[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/05/...finally_so.html : "Yikes! ITAR issues aside, it is obvious why NASA sat on this report for a year -- it has a high embarassment coefficient."

I put this report in this place on the website because of the crucial importance of robotic rendezvous and docking to Mars sample return. Overall causes of the failure were our familiar old friends: too small a team, lack of a systems engineer, over-hasty schedule, and above all "High Risk, Low Budget Nature of the Procurement". Seems to me I've heard that song before...

[Jim from NSF.com]

Another fine mission managed by MSFC. The wrong center was managing a mission that they had no expertise in and not smart enough to ask or listen to it.

[Bob Shaw]

Keith Cowing's coverage is interesting - just wait until Mark Wade has a go, too!

It seems that the root cause of this one is, once again, a lack of management quality rather than a lack of quality management - someone should have called a halt well before launch.

And *why* did the report take 18 months to escape into the wild?

Bob Shaw

[The Messenger]

And *why* did the report take 18 months to escape into the wild?

Bob Shaw

So much for Griffin's pledge that the sock is out of the scientists mouth...or does this mean that there were no scientists involved in the Dart debunkle?

In the years leading up to the Discovery- er Columbia Explosion, we were told that Shuttle Technology was mature and there were hard design freezes. We were also told engineering degrees where not essential to managing a space enterprise, and managers started creeping in with experience making plastic diapers. Unfortunately, these same entities lack the analytical skill necessary to separate good engineers from fudge punchers...

[djellison]

So much for Griffin's pledge that the sock is out of the scientists mouth...or does this mean that there were no scientists involved in the Dart debunkle?

Well - it wasn't a science mission - but at some point the role of cutting edge engineering and science merge into one fuzzy middle ground.

However - the new press/outreach guidelines from a few months ago certainly don't take "the sock" out of anyones mouth

Doug