From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 101deb,f96f757d5586710a X-Google-Attributes: gid101deb,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: john@assen.demon.co.uk (John McCabe) Subject: Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception? Date: 1996/08/25 Message-ID: <840979842.3697.0@assen.demon.co.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 176368657 x-nntp-posting-host: assen.demon.co.uk references: <4vgmit$124@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <4vk8r4$2r7@zeus.orl.mmc.com> newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1 Date: 1996-08-25T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: eachus@spectre.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) wrote: > I would be be fired three times over for incompetent engineering >on that scale, and so would you. But the decisions were political and >managerial. I can't overemphasize this. The decisions which caused >the failure were signed off not by engineers but by government >ministers and corporate executives. That is one of the most major problems of working in the European space industry - NOTHING is ever decided on purely technical terms. I have experience of this even within my own (Anglo-French) company. >And the effect, not the intent of >those decisions insured that the engineers never knew how badly things >were being botched. It speaks well for the consortium that they did >an honest evaluation of what went wrong and published it. I think this was necessary due to the amount of [European] government money that went into the project in the first place, and therefore the consortium had to make sure that _everyone_ was made aware that they had discovered what the problem was. It would have been reasonably easy to keep it quiet, but they need to build peoples confidence again, and by publishing the report detailing that they knew exactly what happened, and they knew exactly what to do about it in future, I think they are well on their way to restoring that confidence. >Unfortunately it was clearly bowdlerized and mentions no names. I >suspect that this was a condition imposed upon publishing it. That's unfortunate, I'd love to know exactly who was to blame - perhaps more information is given in the restricted circulation technical report? If anyone knows any more, please let us know. Best Regards John McCabe