Professionals respecting their responsibility.
It isn't driven to keep the press out. If any benefit its a side benefit and I observe a metric French tonne of press is locked inside the room(s) at that point.
Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA:
> If you are referring to the call from the Flight Director: “GC, Lock the doors” that is a command that initiates the contingency response to a significant incident, such as the loss of a vehicle. It begins a FREEZE, ISOLATE, AND PROTECT process. The Flight Director would follow up that statement with a call to the team to immediately pull out the contingency section of the Flight Control Operations Handbook to identify specific actions that are to be taken.
> Access to the facility becomes restricted. People that weren’t in the room at the time or aren’t essential to the next steps are not allowed access and the people in the room are restricted from leaving. Communication in and out of the room is restricted. Usage of all devices, both workstations and personal, is restricted. The team is hands-off. Nothing should be done that changes the configuration at the time of the incident. Those are the freeze and isolate steps. Next comes protect. All of the data that was in use must be captured, recorded, and preserved in a static state. Even the trash cans have to be preserved in their state. All of this is because any investigation into the incident will require all of this data.
> Once given permission, the occupants of the room may continue to capture their observations and actions in their console logs.
> It is important to keep the equipment, documentation, and people in a pristine state until it all has been preserved. We don’t want any form of contamination that could be caused by someone bringing in data that wasn’t in the room during the incident into the room or removing data. We don’t want the team’s observation and recording of those observations influenced by communication with people that weren’t there.
> All of the data will be collected and put into secure data containers and taken to a secure vault. Debriefing of the team may then be performed and once a response team has been formed and has begun their work, the Flight Director may release the team.
But how's that legal? Is there some special legislation for it? A citizen's arrest requires an actual crime being observed.
When it comes to leaving secure sites you can often be restrained to prevent you from smuggling out sensitive materials which is quite sane and necessary in a number of situations. There are also a plethora of public sites (i.e. government run) that non-enlisted citizens are barred from entering - though that is a bit of a different situation.
Go on law.cornell.edu and dig through the vast provisions of federal security officer power as it pertains to arrest, detainment, use of deadly force, etc.
They can do it.
Arrest authority:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/1203b.103
Deadly force authority:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/1203b.106
Management oversight:
(3) The arresting officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States.
Therefore, if you try to leave after being ordered to stay, during a crisis situation, without a valid reason, you should expect to be arrested and further dealt with.
What you're likely to find is an issue is that the security guards at NASA can arrest, if the links above are correct, and you're likely to fund yourself in a predicament if you try to leave and they don't want you to.
I'd imagine working at NASA, and at least some other space launch companies, especially those that provided services to government and defence agencies, come with additional conditions beyond what one might expect stacking shelves at a supermarket.
Being told "you're not free to leave" is rightfully worrying to a lot of people. There are countries where hearing that would be terrifying. What makes the US different is the rule of law, due process, and individual liberties. Asking on what authority the government has to detain you should never be karmic suicide. There are many places where asking that question is truly unthinkable, and they're not places you want to live.
That reads like complete sarcasm to me.
Anyway, like I said - to me this is on the same level as someone asking if an astronaut on the ISS is "free to leave" and how is this not a citizen's arrest and how somehow this constitutes an abuse of liberties.
This doesn't read like a serious question - more like something a very edgy 14 year old would ask and feel clever.
It covers things like assault, resisting, impeding, damage, theft, sabotage, forging, impersonation, destruction of vehicles or other property, communications, explosives, civil disorder and a dozen other categories with sub categories.
They'd easily get you on numerous federal charges if you attempted to flee.
...if they've observed you committing an offence.
How is any other job duty legal?
> Is there some special legislation for it? A citizen's arrest requires an actual crime being observed.
Being prohibited from leaving on pain of adverse employment action is not arrest, and does not require a crime. (That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if NASA did have special statutory authority for more binding orders related to spaceflight related emergency situations, not that they would be likely to need either those or even employment sanctions to secure compliance with control room staff staying put while trying to resolve an emergency incident.)
Apparently it's fashionable to make it look like HN has such a collective boner for "professional integrity" that even asking this question is treated like an insult and downvoted. Repugnant.
It's a collective boner for NASA.
It's interesting though the language you choose to use to deride the commenters explaining why the lockdown happens.