New NASA Space program.... (NSR)Ric |
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Plankowner Posts: 9165 Location: Upper lefthand corner of the map. | Subject: New NASA Space program.... (NSR) ..I have a long time friend who worked for NASA a few years ago and is now free lance programmer. He just sent me this email about his current project for them!!! ============================ I'm currently contracted to help write the specs for the CEVs life support. Naturally I'm working with some old timers that worked on other NASA life support projects for spacecraft, station, suits, etc. One disturbing story I heard today was from a couple senior guys saying the thing that bugged him and others about some of these programs - was NASA demand that they lower the safety factors - the design reserves. The companies rules were you design everything to take 150% to 200% of the design load, so you have a acceptable safety factor. NASA said that made things to heavy, so they ordered the safety factors lowered - usually to 110%, in some cases to 85% of designed load - below the calculated necessary capacity.. The reason was that their brilliant guy statistically showed,that the cumulative reliability of systems that, component by component, had such a lower safety factor - leads to a total safety factor that was the same ---- according to him. Of course NASA also calculated that the odds of a shuttle crashing was 1 in 500 flights. Industry groups that do such stuff calculated it at 1 in 50, so I'm guessing the companies safety factors were correct. ::shudder:: ============================ Hope to god this s**t isn't going on in our subs too!!!! Ric | ||
