Another Engineer warning turned down... and people dies.

[Zucca]

I can't stand this:

1986-01-28 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

The Rogers Commission found NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident, with the agency violating its own safety rules. NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton-Thiokol's design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. NASA managers also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning, and failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.

2003-02-01 Space Shuttle Columbia

... but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious.
NASA managers limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed.

2018-08-14 Morandi Bridge collapse in Italy

Eng. Antonio Brencich warned in 2016 that the bridge project was faulty and had some design problems.


Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I am so sad. RIP to them.

[onesixright]

Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I am so sad. RIP to them.

Extremely sad. As always their priority are probably money, money and more money. A life has no value.

Unfortunately it will not be the last (hate to say it).

[Zero999]

Yes, this all comes down to money, very sad.

Correction: the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was 2003-02-01.

[RandallMcRee]

Interesting that this is Italy. There seems to be some tension between the engineers and politicians?

These scientists were prosecuted and found guilty for being wrong about earthquake warnings:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/italian-scientists-get/

Later exonerated:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/italy-s-supreme-court-clears-l-aquila-earthquake-scientists-good

[james_s]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

[Mr. Scram]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

It's very rare to not be able to do anything at all. You possibly could alter the trajectory or try other things to lessen the stress in the damaged area.

[Gyro]

I thought there were possibilities discussed at the inquiry that they could have adjusted their re-entry 'angle' to reduce temperatures on the affected wing, at the expense of other surfaces - not saying that it would have worked...

[ciccio]

Too many bridges have collapsed in Italy in recent years, including one the was opened only 10 days before it collapsed.
The Genoa's bridge that collapsed to-day, with a more than 30 death toll, was opened in 1967: 50 years ago.
In it's life it had been subject of many maintenance works, maybe it was not well designed, but the problem is a money problem:
The bridge is part of a  privately managed highway (on State concession). You pay a toll for using this "autostrada", and every year the private owned Company ask for a toll increase, but the state approves it only if they have spent money in safety and maintence.
The trick is simple: they own the Companies that make the maintenance work, so they spend a lot of money from one pocket, and put it in the other pocket.. The State allows for the toll's increase, and people pays...
Was the work "state of the art"? It really does not matter.
I, like Zucca, I'm very sad.

[langwadt]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

It's very rare to not be able to do anything at all. You possibly could alter the trajectory or try other things to lessen the stress in the damaged area.

use the space station as a life raft and abandon the shuttle?

I seem to remember something about them adding remote control to the shuttle so that in the event of something similar they could park the astronauts at the space station and attempt to bring it down remotely




 

[Kjelt]

The problem is that there probably are a lot of warnings made where nothing happened or will happen.
The challenge is to sort/shift the real threats and dangers.
Every life lost is one too many though.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I've thought about this a lot, and come to the conclusion that while people are around and doing stuff - building bridges, rockets etc, there will always be disasters.

It's all about the money.

Of course, money represents resources, and resources are finite. Our desires are infinite. The real problem is opportunity cost. Yes, we could spend $1 billion on every bridge to make it totally safe, but then there will be 10 other bridges we can't afford to build.

Given the underlying systemic factors, disasters are inevitable. Really, the only thing you can do is just get used to it.

It was a disaster that lead to evolution of intelligent apes; in many ways change depends on catastrophic events.

[BrianHG]

Not as bad, but I know a few people got their arms and hands crushed because of a TV lift I was contract to design which I quoted on, I warned of the problem and they even knew about the issue and came specifically to me for my expertise to design a safety solution.  They didn't want to pay me, they didn't want to add the 1$ of safety electronics on a 450$-750$ device, I even told them what to do if they didn't contract me because I wanted to look out for the small company, and guess what, exactly what they came to me to prevent happened in the field within a month or 2 of sales.  Now, they are out of the business and they faced a few law suits.

[glarsson]

I've thought about this a lot, and come to the conclusion that while people are around and doing stuff - building bridges, rockets etc, there will always be disasters.

There will be disasters even if we don't build things or fly rockets. The cave we live in might collapse, an earthquake, a  mud slide...

[james_s]

Hindsight always makes it easier to decide what we should have focused our efforts on too. It's easy to say after the fact that we should have done X, Y or Z, but given resources are limited it's impossible to fix everything that really ought to be fixed. Instead we have to make an educated guess prior to something happening.

[rdl]

I wonder if there were other close calls.

[CatalinaWOW]

After every disaster you will find many people pointing out that they had predicted the problem and were ignored.  In many cases they are correct.  In almost as many cases the predictions were made in ignorance, just habitual nay saying.  Those in decision making positions have the difficult task of deciding which Cassandras are fact based and worth listening to.  They need to do this because there are always a few who will predict disaster for any activity.  Listening to everyone would result in nothing happening.

My interpretation of the Challenger analysis is not that managers should listen and respond to every warning, but that they had shifted their balance too far towards ignoring all warnings.  They do need to listen to all warnings, evaluate credibility and respond appropriately.   

The Columbia case is more troubling.  They could have done an inspection flyby and ISS crew would have been able to report the extent of the damage.  Nothing has been reported about analysis of the possibility of returning to the ISS and sheltering after a negative report.  Perhaps someone did an analysis and determined that there wasn't enough life support to keep them going until another shuttle could be launched (which would have had the same risk of damage to the tiles).  Keeping them there until the problem was fixed was clearly impossible (it took many, many months as I remember).  Similar analysis might have shown that Soviet launch and return capability wasn't enough to get them down (could only get two at a time down without depending on the not so reliable automatic docking system so it is many trips).   

[langwadt]

Hindsight always makes it easier to decide what we should have focused our efforts on too. It's easy to say after the fact that we should have done X, Y or Z, but given resources are limited it's impossible to fix everything that really ought to be fixed. Instead we have to make an educated guess prior to something happening.

as they say in aviation, “regulations are written in blood.”

[chickenHeadKnob]

What a strange bridge design, Morandi used pre-stressed  concrete beams instead of cable stays. No wonder it required extra continuing maintenance.

[Kjelt]

My interpretation of the Challenger analysis is not that managers should listen and respond to every warning, but that they had shifted their balance too far towards ignoring all warnings.  They do need to listen to all warnings, evaluate credibility and respond appropriately.     

Been a long time ago but what I remember was that NASA could not afford any bad news or there would be bigger budget cuts.
The problem is always do we stop a mission in order to higher the safety and add to the running costs or do we let it go.
Spaceflight is a high risk venture, two shuttles lost on all those missions is how awfull it sounds not that bad. If you look how many normal unmanned rockets with satelites get scrapped halfway flight because something goes wrong...........

[TerraHertz]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

The reason they could not have done anything about the wing damage, was that the penny-pinchers had decided that mission didn't need any space suits on board. Not even one. Whereas if they'd had a suit and even a small patch kit for damage to the thermal tiles, they'd have been able to fix it. The damage was quite small.


Here's someone else's rant about 'minimal safety factor engineering'. With photos at source http://82.221.129.208/.yg9.html but that isn't a permalink.

Freeway collapse in Italy
Time for a rant
I do not like minimally built structures. And that is exactly what the freeway that collapsed in Italy was. Though such designs will work if nothing goes wrong, all it takes to destroy them is for one contractor to cheat, or one error to be made. Why build like that? For perspective, each span is over 1,000 feet long.

Back in the good old days, before "highly educated" engineers worked all projects to look like "art" while building the thinnest "graceful" looking crap that could possibly do the job, roads were built that looked like this:

There's something to be said about the old school method, where things were made many times stronger than they needed to be, just to make sure it would last. And you can bet that when there's nothing but sand blowing in the wind, after this planet is abandoned thousands of years from now, THAT particular highway is still going to be there along with the pyramids. Why not? If it can be done, why not do it? It sure beats what just happened in Italy. And contrary to logic, the materials are so cheap that it is actually cheaper to over build rather than do the fancy crap, and you'll have tons of room for contractors to cheat and you'll still be OK.

One great example of a bridge that got cheated while being built to minimum specs for the sake of "art" is the Zakim / Viaduct bridge in Boston. It was noticed that the spans were really long between supports, and people wondered. But assurances kept coming, "don't worry, it is the latest design, it really is strong enough, the most advanced materials were used, blah blah, and then it was discovered that the contractor cheated the concrete. Then the word was "don't worry, it is fine anyway, and to prove it they marched a herd of elephants across it for the grand opening. That's right. A herd of elephants. Which, with a combined total, weighed less than one multiple axle dump truck loaded with granite. Though it won't happen often (for sure), that bridge is just waiting for the right traffic jam, where it is loaded with bumper to bumper dump trucks loaded with granite. Then what? Probably what happened in Italy. Look how long this span is. It goes all the way across the Charles river (and more) in one whack.

How about another look at this. Look how much those thin supports are holding, and despite the depth of field of this photo being compressed, those thin supports are on opposite sides of the very wide Charles River.

What's going to happen if a speeding semi truck loaded with 80,000 pounds of coiled steel hits one of those supports dead on? Stuff should be designed to handle that, because sh*t happens.

When I see thin and graceful construction, I don't say "wow, that's cool", I say, well, there are cars on it, and it did not fall for them so yeah, I'll go across it and hope. One such bridge I went across that failed later was the one in San Francisco that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake. I went across that on the bottom span and kept saying, "damn, those support columns are super thin, what were they thinking?" and they guy I was with said "that's the latest construction, they are thin but super strong and are made that way so they won't fall in an earthquake. WHAT HAPPENED? Remember that! the people claiming that was a high tech design were full of crap. I said there's no way that's going to make it through an earthquake and I was right. I was just glad to be off the thing. Only a few months later the earthquake happened and down it went.

Yes, it is amazing that a lot of that stuff works without a problem. But why do it when you don't have to?

[Jeroen3]

There is an entire wiki page with bridge failures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

Not too long ago, a bridge (in progress) collapsed in Florida.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse

[Nusa]

use the space station as a life raft and abandon the shuttle?

I seem to remember something about them adding remote control to the shuttle so that in the event of something similar they could park the astronauts at the space station and attempt to bring it down remotely

The Columbia case is more troubling.  They could have done an inspection flyby and ISS crew would have been able to report the extent of the damage.  Nothing has been reported about analysis of the possibility of returning to the ISS and sheltering after a negative report.  Perhaps someone did an analysis and determined that there wasn't enough life support to keep them going until another shuttle could be launched (which would have had the same risk of damage to the tiles).  Keeping them there until the problem was fixed was clearly impossible (it took many, many months as I remember).  Similar analysis might have shown that Soviet launch and return capability wasn't enough to get them down (could only get two at a time down without depending on the not so reliable automatic docking system so it is many trips).   

STS-107 was not an ISS mission, so it couldn't have returned there. It was a science mission in a lower orbit at a different inclination than the ISS. Going to the ISS was probably not an option fuel-wise, even if they wanted to.

Even if they could, the 2003 ISS was set up for the existing crew of 3. Trying to make that life-support sustain an additional 7 people once the Columbias reserves were gone was probably not going to work for long.

[metrologist]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/the-age-of-precarious-infrastructure/567493/

[CatalinaWOW]

To Engineer Is Human: The role of failure in successful design by Petroski is a good read on this general subject.

[Paul Moir]

Going to the ISS was probably not an option fuel-wise, even if they wanted to.

Even more, Columbia was too heavy to get to the ISS which it why it never went there nor was fitted with the necessary docking hardware.  (Never mind that the ISS did have to dip down for the higher performance shuttles which took some planning.)

The commission did identify a rescue mission with Atlanta as just about being possible though.