James Webb Space Telescope

[bknight]

I think the Columbia disaster was worse. The technical details of the failure were different but the management failures were the same. They didn't learn from Challenger.

I agree  100% with they didn't learn, which was the original intent of the thread, would the same type of mistake be made with JWST.

[Peter B]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course

Superb article by James Oberg which details the problems with the spacecraft - or, more precisely, people and processes within JPL.

What a complete and utter cock-up!!!

A multi million dollar probe was lost because people didn't fill in the correct forms.... that's bureaucrats for you!!!

I'd disagree that there's anything unique about the ability of bureaucrats to stuff up. In my experience people in private enterprise can manage it just as well.

A good example here in Australia in the last couple of years is how one of our two major supermarket chains, Woolworths, seems to have thrown away half a billion dollars on a largely failed hardware chain called Masters. They seemed to manage to do everything wrong: they opened stores a long way from where people lived (compared to the most popular chain which has stores in town centres); they managed to have their stock ranges out of season, thanks to being tied to an American chain; their staff included a lot of inexperienced juniors (compared to the most popular chain which employs a lot of retired tradesmen); and they engaged in a lot of pointless micromanagement (staff are required to park their cars tail-in).

[sts60]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course

Superb article by James Oberg which details the problems with the spacecraft - or, more precisely, people and processes within JPL.

What a complete and utter cock-up!!!

A multi million dollar probe was lost because people didn't fill in the correct forms.... that's bureaucrats for you!!!

You should re-read the article.  It wasn't about "bureaucrats not filling in the right forms".  It was much more complicated than that

[smartcooky]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course

Superb article by James Oberg which details the problems with the spacecraft - or, more precisely, people and processes within JPL.

What a complete and utter cock-up!!!

A multi million dollar probe was lost because people didn't fill in the correct forms.... that's bureaucrats for you!!!

You should re-read the article.  It wasn't about "bureaucrats not filling in the right forms".  It was much more complicated than that

Oh, I am well aware of that, I was just pulling out a sound bite....

"Although the navigators continued to express concern about the spacecraft trajectory, NASA's Stephenson explained why there had been no management response. "They did not use the existing formal process for such concerns," he stated. JPL has a special form to invoke a so-called incident surprise and analysis procedure, and the navigators did not follow the rules about filling out that form to document their concerns."

Its this kind of bureaucracy that really pisses me off. I had it in the Air Force so I'm familiar with the types of pen-pushing shiny-arses who stand between safety and success. It is exactly this kind of attitude that results in things like the Challenger and Columbia disasters; the engineers warn of the dangers, the paper shufflers and bean-counters don't listen....BANG! More dead people!

[sts60]

Ha, sorry.  I should have realized you understood it better. 

Although I don't have time right now to pontificate, this sort of thing is of much interest to me, as safety & mission assurance (S&MA) is basically what I currently do for a living. 

[bknight]

The ground test of the mirror's curvature.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-completes-webb-telescope-center-of-curvature-pre-test

[bknight]

Good to have a back up plan for Hubble in case JWST fails.  There is a good animation of the deployment of JWST, so many places for a failure.  I hope that all goes well.

http://www.universetoday.com/133429/dream-chaser-spacecraft-may-used-hubble-repair-mission/

[Dalhousie]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course

Superb article by James Oberg which details the problems with the spacecraft - or, more precisely, people and processes within JPL.

What a complete and utter cock-up!!!

A multi million dollar probe was lost because people didn't fill in the correct forms.... that's bureaucrats for you!!!

You should re-read the article.  It wasn't about "bureaucrats not filling in the right forms".  It was much more complicated than that

Oh, I am well aware of that, I was just pulling out a sound bite....

"Although the navigators continued to express concern about the spacecraft trajectory, NASA's Stephenson explained why there had been no management response. "They did not use the existing formal process for such concerns," he stated. JPL has a special form to invoke a so-called incident surprise and analysis procedure, and the navigators did not follow the rules about filling out that form to document their concerns."

Its this kind of bureaucracy that really pisses me off. I had it in the Air Force so I'm familiar with the types of pen-pushing shiny-arses who stand between safety and success. It is exactly this kind of attitude that results in things like the Challenger and Columbia disasters; the engineers warn of the dangers, the paper shufflers and bean-counters don't listen....BANG! More dead people!

How many people have military stuff ups killed? 

[smartcooky]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/why-the-mars-probe-went-off-course

Superb article by James Oberg which details the problems with the spacecraft - or, more precisely, people and processes within JPL.

What a complete and utter cock-up!!!

A multi million dollar probe was lost because people didn't fill in the correct forms.... that's bureaucrats for you!!!

You should re-read the article.  It wasn't about "bureaucrats not filling in the right forms".  It was much more complicated than that

Oh, I am well aware of that, I was just pulling out a sound bite....

"Although the navigators continued to express concern about the spacecraft trajectory, NASA's Stephenson explained why there had been no management response. "They did not use the existing formal process for such concerns," he stated. JPL has a special form to invoke a so-called incident surprise and analysis procedure, and the navigators did not follow the rules about filling out that form to document their concerns."

Its this kind of bureaucracy that really pisses me off. I had it in the Air Force so I'm familiar with the types of pen-pushing shiny-arses who stand between safety and success. It is exactly this kind of attitude that results in things like the Challenger and Columbia disasters; the engineers warn of the dangers, the paper shufflers and bean-counters don't listen....BANG! More dead people!

How many people have military stuff ups killed?

Where would you like me to start?

[Zakalwe]

Good to have a back up plan for Hubble in case JWST fails.  There is a good animation of the deployment of JWST, so many places for a failure.  I hope that all goes well.

http://www.universetoday.com/133429/dream-chaser-spacecraft-may-used-hubble-repair-mission/

That looks like vapourware to me. How would such a system get to the HST orbit? And de-orbit? Is it big enough to allow astronauts to suit up for EVA? Does it even have an airlock to allow EVAs?

[Kiwi]

How many people have military stuff ups killed?

For a start, just one example: 2,721 Kiwis killed and 4,752 wounded at Gallipoli between 25 April and 19 December 1915* in a monumental stuff-up by the British, who kindly saved their own troops and put the colonials in the front line. Then there were all the Australian casualties from the ANZACs... But we're wandering off topic, so this should go to a new thread.

* Two Hundred Years of New Zealand History, A W Reed, Reed Trust, Wellington, 1979, pages 207-208.

[Glom]

I think troops from the metropole did plenty of dying elsewhere.

[Dalhousie]

How many people have military stuff ups killed?

For a start, just one example: 2,721 Kiwis killed and 4,752 wounded at Gallipoli between 25 April and 19 December 1915* in a monumental stuff-up by the British, who kindly saved their own troops and put the colonials in the front line. Then there were all the Australian casualties from the ANZACs... But we're wandering off topic, so this should go to a new thread.

* Two Hundred Years of New Zealand History, A W Reed, Reed Trust, Wellington, 1979, pages 207-208.

Casualties from the UK at Gallipoli amounted to 73,485 so your opinion is not borne out by a moment's research. 

[sts60]

Took this picture today....  JWST at Goddard, with vibration and acoustic testing completed, prior to departing for JSC.  Next up, thermal/vac testing at JSC's Chamber A, in which the Apollo CSM stack was tested.

[Kiwi]

Casualties from the UK at Gallipoli amounted to 73,485 so your opinion is not borne out by a moment's research.

Fair enough. But small countries often think the following types of figures are more important. I'll use the third kind of lies, statistics, but was last taught maths in 1964 so could be a little rusty.

Gallipoli casualties divided by 1914 population
UK – 73,485 / 46,000,000 = 0.0015975
AU – 28,150 /   4,948,990 = 0.0056880
NZ –   7,991 /   1,158,436 = 0.0068981

56880 / 15975 = 3.56
68981 / 15975 = 4.31

Therefore, on a population basis Australia had three times and NZ had four times the casualties of the UK.

Figures from these web pages:--
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/interactive/gallipoli-casualties-country
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/british-empire-facts-and-stats

We do the same with medals at the Olympics and often come up shining.