Some of them were not NASA failures. For example #1 and #2 were both Lockheed-Martin failures. #8 the Helios, was caused by wind shear.
Apache
Apache
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Where do you put the Bayonet?
Chesty Puller (upon seeing a flamethrower for the first time)
I am all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Lets start with typewriters.
Frank Lloyd Wright -
What Apache said. Plus, if you really want to evaluate their failures you have to look at the true tragedies. Challenger was preventable; there were warnings about the O rings before the launch. I still say the good has outweighed the bad. I just wish they had been given more funding over time. At the moment we literally can't get back to the Moon. That should never have been allowed to happen, such a massive regression.
-Rand[img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4333/35734799273_0013dbe418_z.jpg[/img]
Killing CLRs since 2004. BOOSH!
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NASA still has the final word on the GO - NO GO status of the missions which gives them final responsibility for the missions. I could have told you that flimsy Helios would break at the first turbulance. Most of these could have been prevented by a good preflight check. No. 1 does belong to LMA though. Somone probably got the sack for that one. But then No. 1 didn't even make it to the status of a mission.
As for Challenger...that wasn't a failure. That was premeditated murder. I know some of the engineers involved and they were screaming at NASA not to Launch. NASA didn't give a crap.
Columbia is a hard case because so much wasn't done that could have been. It's hard to say if they were doomed or not.
Lets not forget Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Like so many of NASA's failures they were killed by schedule.
The list of NASA's failures is long and stupid. I was a big NASA fan untill I heard about the Hubble telescope needing glasses. Then I started hearing about all the near misses during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. Up till then I thought of NASA as the ultimate safety concious organization. Boy was I wrong. NASA has accomplished some amazing feats but I don't look at them the same any more.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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It's not hate...it's contempt.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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Actually I don't count the Hubble as a failure. Besides the longevity of the telescope the technology for fixing the mirror has actually made it into the consumer market place for fixing high order abnormalities in eyesComment
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But they made a mistake that an amature telescope maker wouldn't have. How stupid is that? They have a lack of foresight.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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You're comparing Hubble to something an amatuer telescope maker would build?Originally posted by MR_MADHATTER View Post
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Yes. Even an amature scope maker compensates for how the primary mirror will flex under gravity. Especially for large diameter mirrors. They should have known that a zero gravity environment would have similar concerns. Amatures spend considerable thought on how to mount the primary and what design mount to use. Obviously the Hubble has tolerances that are tighter than any amature rig but the process is the same. There was absolutely no thought given as to how the mirror would perform under the given conditions. Pure incompetency. Go read some amature scope making websites and read about primary mounts. They get pretty involved and technical. I have a Meade 16" primary that I want to remount in a truss tube frame. I need to get it recoated first and come up with a design for the scope. It's alot of work.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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I guess I'm not totally against NASA although I'd be curious to see the list of mistakes compared against the list of successes. One thing I do know is that the software is usually almost 99.99999 bug free. Which is itself an amazing feat. Yes they had the problem with the metric/imperial units on one of the mars probes but, other than that they have a really excellent record. Compare that to any other software out there.Comment
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Nobody really cares about the success of NASA anymore. You can see this alone by just looking at the amount of people who watch shuttle launches these days. But if one explodes on takeoff/return the news and the world population would be all over it.Originally posted by mapes View Post
Quite sad really.Comment
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Oh I would say that NASA has many more sucesses than failures. But when you are dealing with something as unforgiving as space flight, you can't afford to have any failure. Especially with concern to manned space flight. 99% perfect is not good enough. One NASA official really p____ed me off. It was after the Challenger disaster. He was trying to say that everyone should expect to see loss of life after a given number of missions and accept it as part of manned missions. That's the wrong attitude. You should not accept any failure. You should always be looking for the item you missed. Whether it's there or not. Complacency and routine are not allowed. One of my favorite movies of all time is a documentary of the Blue Angles called "Threshold". It's all about the process of removing all complacency from your life and only working towards perfection. You will never achieve it. You will always be just at the threshold of reaching it if you are doing it right. Drift a little way from it and disaster will strike.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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