CULTURAL DIVIDE PLAGUES NASA

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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From: "Jonathan M. Smith" <jms () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 11:05:17 EST
To: farber () central cis upenn edu
Cc: jms () central cis upenn edu
Subject: This might inspire discussion on IP:




CULTURAL DIVIDE PLAGUES NASA
from The Washington Post

HOUSTON, Feb. 9 -- After the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986,
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman asked NASA officials what
risk of failure each mission carried. NASA engineers said about 1 in every
100 flights was likely to experience a catastrophe. NASA managers put the
risk closer to 1 in 100,000.

As accident investigators pore through mountains of data to determine why
the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, the most difficult
questions may lie not in telemetric data, risk analyses and high-
temperature physics.

Rather, they may lie in the agency's discordant internal cultures, and in
asking whether gaps in communication and perception might have caused the
shuttle's demise.

Feynman suggested that the managers' role in selling space exploration to
Congress, the White House and the public might have clouded their own
perceptions about how risky the technology was. "For a successful
technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature
cannot be fooled," he wrote in a report to President Ronald Reagan.

The gap between engineering and managerial perceptions persists today.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49325-2003Feb9.html>





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