“What Do You Care What Other People Think?” (Further Adventures
of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman

The first half of this book is more adventures akin to the first Curious
Character book. Sad and witty in equal parts.

The second half recounts his adventures as a member of the
Challenger disaster investigatory commission. This was
fascinating. I hadn’t really followed the story in detail… I had
vaguely heard of the infamous “failed o-ring”.

But Feynman’s account from within the investigation is very disturbing.
You see a lot of the same bureaucracy going on that appears in other
technical companies of much less importance (no lives at stake).

I went back a re-read the results of the Columbia disaster
investigation and saw those findings in a sadder light after having read
Feynman’s actual appendix to the Challenger report, which he had to
fight so hard to have included. There simply could not have been a
clearer warning of exactly what lead to the Columbia disaster:
complacency over failure. “Well, yes, the design didn’t work the way we
liked, and could fail, but it didn’t last time, so we’re good to go!”

had said in a prior post or comment that the
whole shuttle system should be mothballed. At the time I read his
comment, I thought that was extreme. But now I’m of the same mind.
Feynman’s investigation showed that the shuttle was not designed following
the good practices used in comparable endeavors like airplanes. It’s
filled with hardware bugs (though Feynman praises the software
development).

Scrap it, start over, do it right. Or let private industry do so.

In the meantime, keep sending those cool Mars images.