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Comment by xupybd | Hacker News Reader

That sounds serious, but if they are no delaying it by much can we assume it's not too serious?

Boeing thought their last launch delay was just going to take a small amount of time too. Then, as they dug into it, they basically put it on indefinite hold when they realized they had no idea on what to do about the issue causing the dealy.

Of course they will come out and say "just a short delay" immediately, but who knows what the actual delay gets to when they really start looking at it. Besides, how can they really know that it is okay without taking it down and putting it through all of the motions? A bent arm in a manner not visible while folded in launch config but prevents it from unfolding after launch is a very dumb reason to not have this thing work.

Maybe not serious at all -- there will be more vibrations when the rocket engine ignites, but when $10B are at stake no one would want to be careless.

A committee decided that the potential danger from cold weather to o-ring gaskets wasn't too serious. That's how the Challenger blew up.

Actually the engineering committee of Morton-Thiokol (the real engineers, not the managers) did flag it as risky.

But hey, we need to launch, right?

Reading through the history of that is ridiculous.

E: Hey we're pretty sure this is going to kill people.

M: Are you sure? Maybe we can just do it while thinking really positive thoughts.

Meanwhile one of the managers responsible for giving the 'go signal' still blames the engineers. "Hey, if it was unsafe the engineers should have said so." Ignoring that he had been bullying them for hours to shut up about how it was unsafe.

The dramatization of the event in one of the documentaries stands out to me. "I'm going to go around the room and if anyone knows that this thing is definitely unsafe, then they need to speak up." WRONG. You go around the room and make everyone explicitly say it's safe. If anyone refuses you don't launch. They might seem like logical duals, but there is a huge difference.

This problem was a management problem.

Opt-in vs opt-out makes a huge difference.

Hopefully they've learn from that mistake. Especially after making it twice.

It took 17 years for the lesson to decay to a lethal level last time, and that was 18 years ago. We can hope it's stuck better this time, I suppose.

Committees the homeopathic responsibility dilution of any thoroughly dysfunctional organization.

Make them agree on the one who should shoulder responsibility for a possible problem, to crash the process.

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