Read Online Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Early Years, 1972-1986 (Outward Odyssey: A People's History of S) by David Hitt, Heather R. Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: David Hitt, Heather R. Smith
Tags: History
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how to do maintenance and training, and we had people come in and start giving classes on how you give instructional courses and how we do logistics [in] the airlines. For a couple of years, we studiously tried to follow all that, and finally after a good bit it became clear that, you know, if there is anybody that’s going to explain this to someone, it’s going to have to be us explaining it to ourselves. That’s where it evolved back into the way we had done things in the earlier programs.
Developing the systems was very much a group effort, Mattingly recalled.
I remember when we first started building the flight control schematics. Those are the most magnificent educational tools I’ve ever seen. I’ve never encountered them in any other organization. I don’t know why. I used to carry around a couple of samples and give them to people and say, “This is what you really need.” And they’d say, “Oh, that’s all very interesting,” and then nothing ever seemed to happen. But working with people to put those drawings together, and then understand what they meant and develop procedures and things from, was a massive effort. During those days the Building 4 [at Johnson Space Center] and the building behind that, where flight control teams had some other offices, the walls were just papered with these things. People would go around, and they’d walk by it and look at it, and they’d say, “That’s not right.” They’d draw a little red thing on it and say, “See me.” And it was an evolutionary process going on continuously.
The shuttle was built with redundant systems. The idea was it should be able to suffer loss of any piece of equipment and still be able to fly safely. Itwas called “fail op, fail safe,” meaning that one failure wouldn’t affect normal operations and that a second failure could affect the way the vehicle operated but not its safety.
That generally led to a concept of four parallel strings of everything. And that was great, but now how do you manage it, and what do you do with it? Now, a schematic has all of these four strings of things, sometimes they’re interconnected, and you could study those things, you’d pull those long sheets out, and you go absolutely bonkers—“Oh no. This line’s hooked to that. I forgot that.” Trying to figure out how this all works. So you’d go get your colored pencils out, and you’d color-code them. By now the stack of these things is building up, and I’m really getting frustrated in doing this dog-work job just before—I had to spend many, many hours for each drawing to get it sorted out before you were ready to use the drawing. So I said, “We’ve got to take these things and get them printed in color, right off the bat.”
And so my friends in the training department said, “Well, you’re probably going to have to talk to Kranz about that. He’s not that enthusiastic about it.” I thought, “Oh God.” So I got an audience with Gene and went over and sat in his office and explained to him what we were doing in trying to get the training program started and how we were trying to get ready to do that, and I really wanted to get these things printed in color so that it would make it easier for people. I knew color printing would be a little more expensive, but it would sure save a lot of time. He said, “No. We’re not going to do that.” I was just overwhelmed. I said, “Gene, why?” He didn’t say a word, he just turned and looked at his desk, and there on his desk, right in the corner, was this big mug filled with colored pencils. And he says, “That’s how you learn.” And so that was the end of the story. I don’t know, I’ll bet today they’re still black and white. But that was Gene’s method of learning, and he figured that by having to trace it out, he had learned a lot, so he felt that others would benefit from that exercise. Even if they didn’t appreciate it, they would benefit.
The process of how the
Developing the systems was very much a group effort, Mattingly recalled.
I remember when we first started building the flight control schematics. Those are the most magnificent educational tools I’ve ever seen. I’ve never encountered them in any other organization. I don’t know why. I used to carry around a couple of samples and give them to people and say, “This is what you really need.” And they’d say, “Oh, that’s all very interesting,” and then nothing ever seemed to happen. But working with people to put those drawings together, and then understand what they meant and develop procedures and things from, was a massive effort. During those days the Building 4 [at Johnson Space Center] and the building behind that, where flight control teams had some other offices, the walls were just papered with these things. People would go around, and they’d walk by it and look at it, and they’d say, “That’s not right.” They’d draw a little red thing on it and say, “See me.” And it was an evolutionary process going on continuously.
The shuttle was built with redundant systems. The idea was it should be able to suffer loss of any piece of equipment and still be able to fly safely. Itwas called “fail op, fail safe,” meaning that one failure wouldn’t affect normal operations and that a second failure could affect the way the vehicle operated but not its safety.
That generally led to a concept of four parallel strings of everything. And that was great, but now how do you manage it, and what do you do with it? Now, a schematic has all of these four strings of things, sometimes they’re interconnected, and you could study those things, you’d pull those long sheets out, and you go absolutely bonkers—“Oh no. This line’s hooked to that. I forgot that.” Trying to figure out how this all works. So you’d go get your colored pencils out, and you’d color-code them. By now the stack of these things is building up, and I’m really getting frustrated in doing this dog-work job just before—I had to spend many, many hours for each drawing to get it sorted out before you were ready to use the drawing. So I said, “We’ve got to take these things and get them printed in color, right off the bat.”
And so my friends in the training department said, “Well, you’re probably going to have to talk to Kranz about that. He’s not that enthusiastic about it.” I thought, “Oh God.” So I got an audience with Gene and went over and sat in his office and explained to him what we were doing in trying to get the training program started and how we were trying to get ready to do that, and I really wanted to get these things printed in color so that it would make it easier for people. I knew color printing would be a little more expensive, but it would sure save a lot of time. He said, “No. We’re not going to do that.” I was just overwhelmed. I said, “Gene, why?” He didn’t say a word, he just turned and looked at his desk, and there on his desk, right in the corner, was this big mug filled with colored pencils. And he says, “That’s how you learn.” And so that was the end of the story. I don’t know, I’ll bet today they’re still black and white. But that was Gene’s method of learning, and he figured that by having to trace it out, he had learned a lot, so he felt that others would benefit from that exercise. Even if they didn’t appreciate it, they would benefit.
The process of how the
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