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>we've never lost a craft

Can you explain? My comment was in the context of Columbia.

“An investigation board determined that a large piece of foam fell from the shuttle's external tank and breached the spacecraft wing.”[1]

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt with your definition of “we”. But your tone seems to point directly to the types of biases I referred to. It’s worthwhile to research the history of the industry as an whole.[2] Prior to the disaster, do you know NASAs response? “Foam shedding happens all the time…it’s ‘in family’ and not a problem.” It was still out of spec for a good reason. The term from the investigation report is “normalization of deviance”.

It seems even as technology progresses, we’ll still be anchored by faults in human psychology.

[1] https://www.space.com/amp/19436-columbia-disaster.html

[2]https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html



I think it was an attempt to illustrate the biases that play in and cause safety regulation to be written in blood. Either an attempt at a quote from within NASA, or actually one (I am insufficiently familiar with the entire background of the broken tile to say).


Ah, ok. That makes complete sense and I just misinterpreted because of the lack of quotes. Thanks for clarifying


Yes that was a hypothetical quote from a NASA manager to an engineer prior to the disaster.




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