9/3/2016 Archives: Tough and Competent
This was posted to codingastronomer.com on 9/3/2016.
The archives were created to preserve my writings from various blog sites which I have used over the years. Most come from my wordpress blogs nathanphoffman.com and codingastronomer.com. I hope to make medium.com my new home.
I am back to blogging more than a year after my last post. It seems I am starting where I left off, news sites are again criticizing spaceflight, spurred on by SpaceX’s recent failed test. I would suggest reading my last post for my feelings on launch failures, what I want to do here is respond to many blogs and news sites for criticizing people for saying “Space is Hard.”
If we can’t analyze and accept difficulty, then we can’t improve on the past. For me, saying “Space is Hard” is not so much an excuse for past failure but a reminder of challenges that lie ahead. It is when we grow confident in our abilities that the worst disasters strike, and with the US on the verge of venturing into manned spaceflight again, I think it is worth revisiting our own past.
The past I would like to visit occurred during a routine test in January 1967. As the test proceeded, the engineers felt everything was going smoothly, not realizing that disaster was about to strike. A loose electrical wire, perhaps frayed by a sliding seat, caused the high pressure oxygen gas in the cockpit to literally explode into flame. The fire spread through their cockpit claiming the lives of three US astronauts. Gene Krantz, who was the flight director for many missions including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, made a speech to his engineers, which is remembered to this day and often quoted by the people who were there. His words speak better than mine, and they are a reminder that disaster strikes where and when we least expect it:
Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I Don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.
From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.
