Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/04/trailer-for-new-docuseries-abo.html
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Is there anything that’s not executive produced by J.J. Abrams these days?
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I hope there’s a lot of focus on the aftermath, including Feynman’s O-ring demonstration (a classic of cutting through the BS) and the Morton Thiokol executive’s demand that one of his underlings “take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat” (showing how the demands of capitalism can lead to disaster and death).
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There’s some systems analysis part of my soul that is able to partition itself from my emotional part. I could watch something like this, or Chernobyl, a million times for the systems disaster angle – even though I know Chernobyl was supposed to be one of those “series you only have to watch once”. This makes me worry about myself slightly, but it’s also very useful from a practical standpoint.
I hope they spend an entire episode on the concept of normalization of deviance.
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With any luck they had a copy of ‘The Challenger Launch Decision’ by Diane Vaughan in the writing room. It’s a long book, incredibly dense in place and a compulsive read that details the crumbling safeguards that were in place to protect the Shuttle and the astronauts. It is one of those books that can make you very angry.
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I wonder if they’ll ever do a similar series about the Columbia disaster. Equally tragic, but never quite had the same cultural impact the second time around.
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That one horrified me more. Knowing there was a problem, being told the “best” way to deal with it was to fly home at an angle - then those radio messages as it went wrong.
Leaves me cold.
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Alas Feynman came to realise later that he had been guided toward his conclusions, including the o-ring demonstration, by MTK engineers who wanted him to look at certain areas. He was quite angered by this.
Still a good demo.
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The report on the findings of the Colombia Accident Investigation Board is a great read, quite the page turner. I recommend it for anyone at work who does failure analysis. It’s available as a free pdf.
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I vaguely recall an editorial cartoon commentary on the disaster: It showed the Shuttle on the big external tank and with the two MT solid rockets… just after launch and rising upward. Written on the tank and solids were “expediency”, “schedule”, and “cost”. On the Shuttle was “safety”… with the Shuttle drawn incredibly small relative to the tank and solids.
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I remember as a kid in Alaska watching the shuttle take off in the morning on CNN or something. It was really pushed to school kids to watch because of the teacher going to space and the “student science” projects that were being taken to space. So we all watched that tragedy and then went to school confused and at a loss.
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