NASA's Worst Fears Realized

“Newly disclosed e-mail inside NASA showed senior engineers worried a day before the Columbia disaster that the shuttle’s left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, a scenario remarkably similar to the one investigators believe actually occurred…. After intense debate — occurring by phone and e-mail — the engineers, some supervisors and the head of the space agency’s Langley research facility in Hampton, Va., decided against taking the matter to top NASA managers…” —NASA’s Worst Fears Realized AP/Wired)

Engineers worry all the time, about all sorts of things. Before the Challenger disaster in the 80s, most of those worries, and the dismissals of them, were oral, presented via teleconferences. Diane Vaughan’s The Challenger Disaster suggests that some engineers who worried the most weren’t able to get their concerns through the administrative layers, to the people who could take action.

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  • The last comment was made in error and is being communicated through a interactivesciencefictionnovel/busplan from this point. All ideas in previous statement are to be questioned through new e-mail. Thank you for understanding.

  • The best way to help the "normalization of deviance," in management practices with N.A.S.A. and its management of the technological elitist core, is to allow a media and entertainment complex to help balance political barriers in space policy. This not meaning to have sponsored space ships with 7-up on the side but to allow a seat for artists in space managed from a media focused agency that focuses on the bi-lateral relations of art and science moving forward together in space. To help send this artist to space send one dollar to Art in Space Foundation in Bellingham, WA. 98226 attentions Jason Dedrick.
    The money will go to me to go to Vancouver Film School, then George Washington University an on to International Space University. I will focus on paid interactive gaming dedicated to group purchase of micro-modular robots. I will make your money go far and any small investment in me will help balance these issues of Militarized space. I hope one day to be a valued asset in Commercialized space science dedicated to entertainment and progress, not defense and invasion of privacy. I have no non-profit status now, but I plan on it and I assure you I will account for every dollar.

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Dennis G. Jerz

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