NationStates Jolt Archive

What was NASA's most spectacular failure?

Poll up in a second.

You forgot the metric/imperial screw-up that destroyed the several-hundred-millon dollar Mars lander.

The Apollos were bad, but back then, they were pushing it to the limit to get ahead of the Russians, so mistakes and tragedys were bound to happen.
Challenger was a tragedy, but I don't know if you can put all the blame on NASA. They were forced to use the lowest bid contractor, so inevitably something was going to screw up.
Likewise with Columbia - these shuttles are 25yr old technology with tens of thousands of working parts. Eventually something will go wrong, and since you're pushing them to their limit with only a small margin of error that means a spectacular fuck-up when it does.
The problem with the foam is a pretty bad. After 18 months you'd think they'd have fixed it.

But the real screw-up has to be the one I mentioned first. One team using imperial, one team using metric and no-one noticing? That's real D-U-M-B.

While I'm a big supporter of NASA and their programs. I would to have to say that their biggest screw-up was after 20 years not having a completed replavement for the dshuttle. They should retire Atlantis and Discovery now and move on, but first they have to wait to deploy new machines.

I'm looking forward to the new designs, but I'm unhappy that I have to wait 5 years to see them in action.

The last one, the others were STUFU in their own right but weren't complete repeats of another one. They had 18 months to fix a known problem and totally failed - good thing the shuttle didn't blow up this time.

You forgot the metric/imperial screw-up that destroyed the several-hundred-millon dollar Mars lander.

But the real screw-up has to be the one I mentioned first. One team using imperial, one team using metric and no-one noticing? That's real D-U-M-B.

Shoot. I knew I was forgetting something...

I'd say the entire shuttle program was their biggest failure. The Apollo missions weren't good science. Unmanned probes could have gathered more scientific infomation more cheaply (See Russian lunar exploration for a program that was much cheaper and just as effective at gathering infomation.) But most people reguarded it as a sporting contest where the goal was to beat the Russians. In that it succeeded. The shuttle hasn't achieved any of its objectives. It's not reliable, it's not safe, and it's certainly not cheap. It's so bad America's allies pay China to launch their satellites. I'd prefere it if America didn't build a new type of shuttle but instead built a cheap relaible rocket and perhaps worked on a space elevator.

It's hard to say. But I might have to say that Apollo 1 was the absolute worst failure. The loss of life due to a broken door...

That being said, I support NASA and I want to see them brought back on their feet.

The last one, the others were STUFU in their own right but weren't complete repeats of another one. They had 18 months to fix a known problem and totally failed - good thing the shuttle didn't blow up this time.

Read the Challenger report sometime. The foam problem is not going to be easy to overcome. That was how they launched Shuttles from the beginning, with the exception of the fact that they reformulated to please the EPA and Clinton Admin. That made it worse, but still they have to figure out how to change that.

Challenger was a total bury-your-head-in-the-sand ignoring of a known problem. They actually thought that if the seal burned through, it would blow up on the pad. They got off light in many respects.

But they knew seals were burning through, and they let political pressure persuade them to make a horrible decision.

Apollo 1 I can actually forgive NASA for. That was caused by pumping pure oxygen into the spacecraft, which caused it to burn. How were they supposed to know that oxygen from normal air wouldn't run out on a moon flight?
Anyhow, there biggest failure is the state of NASA today, symbolized by not getting the shuttle program back and running. They are an agency with billions of dollars to spend, thousands of scientists and engineers, and several gigantic aerospace companies working for them. Yet they are in danger of being eclispsed by a few innovators and benefactors, as symbolized by Space Ship One.

I'm just glad the rate of failures and deaths caused by NASA isn't equal to that caused by the Russian Space Agency during the Space Age.

Secret deaths? Covering up dead cosmonauts? What the hell?

I'm just glad the rate of failures and deaths caused by NASA isn't equal to that caused by the Russian Space Agency during the Space Age.

Secret deaths? Covering up dead cosmonauts? What the hell?
That's because NASA played it too safely. The Russians launched five times as many missions until the end of the Cold War. Not that NASA needed to be reckless, but I think that it is inherent that they could never do anything right.

But the real screw-up has to be the one I mentioned first. One team using imperial, one team using metric and no-one noticing? That's real D-U-M-B.

To cap it all, that wasn't the first time they made that mistake. At one point they failed to bounce a laser off a mirror on the spaceshuttle for exactly the same reason.

Challanger wasn't just a physical screw-up, but also a beurocratic nightmare. They knew there was a problem and they ignored it. The other disasters were unforseen. Apollo 13 was entirely accidental, and shouldn't even be discussed here.

Bump.

I'd say the blame for the Shuttle disasters should go to the American public, after all you stopped caring about Apollo or else NASA would have continued with the moon and building space stations.

I think the smashing the probe into Mars was pretty bad.

And the fact that sending men to the moon was of no scientific value, really. It would be nice if the money they spent went towards scientifc ventures more than endeavours that please congress.

I'd say the blame for the Shuttle disasters should go to the American public, after all you stopped caring about Apollo or else NASA would have continued with the moon and building space stations.

Actually, through the years both the polls and anecdotal evidence showed that the public was pretty supportive of NASA. Blame for the abandonment of Space in the 1970s belongs both to the William Proxmire Democrats in Congress who never wanted a space program anyway and Ralph Abernathy/Bella Azbug types who wanted the money for their own pork barrel projects. They were also influenced by the Luddite element among the environmentalists who were honestly deluded enough to be worried about "polluting space" and the numerous elements among the "anti war" movement insisted on identifying NASA as part of the military as well. That the drive to space was abandoned is more a testimony to how out of touch with the public politicians who are incumbants can get rather than an indictment of the public itself.

As for Dakini's question of whether the Moon launch is of scientific value, one may argue that if one thinks that playing with neat tinkertoys is the only purpose that NASA may have but the fact is that working out the way to send people to the Moon was of vital *engineering value*. No people, no space colonies. And you don't get people unless you work out the methods of getting them there. NASA has value to the extent that it is useful in the setting of space. No more, no less. Without that it would be nothing more than a tinkertoy game.

The ISS.

A hundred billion dollars. omfg. I have a picture of how it is supposed to look complete in 2005, dated 1996, and here we are today, with only a third of it built. And they actually started planning it in the 1980s, wasting billions on it even before the USSR collapsed, before a single module had been designed.

I had really high hopes for it back in those days, as an idealistic kid. Now the whole organisation looks bankrupt, neglected and incompetent.