Risk Management
Thanks for the discussion Paul. Somehow I knew you would have some great input to the discussion.
I love talking about the human psyche and our thought processes as they relate to rationalization of ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. I agree with a lot of what you say.
We all know that flight has its inherent risks and that engineering is largely a series of compromises. We also all agree that not every perceived or imaginable risk can nor should be eliminated prior to flight. I think you said it very eloguently that if this were the case we wouldn't get off the ground.
My point in bringing up the Challenger parallel was simply to point out that being a homosapien carries with it certain emotional pitfalls that may result in biased or clouded judgement. You are much closer to the NASA decision making process than probably anyone else on this forum so you know how decisions are made. What I have to go by are the documentaries and news reports (not always unbiased) that I have seen. I don't for one minute think that someone blatantly stood up and said, "Dang, those o-rings are totally unsafe but we are going to fly anyway." But I do believe that the decision to fly was biased by internal pressures to make up time on the flight schedule and to prevent further embarassment from yet another postponed flight. Again, I may be totally wrong on my understanding but I think this is the understanding of most people in the US and around the world.
So yes, I agree, we can never mitigate every POTENTIAL problem. But in the case of the Challenger, correct me if I am wrong, there was evidence of o-ring leakage on previous flights and the engineers concluded that the extremely cold weather (for Florida) would only exacerbate the problem. If this is true, it was not a case of not addressing every potential problem, but a case of letting the pressures to fly override clear evidence of a real and known problem and the recommendations of the designers.
I know there must be dozens of objections to flight on every mission and I suspect a great deal of them are simply CYA just in case something does happen. It is top managements job to filter through all of the objections and to match them up with real data to make the final go/no-go decision. I guess that is why top management are paid the big bucks.
Yes hindsight is always 20/20 and I certainly am not saying that anyone maliciously put another human being's life in jeopardy, I don't think that for one minute. But from what I know, in the Challenger incident, the people making the decisions failed to tie the facts (known prior leakages) to the untested (unusually cold weather) to the concerns of the designing engineers (we can't guarantee they will hold) and as a result, people died. I don't subscribe to the notion of "fog of war" or "blaming society" or "institutional decision making" as I view these as excuses to keep from holding individuals accountable. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there were a significant number of individuals within NASA who could have stood up and said, "Hey, with what we know today, I will not endorse pushing the go button." Those responsible for making the final go/no-go decision and failing to do so are the ones I hold accountable for the death of the Challenger crew. What I suspect happened (only speculation based on my involvement in many corporate decision making scenarios) is that political pressure and the potential backlash of being labeled as "one standing in the way of getting a bird up" caused a lot of really smart people to override or simply not object to what they really understood to be a less than acceptable risk.
And that is the parallel I am making here. Van has identified what he consdiers, as the designer and producer of these airplanes, to be a serious enough problem to issue a mandatory SB. We can debate whether or not it should be an SB and we can debate whether or not Van is addressing a real problem or trying to cover his backside and we can try to second guess him and come up with what we think is a better solution and we can try to convince Van to change his mind. But this is not a democratic decision making process. The reality is that the SB is not based on what a majority of the builders think is best. The bottom line is that Van, after his careful thought and consideration and more knowledge about these planes than anyone else, has issued what he is calling a mandatory SB and he further qualifies it by stating that it should be completed prior to next flight. We as the flight directors and engineers of our aircraft must now take that data and make the go/no-go decisions for our birds.
I don't see this as addressing potential or imaginable problems at all. And we can try to poo-poo it away by saying, "What about the other upteen fittings in the plane and the flim-flam and the watch-a-ma-callit and the who-dunits? If they fail the plane is going into the ground as well." I say, "so what." This SB is addressing one specific real problem that has been identified and Van has determined to be serious enough to make it mandatory.
I tend to look for the good in people, but as we all know, a lot of good people (being human as they are) sometimes don't make the best decisions due to outside pressures or internal desires. We see this a lot in GA and all walks of life. In this regard, I think the decision that each builder makes is very much like the decision made in the Challenger situation. With all of our human quirks and biases, it is very difficult to step back and make a totally objective decision on whether to drill out and replace that rivet, replace that skin because a scratch is a little too deep, or the other thousands of decisions and compromises that must be made during the course of building an airplane. Over the years we have tried to remove the objectivity from these decisions by creating standards and guldelines. And in this case, Van (who I consider to be the final authority on these matters) has tried to help us out by making the decision for us. He has made his recommendation and all we can do is decide whether or not we will comply with his recommendation.
I know that if I were in a flying status, I would ground my bird and take the time, as inconvenient as it may be, to complete the SB.
Good luck to everyone and thanks Paul, I appreciate your knowledge and insight.
