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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

I had the same takeaway. The guys attitude was “if you want to travel in space you need to take risks and based on what I knew this was a risk worth taking”.

Of course it comes across as quite callous considering it’s not his life that’s at risk, but he does have a point (not necessarily a valid one for the o-ring issue, but more generally speaking).

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That's what Feynman's issue was as he reported it in the Roger's Commission[0]. Is they _didn't_ understand the risk when they thought.

Management thought the risk of lost was 1 in 100,000 which is launching everyday for 274 years. Engineers polled was 1:50 to 1:200. Obviously a massive disconnect.

The thing that gets me is they broke their own protocol operating below 53'F. This wasn't a calculated risk where it's 1-2 degrees out of spec, it's wildly out of spec, below freezing into a completely unknown, untested and un-spec'ed space.

This is what frustrates me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_...

Since we are already comparing Challenger to Chernobyl, that fact is a common thread isn't it? Ignoring temp specs, and at Chernobyl they ignored power and operation specs. In case of Challenger to get a launch, and in case of Chernobyl to conduct a test.

He had no idea whether it was a risk worth taking or not, because they rejected any evidence short of certainty that the O-rings would fail on a given flight. The results of the Rogers Commission make this abundantly clear to anybody who cares to pay attention, yet he professes to have learned nothing.

So easy to gamble with other people's lives and money. Let's admit it was really about his position and career, not 'wanting to travel in space'. He wasn't travelling; he was approving dangerous vehicles. He was trusted to delay launches when necessary. It was a complete fail on the VP's part, and all to improve his own 'numbers'. Not some noble goal.

I'm sure he rewrote it in his mind later, so he could live with himself. Because, of course, he was the kind of guy that rewrote things to suit his agenda.

> “if you want to travel in space you need to take risks and based on what I knew this was a risk worth taking”

The first thing we sent into space wasn't alive. The first living thing we sent into space wasn't a human. Taking risks is for idiots, not researchers or engineers.

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