Noders Note: This is a post that frequently appears on the sci.space.* USENET
newsgroup hierarchy. It's noded here with the kind permission of the original
author. The text is hers, the hardlinks are mine.
Mary Shafer, the author, is an
engineer at
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.
Mary explains the circumstances behind the post thusly;
I wrote, "Insisting on absolute safety is for people who don't have the balls
to live in the real world."
It appeared on sci.space or sci.space.
shuttle in 1989 or 1990 during one of the
cyclical "
why did NASA blow up the shuttle" threads or on rec.military during
a "how dare those pilots crash the taxpayers' airplanes" thread, also a cyclical
thread. I had gotten to a point of complete
exasperation when I wrote this.
But, no matter what you do, it will never be
perfectly, 100%
risk-free to fly. Or to drive, or to walk, or to do anything.
One of our pilots here
died when he waited too long to
eject from a spinning aircraft. He was
wrong; he should have jumped out earlier. He failed in his
duty, IMO.
One of our engineers was walking his dog when a car driven by a kid jumped the curb and hit him. Only his leg was broken. But he walks his dog again, now. Who
know better than him the
danger?
There's no way to make
life perfectly safe; you can't get out of it
alive.
You can't even
predict every danger. How can you
guard against a hazard you can't even conceive of?
I agree that the days of "kick the tires and light the fires" are gone, but insisting on
perfect safety is the single most
reliable way of killing an
aerospace project.
I've been on both sides of the FRR (Flight Readiness Review)
process for a number of aeronautical projects.
Experienced engineers try to think of
everything that
can go
wrong. But airplanes can still
surprise the best team.
I've had to sign a
form,
certifying that to the best of my
knowledge everything that we're going to do on a flight is safe. I've never
seriously asked myself "What will I say to the AIB (Accident
Investigation Board)" because once one starts on that, the form will never be signed, the flight will never be flown, and the
research will never be done.
But I have asked
myself "Have I told
everybody exactly what we're going to do and what the _known_ risks are and are we agreed that these risks are
acceptable" and when I can answer that "yes" I sign the form. That also answers the question of what I'd say to the AIB.
I'm not talking about
abstract theories here, I'm talking about test pilots that I've known for
decades.
Believe me, I _know_ exactly what the consequences of a
mistake on my part could mean. The reminders are all around me: Edwards AFB--killed in the XB-49, Lilly Ave--first NASA pilot killed at what's now Dryden, Love Rd--I _saw_ Mike's burning F-4 auger into the lakebed, with him in it. But once I've done my
best, like everybody else on the team, it's time to go fly the airplane.
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.