“What Do You<\/u> Care What Other People Think?” (Further Adventures
\nof a Curious Character<\/i> by Richard P. Feynman<\/p>\n
The first half of this book is more adventures akin to the first Curious
\nCharacter book. Sad and witty in equal parts.<\/p>\n
The second half recounts his adventures as a member of the
\nChallenger<\/i> disaster investigatory commission. This was
\nfascinating. I hadn’t really followed the story in detail… I had
\nvaguely heard of the infamous “failed o-ring”.<\/p>\n
But Feynman’s account from within the investigation is very disturbing.
\nYou see a lot of the same bureaucracy going on that appears in other
\ntechnical companies of much less importance (no lives at stake).<\/p>\n
I went back a re-read the results of the Columbia<\/i> disaster
\ninvestigation and saw those findings in a sadder light after having read
\nFeynman’s actual appendix to the Challenger<\/i> report, which he had to
\nfight so hard to have included. There simply could not have been a
\nclearer warning of exactly what lead to the Columbia<\/i> disaster:
\ncomplacency over failure. “Well, yes, the design didn’t work the way we
\nliked, and could fail, but it didn’t last time, so we’re good to go!”<\/p>\n
Scrap it, start over, do it right. Or let private industry do so.<\/p>\n In the meantime, keep sending those cool Mars images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “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. … Continue reading
\nwhole shuttle system should be mothballed. At the time I read his
\ncomment, I thought that was extreme. But now I’m of the same mind.
\nFeynman’s investigation showed that the shuttle was not designed following
\nthe good practices used in comparable endeavors like airplanes. It’s
\nfilled with hardware bugs (though Feynman praises the software
\ndevelopment).<\/p>\n