Re: Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July with Deep Space Fireworks


Eric Chomko wrote:
> spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> : > That said a women is piloting the shuttle. When will the Chinese put a
> : > woman into space?
>
> : news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4723541.stm
>
> : China is training women to be astronauts. And China, and the female
> : pilot, have little to do with the organizational values of the space
> : program which have been biased since Werner von Braun away from
> : knowledge and towards power in a way that reflect patriarchal values.
> : Many women reflect patriarchal values than some men: the organization
> : has a patriarchal telos independent of its replaceable members.
>
> Sounds like the gay and lesbian alliance groups...

I would be less concerned, if I were you, about the surface sounds of
words and more about their meaning. The fact is it would come as a
surprise if successful women within male-dominated organizations did
NOT become the worst sort of "men" and reflect the most destructive
values.

Diane Vaughan spares no member of the higher administration at NASA and
the White House science advisors from the charge of initiating a
"normalization of deviance", including "think like a manager and not an
engineer" and the overemphasis on schedule, which (according to today's
International Herald Tribune) caused oversize chunks of foam to fall
off in the most recent launch despite predictions that they wouldn't,
with the result that the current crew is in danger today.

Subcontractor Lockheed-Martin placed schedule before all else as did
Morton Thiokol in 1986 because the subcontractor, in an arm's length
business relation, has to promise a deliverable by a due date, and
risks losing the contract if it "pushes back" because of safety
concerns; the subcontractor is tasked with accomplishing something by
such a date (where the date is integral to delivery) while the
contractor is assumed responsible for penumbral issues including
reliability and safety, unless otherwise explicitly stated in the
contract.

As a result, foam surfacing was applied by Lockheed Martin employees
(and, possibly, further levels of subcontractor) in a slapdash manner,
according to IHT report John Schwartz ("Shuttle adviser warned of foam
risk in 2004", International Herald Tribune, 8-5-2004):

"An internal NASA report in December warned of deficiencies in the way
insulating foam was being applied to sections of the fuel tank to be
used on the shuttle Discovery's current mission...The report, by Conley
Perry, a retired division chief for quality engineering at the Johnson
Space Center in Houston, said it was 'obvious' that Lockheed's external
tank engineers 'did not do a thorough job' of identifying quirks and
variations that can occur when foam is applied by hand".

It is clear to me that the subcontract relation obscured what was
happening on the shop floor, and the shop floor (I conclude from my own
experience) was one of "typically male" pressure. Because the contract
relation may have extended down to the line employees, who were under
macho pressure to meet Lockheed Martin's expectations, those employees,
whether individually women or men, were in a male culture of focusing
on immediate expectations and task "accomplishment".

In that type of culture, to be concerned over and above "what the boss
wants" with issues including safety and reliability is to be coded as a
girlieman who is wasting his time and that of coworkers with issues
that seem "vague", secondary, unimportant and FEMALE to the "guys",
including the gals that have to be even more rough and tough than the
guys to succeed.

The sad irony is that in a large and complex organization, a "man" has
to be less than a "man" if to be a "man" is to think independently and
talk back to the boss, as skilled workers did in the past...at a stage
in technical development where an individual man could comprehend the
science being applied, or the meme had not been established that we can
even do applied science properly without understanding the theory in
depth.

The false persona thus created is one that "thinks like a manager and
not an engineer", and who gets his personal sense of self-worth not
from an internalized knowledge of science and how he applies it on the
job but from the approbation of a supervisor.

And, part of the problem is the way you, Mr. Chomko, think you can
airily dismiss a set of concerns by telling me I am some sort of homo
based on the way I "sound". You are an instance here of what I am
talking about: lacking either a grasp of applied science or the
equivalent inner-directed confidence that you have this grasp, you fall
back to mockery of the airy-fairy way in which people talk.

Well, you've come to the wrong shop. I am accessing, in real time, the
source materials for this discussion: you are not, as far as I can
discern. I have a right to speak out on sci.space.policy using this
background and I question your ethics in using this network for
mockery.

The normalization of deviance, the acceptance of deviant behavior (lies
and the systematic trashing of nonconformists) as not only acceptable
but the only worthwhile behavior, got the US into Iraq; Colin Powell,
when being prepared to address the UN on the US' case for war in 2003,
threw briefing papers across the room because Powell knew them to be
based on lies, the central lie being that Saddam Husayn had WMD after
the end of the first Iraq war. As a result the other day 14
well-trained Marines, each of whom is worth ten of the sort of shits in
NASA who run the show, won't be coming home.

The astronauts in low Earth orbit are being likewise used to advance
the careers of ignorant men in NASA's upper levels. At this point, we
don't know whether they will return safely; debris and protuberances
were found in their spacewalk that can easily start fires similar to
that of Columbia on re-entry. But the shits at the top don't care
because they are not the sort of men who sign up for anything that
takes either physical courage or scientific knowledge. The
normalized-deviants in charge of this country are smirking post-humans
like to become sub-human.

You want to be one of them Eric? Be my guest. But I sure as hell don't.

.