What “Thought Leadership” wrought.
This past Monday was the 40th anniversary of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster. I remember hearing it about that afternoon at high school, and this being a long time ago, the school set up a TV in the library with the news on, so people could get caught up. It was awful to see, and the presence of Christa McAuliffe on board, with her whole school watching, made it even more sad.
Over the succeeding years, there were many business cases written about the preparation and decision making that went into the fateful launch. One of the more shocking things to read is that the astronauts had no say in the decision to launch, when clearly they had the most skin in the game!
A lengthy official investigation highlighted the cavalier attitude that NASA officials had regarding safety. Here are some quotes from a post on the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog.
The phenomenon of accepting for flight, seals that had shown erosion and blow-by in previous flights, is very clear. The Challenger flight is an excellent example. There are several references to flights that had gone before. The acceptance and success of these flights is taken as evidence of safety. But erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next. The origin and consequences of the erosion and blow-by were not understood. They did not occur equally on all flights and all joints; sometimes more, and sometimes less.
The post author sums up NASA’s attitude like this:
(a) To do X seems on its face crazy, irresponsible, reckless, evil etc.
(b). We are not crazy, irresponsible, reckless, evil, etc. people, but rather the opposite of that, because look at our resumes, degrees, awards, h-factors, titles, salaries, and so forth.
(c) Therefore what seems to be the case to naive opinion in re (a) is not in fact the case.
Having read plenty of punditry about the war in Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, inflation expectations post-2008, Project 2025, etc, I see this attitude manifest itself frequently. People like Margaret Wente, Andrew Coyne, David Brooks, Jim Cramer, Derek Hunter (the Hill Times), Maureen Dowd, all have been incredibly wrong about events, erring on the side of “that’s so outrageous, it could never happen”, but when it does happen, there’s no reckoning, no markdown on their value. It’s as if being a pundit entails just throwing out some verbiage before deadline, and then moving on to the next hot take.