed to read "Comm Check," by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood, where if you aren't a careful reader, one could conclude that no serious efforts were made to determine the damage to Columbia since there was "nothing we could do anyways, why make them suffer." Even the watered down Rodgers commision report (well, except for Richard Feynmans rather scathing appendix) showed that NASA needs to listen to their engineers. And of course, there is the CAIB report, which emphasizes again and again the NASA ignored evidence of a serious problem, that the need to launch outweighed safety concerns, and that there were several items that had to be addressed before launching the next shuttle. Did you miss that one too, Mike?

The obsession with returning the shuttle to flight has a name - "go fever" and boy, does NASA have a bad case. They as much as admit to the CAIB that they don't have a good understanding of foam shedding, yet allow the the shuttle to rollout with a crack in the external tanks foam! They have modified the analysis software for evaluating launch debris strikes, the same software that said that Columbia was in no danger. Well, that's a good thing then, right? Except they are modifying the software in the OPPOSITE direction of safety! That being the case, what is Griffin going to base his decisions on, his 7 degrees, management opinion, or Kentucky windage? How foolish of me to expect him to listen to the experts who have been selected to approve the return to flight. How foolish of me to doubt the Mike Griffin knows best. How foolish of me to expect a government agency, in this administration, to do a patient review of all the facts instead of acting rashly. And lastly, how foolish of me to expect logic and reason to prevail over ego and emotions. Now, the crew of Discovery are unwittingly risking theirs lives for the furtherance of the political careers of bureaucrats, and I can only hope they survive.

Oil Speculators as Terrorists

So, you want to bring the United States to its knees? Don't become some form of human bomb, just jack up the price of oil! The whole world makes lots of money at $35 a barrel. Only the speculators make money at $40 and above. And there is no earthly reason for oil to be above $35 a barrel, NONE! Of course, there was no earthly reason for the stock bubble in 2000 either, but at least the motive was obvious back then, pure greed. The motives behind the people setting the price of oil these days seem to be purely evil. The trouble is when you look at the impact of high oil prices. During the winter, home heating oil prices rise, in the spring and summer, it's gasoline. Either way, it makes people travel less, re-allocate disposable income towards fuel and away from products, and creates a lot of FUD. Petroleum is a major ingrediant in lots of products, from plastics to chemicals and fertilizers. Thus, the cost of food rises, the costs of packaging rises, in fact the cost of most things rise. Once again, people have to re-allocate more money away from "splurges" to more practical items like foodstuffs.
Now, we have to lay off people, because consumers aren't buying what they used to. No one wants an SUV or other irrationally designed vehicle, we all want 100 miles to the gallon. Auto manufacturers have to cut back on hourly workers. All those increased prices in food and gas brings inflation fears, so up go interest rates, down goes home sales, and home prices. Since the baby boomer generation (myself included) use their homes as their retirement fund, whoops, guess I'll be working longer. And lest we forget, the trade imbalance gets HUGE with all that outrageously priced petroleum coming in, and damn little going out. In short, the US economy is on its knees, all by pushing up the price of oil to an irrational level. There you have. You can destroy the US automotive industry, agriculture, future investment, retirements funds, everything. And not a single follower had to imolate themselves to do it. And we just follow the judas goats bell, and abort to orbit again.

Why it's been awhile

Amazing how sometimes things just turn out, and the circle closes. I've been trying to escape my day job for quite sometime, got all set to bail out, when they announce a plant closing. Now I get to do what I want to do (albiet a few months later) with some paltry, but helpful amount of severance. Of course some of my co-workers are in shock, they have essentially worked for the same people for 20 or more years, never had to do a resume or any job search work, now they are 50+ engineers with no job search skills. It's bad enough they have let their engineering skills stagnate for so long, but over time their salaries have risen to the 99th percentile, while their skills have withered to the 33rd percentile. With the ever shrinking job market up here in New England, their future will be dependent on contacts and luck.

I was fortunate in my childhood to have seen the empty mill buildings in Lowell. To realize that once great companies can just up and move, or cease to exist was earth shattering to me at the ripe old age of 8. It certainly explains why I've never lasted longer than 4 years at any one company, and why continuous training and learning are integral to my life. In this day and age where there is no such thing as loyalty in the workplace, the ability to keep your skills generic is the best way to insure continued employability.

The counterpoint to generic skills is that a lot of firms are looking for specific skills. It's interesting to look at some of the jobs that are out there. For example, "some company" is looking for someone who has experience designing and testing the power supply used in EMC's Symmetrix system. There's a 6 month contract for a former EMC employee who has no other skills than what they learned at EMC. Yup, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life, wait for an ex-employer to need me. You still waiting to re-marry your ex too?

Sorry if this is turning into a rant, but damn if American manufacturers aren't insisting on performing an Abort to Orbit. Rather than use approriate components that require a higher engineering talent level, they are embedding PC's in coffee makers, and scheduling reboots. It's bad enough NASA is still stuck on the ground, do we have to bring down what little is left of domestic engineering talent and manufacturing? It's fine for me, when it's a crisis, my rates start at $100 per hour and soar from there. But wouldn't you like to do a little thinking up front and pay $50?

Introduction

I have zero tolerance for people acting under the influence of stupid, people who fail to take personal responsibility for their beliefs and actions, and people who think they know me better than I do. Thus from time to time, I will share what I feel are the more egregious cases of any of the aforementioned Zero-T issues. And you may ask, why Abort to Orbit? It's one of the abort options for the space shuttle during liftoff, when they are too high and too fast to land, but don't have enough power to go to their planned orbit. So the abort to orbit, though not high enough to do their mission, but maybe high enough to do something useful. It had become a favorite phrase of mine years ago, when mighty NASA forgot they were in the vision business, and settled for a poor excuse for a launch vehicle instead of holding out to do things right. It represented mediocrity, settleing for less than you need, less than you could be. As I watched superior technology fall by the wayside (Betamax, OS/2, non-segmented processors) in favor of less than second best, as I watched elections become a choice between the lesser of who cares, as I watched absolute drivel rise to the top of TV, movie and book sales rankings, I realized abort to orbit isn't just an option, it seems to be a way of life.

I'll finish this first post with an example. I have recently completed reading several books, the most thought provoking of them being God's Debris by Scott Adams, a great read so long as you observe the disclaimers in the preface. This is a quiet book that started life as an ebook, will never reach some of the loftier heights a good book should reach, yet is nicely done. Then I finish The Godfather Returns, by Mark Winegardner, which I'm sure will soon top everyones bestseller and most recommended lists. The only problem is the book is awful. Some of the story ideas are pretty good, but the exposition is abrupt at best, a hydra headed compound sentence doing the work of a paragraph or three. After all these years, and a grueling search for "S/HE WHO WOULD FILL MARIOS SHOES" and this english teacher (professor, sorry) is the best they could come up with? Guess they just aborted to orbit.