Re: The Electric Car

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:15:46 -0700, Fred Abse
<excretatauris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:11:19 +0000, Glen Walpert wrote:

He might have been right about the projections, although lifetime
projections are normally correlated against test data before being
accepted as meaningful. I never heard of any problems with the
oxidizer turbopumps failing in flight, have there been failures?

Not outright failures in service, but "cracks have been found in the
turbine blades of the high pressure oxygen turbopump". He was talking
about the inherent deficiencies of top-down design vis-a-vis the
inaccessibility of certain critical parts.

It's interesting reading, lacking none of Feynman's customary clarity and
incisiveness, despite the fact that, by this time, he was dying, and knew
it.

Available at:

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

Thanks, very interesting indeed. Great conclusions:
--------
"Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the
probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this
may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and
success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that
they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost
incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working
engineers."
....
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
--------

<rant>
One often finds this sort of management disconnect from reality. I
think that the fault lies at least in part with the standard doctrine
at most if not all business schools, that it is not necessary to
understand a process in order to manage it. They point to the
possibility of getting bogged down details, doing the work rather than
managing it, and claim it is actually better not to understand the
details of how the process works. Just apply these management
principles and profits will be maximized, they say. No doubt some
managers have gotten bogged down with details, but far more often they
make bad decisions based on a failure to understand key issues.

The motivation for this teaching is pretty clear: hire only business
school grads for management positions is the actual self-serving
message; don't promote line personell from within no matter how much
they know about the business, you need an MBA!
</rant>

.

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