[datenwolf]

> Some (many?) NASA engineers are at the high end of the band and are advocating a return on Dragon instead. Boeing is obviously at the low end of the band and thinks it is a low risk.

To me this gives a strong impression of history rhyming with itself. Back in the early 1980ies NASA engineers "close to the hardware" were raising warning, above warning about reliability issues of the shuttles, ultimately being overruled by management, leading to the Challenger disaster.

Then in 2003 again engineers were raising warnings about heat shield integrity being compromised from impacts with external tank insulation material. Again, management overruled them on the same bad reasoning, that if it did not cause problems in the past, it will not in the future. So instead of addressing the issue in a preventative action, the Columbia was lost on reentry.

Fool me once …, fool me twice …; I really hope the engineers will put their foot down on this and clearly and decisively overrule any mandate directed from management.

[btilly]

Given the many organizational failures that Boeing has had in recent years leading to safety problems (cough Dreamliner cough), I'm quite sure that Boeing's engineers have no way to put their feet down.

Afterwards one might come out as a whistleblower. But the fact that the last two whistleblowers wound up conveniently dead (no really, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boeing-whistleblower-di...) is likely to have a chilling effect on people's willingness to volunteer as whistleblowers.

[bunderbunder]

Scott Manley mentioned an interesting twist on this in a recent YouTube video of his: Kamala Harris, chair of the National Space Council, becoming a candidate in this year's Presidential election. The NSC is supposed to guide policy, so she wouldn't normally be involved in this kind of nitty-gritty, but there are people all up and down the hierarchy who would be well aware that this isn't how the media or her political opponents would think about it in the event of disaster.

[GMoromisato]

Except in this case, according to Steve Stich, it is NASA engineers vs. Boeing engineers. And the Boeing engineers are the ones who are "closer to the hardware", while the NASA engineers are just overseeing it.

I have no idea who is right in this case. And even if the crew comes down on Starliner successfully, it doesn't mean that it was the right call. Maybe they just got lucky.

My sense from the call is that, if NASA engineers insist on a Dragon return, NASA management will support them.

[HWR_14]

How many times have engineers been safely overruled?

[bumby]

I don't think this is good logic without more information about the actual calculation of risk. It should come down to who can accurately measure the risk and whether that risk is acceptable. People can roll the dice on low probability events, sometimes for an entire career without bad consequence but that shouldn't be conflated with good decision making.

Flying safely with a 10% failure risk when your acceptable risk is only 2% just means you got lucky, not that you're good.

[realslimjd]

It doesn't matter when there are lives needlessly at risk. The answer should be zero.

[neuronic]

Until management is held accountable and put into prison for their conscious unreasonable decisions against all advice, which led to the loss of life, nothing will ever change in megacorps.

[philipwhiuk]

If the concerns aren't addressed then there's a defined process by which the NASA Administrator (Nelson) has to sign it off.

NASA has learnt from the bad days of blind Mission Management teams.

[PopePompus]

Nelson. The guy who thinks the far side of the Moon is in eternal darkness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZyPwCQak8&t=153s

[netsharc]

If one wants to be generous, maybe he means dark "to us" because we never see it from the earth.

[PopePompus]

Well, I'm reluctant to give him the benefit of the doubt because he also says "we don't know what's on the back side of the Moon" despite the fact that the agency he heads mapped the far side of the Moon decades ago.