

Things that Saved Apollo 13 (2010) - bootload
http://www.universetoday.com/62339/13-things-that-saved-apollo-13/

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hudibras
I always assumed the electrical short happened the first time they stirred the
oxygen tank, not the fifth time. I makes me nauseous to think about what would
have happened if the short didn't happen until the tenth time the button was
pushed and two of the astronauts were on the Moon. Certain, slow death for all
three...

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kjhughes
This original (2010) article is being expanded this month to "13 MORE Things
That Saved Apollo 13":

[http://www.universetoday.com/119747/13-more-things-that-
save...](http://www.universetoday.com/119747/13-more-things-that-saved-
apollo-13/)

Unfortunately, it's basically only a teaser article at the moment:

    
    
        Over the next few weeks, we'll look at 13 additional
        things that helped bring the crew home safely.

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tempestn
The fact that they launched knowing about the pogo problem and its possible
catastrophic implications is brutal. I could almost understand (not justify)
it if they had yet to land on the moon, given the fervor of the space race,
but given than milestone had already been reached, you would think that
avoiding a disaster would be a higher priority.

Presumably (or at least hopefully), like the space shuttle foam, the problem
was known, but not the extent or likelihood of its consequences.

~~~
outworlder
Then there's the Challenger incident. The fact that the O-rings were failing
was well known, there had been documented damage before that flight. They were
a mission critical component, but someone decided that, since they were
redundant, the fact that one set of O-rings was damaged was enough. But that
was actually against regulations.

That they could fail in very cold environments was also known. And yet, the
shuttle was ordered to launch anyway.

~~~
LoSboccacc
it's even worse. on top of corrosion issues, they were certified for ranges to
x to y degrees of temperature, that day the temperature was below minimum
certification range, so management reasoned that since it was outside test
range, there were not enough data point to warrant a scrub.

~~~
saalweachter
You know, I don't think that management made such a call is rare or unique to
NASA, and I don't think that such a call cost lives is even that rare.

The problem is that the decision wasn't "push a button and kill a half dozen
people", it was "launch and maybe have a problem or not launch and definitely
waste X billion dollars and Y man-centuries of time". And we're terrible at
those decisions. We - as individuals and organizations - are terrible at
eating the sunk costs and paying definite to avoid maybe-catastrophes. Maybe
sometimes it's rational but a lot of the time it isn't.

And it's not just "management". All of us make these kinds of decisions when
we ignore bugs to meet deadlines or push a feature that isn't really working
just because we spent so much time on it.

~~~
JamesSwift
I understand the point you are trying to make, but I disagree that 'all of us'
make these kinds of decisions. The catastrophes the vast majority of us will
run into are nothing compared to the catastrophes at play here.

~~~
saalweachter
The catastrophes involving space vehicles are certainly more _impressive_ and
_public_ and _obvious_ , but they aren't particular large in terms of loss-of-
life. It's not hard to beat with a building fire or a large freeway accident,
let alone a series of small failures or the really impressive failures like
structure collapses or industrial-scale explosions. And while it's true that
_most_ of us aren't working on things which by themselves have the potential
to cause these disasters by themselves, _many_ of us are working on things
that could spark an accident or cause one in progress to get worse. Any small
electrical device could start a building fire. I've seen small USB devices,
when left in a laptop in a bag, start smoldering. It was only luck that it was
noticed before combusting. Nearly any component of an automobile could cause
an accident -- the ignition switch, for instance. I don't remember if the
floor mats were exonerated in the "stuck accelerator" cases (did it end up
being driver error?). People use Maps applications and GPSs to find hospitals
-- if you don't return the closest hospital or send people to a wrong address,
people could die. Most of us don't work on Therac software that can directly
shoot people to death, but it's not hard for your bug to be one of a chain of
things that go wrong.

Meanwhile, a lot of us work in or contribute to a culture which promotes risk-
taking. Risk-takers get a lot of the done and only sometimes have problems,
and get promotions, bonuses, congratulated, and trips to tropical locales.
Sometimes things go wrong, but a lot of times you'll be forgiven because you
perform so well. If you're overly cautious, things may never go wrong, but you
also won't get as much done and you'll probably not get as much praise, and
might even be let go for being low-performing. This may not directly result in
any deaths, but it contributes to an industry-wide culture where risk-taking
is the norm and success is defined as "getting a lot right" and not "getting
very little wrong".

