Re: Space Shuttle Grounding....depressing....

Once upon a time, Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
>Most of the original rocket engineers will have
>retired taking their unpublished knowledge with them.

There are still a few around. One of the original Germans is still
working at Marshall. My father is still working there as well (and he's
not yet the senior member of his group). Dad worked on the Saturn V
guidance computer, and he's told me some interesting stories about it.
There's almost no comparison between the computer power then and now.

Also, some of the engineers retired from NASA and then went to work for
contractors, so they are still around working on the space program.

As for "unpublished knowledge", I think there's still an amazing amount
of documentation from the Saturn era just sitting in warehouses. One
reason that NASA spends so much to do some things is that they document
every detail. For example, after Apollo 13, they were able to follow
every step of the "life" of the particular O2 tank that failed. Every
single detail had been written down (even if nobody put them all
together to see what might happen).

>A major money saving action by NASA is to get
>historians to make a list of the modifications made
>to the V2 and Saturn V rockets plus the reason for
>the modification. Give each rocket engineer a copy
>and a request that they avoid repeating these mistakes.

The engineers generally don't make the same mistakes twice. The Saturn
series had just about as close to perfect a record as can be had because
they learned from Redstone, Atlas, and Titan.

I can't say the same about management though. The German team had a way
of doing and running things that really produced, but almost all of them
were run off after Saturn and Apollo succeeded in putting man on the
moon.

>A few hours reading the list and applying to the new
>design is a lot cheaper and quicker than spending
>millions replacing the launch tower for the tenth
>time because the previous missile blow up.

When is the last time you saw a NASA rocket destroy a launch pad?
--
Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

.

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