NASA spinmeister Sean O'Keefe

The BBQ Pit
1

I watched Tim Russert interviewing NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe this morning.

Now I thought that the briefings NASA had yesterday (Feb 1) were excellent. They answered all questions put to them, honestly and openly. They offered extra info, even beyond what was asked. Today, however, NASA is already in spin mode.

One question Tim asked was (paraphrased): “Did the crew have any capability of inspecting their shuttle, and if a problem had been found, could any damage be repaired, or could the shuttle dock with the ISS, or could a rescue mission be sent, etc.?”

Now, some of these questions had already been answered at the technical briefing the day before. And I, personally, was pretty shocked by the fact that no, the crew could not inspect their vehicle, nor could they do any repairs.

I thought that the wisdom of NASA sending up a crew with no ability to even inspect their craft was a matter worthy of debate, and so I started this thread in GD:
Shuttle crew helpless to inspect orbiter?!

(There’s also a related thread in GQ:
Columbia: Logistics of a Second Shuttle Staging a Rescue)

So, now for the reason for this post, and why it’s in the Pit:

Did Mr. O’Keefe answer any of the questions posed by Tim Russert, even those that had already been addressed the day before? (And BTW, why didn’t Tim know that?) Did he even address the impossibility of the Columbia docking with the ISS?

Answer: NO, he said absolutely nothing of value. His only response was some meaningless blather about how seriously they take everything and that they did everything they could.

You slimy piece of shit. ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTIONS. Your own agency has already told the American public:

  1. The crew had neither the training nor capability of inspecting their own vehicle.
  2. The crew had no ability to effect any repairs.
  3. Your engineers decided not to try to photograph the shuttle from the ground or other assets.

I don’t know why this has me so hot under the collar. However, in this time of national mourning, the last thing I want to hear is “spin.”

I want NASA to tell us:
–what they know.
–what decisions they made, and why they made them.

And if, for whatever reason, NASA made a deliberate decision to make it impossible for a crew to inspect their own vehicle, I want to know why this decision was made.

I do not want to hear generic crap about them having done “everything they could.” Because the more I hear, the more I’m starting to doubt this.

2

I don’t think that a Space Shuttle is as easy to “inspect” and “repair” as, say, a car. If the Shuttle gets a flat tire in orbit, it’s not just a matter of jacking it up and retrieving the spare tire from the trunk…

Maybe he wasn’t expecting stupid questions.

3

No, it’s a matter of conducting an EVA. I fail to see why any shuttle mission would be put up without the capability of conducting an EVA. What if something more substantial than foam insulation was filmed hitting the wing during liftoff? The crew would not (and in fact did not) have any way of assessing the damage.

Well, SPOOFE, I respectfully disagree. Similar questions were brought up the day before and answered factually. Personally, I perked right up when Mr. Russert repeated the questions this morning, because I hoped he would follow them up with some “why” questions, as in: “Why was the decision made to send up a shuttle mission with no capability of conducting an EVA?”

4

O’Keefe’s a bean counter. Why would you expect him to know the answers to all these technical questions ? If you want answers, you have to ask lower on the food chain. That’s all. He’s likely not spinning it, he’s just at the limit of his own knowledge.

5

Then why did he go out there to be interviewed, without making sure he was briefed fully by those who do know the answers? That’s how it works.

6

Robby, you don’t seem to really understand (even at a basic level) the problems involved with just hopping out of the shuttle and having a look, much less the process of replacing tiles (each one different then the rest) in space, using a silicone-based adhesive, which I am sure would not just freeze when trying to squirt some on, while floating around.

Basically, you are looking for answers to questions that are irrelevant.

You seem to think you are on to something with “Your engineers decided not to try to photograph the shuttle from the ground or other assets…”, but the fucking shuttle orbits bottom facing ‘away’, which helps protect the crew from radiation. Gee, why the hell didn’t NASA swing Hubble around for a look, huh?

NASA is full of briliant people who understand what they are doing. You do not, and you do not even understand it enough to ask poignant questions.

7

From the press briefing late this afternoon, it seems that in the past, they HAVE tried to use ground-based scopes to inspect the shuttle, but couldn’t get good enough resolution to obtain any useful data. Bet he wasn’t aware of that when he was talking to Russert.

Consider if he replied, “I don’t know” to everything he didn’t have immediate answers for. Then he’d be deemed “asleep at the wheel” by those who expect him to immediately know everything.

Consider if he didn’t take the interview at all. Then he’d be hiding something, wouldn’t he? Those sneaky NASA slimeballs!

Sometimes the head honcho has to spin for the good of an organization that’s very suddenly under the microscope. Good or bad, part of the job.

8

Brutus, granted, IANAA, but I’m reasonably well-informed, and as a former nuclear submarine officer, I’ve had extensive training and experience in planning for and confronting engineering failures and casualties while under the gun.

Based on your condescending reply, though, I’m confident that you must have the in-depth knowledge that only years of close association with the space program could bring.

Here’s what I do know:

NASA has conducted EVAs in the past from the shuttle. I made the huge leap that EVAs are still possible now. If, for whatever reason, an EVA was not possible, I don’t think it is unreasonable for an explanation from NASA as to why it was not possible, and why the decision for this was made.

The shuttle has been losing tiles since the beginning of the program. I know that there was some effort to providing an in-orbit tile-repair procedure back in the 1980s. I only know that it was dropped. Why?

Regarding photographing the shuttle, I know that an effort was made to photograph the shuttle in the past. I know that it was not even attempted for STS-107. I also mentioned “other assets”, such as the ISS in its higher orbit. I believe the shuttle got within a few hundred miles of the ISS at times during the STS-107 mission. Or, for ground-based telescopes, what about using maneuvering thrusters to temporarily roll the shuttle for a better look?

I am cognizant of the brilliant people involved in designing the shuttle. Unfortunately, we have seen in the past that these brilliant people have been overruled over their strong objections, such as what happened in the ill-fated decision to launch in January 1986.

In any event, as a taxpayer and a citizen, I think I and the American public deserve honest answers to these and other questions. I am not a conspiracy theorist. If the answer is that NASA has insufficient funding to address these and other safety-related issues, I want to hear it. In short, Brutus you’re full of shit to dismiss these questions as irrelevant. Even here on this message board, a number of others have brought them up. And for crying out loud, did you even read my OP? My rant was the fact that Mr. O’Keefe evaded not my questions, but those of Tim Russert.

Oh, and Brutus, that word “poignant”—look it up. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.

9

Well, if not, he should have been aware of this. The same information was put out yesterday afternoon.

Let me say this again. The questions he evaded were brought up the previous day. NASA had only held two press conferences prior to the Russert interview, and the first of these had been given by O’Keefe himself. Do you really think O’Keefe went into the interview this morning not knowing what was asked and answered at the technical briefing yesterday afternoon? At a minimum, I’d expect him to have been provided a written transcript, if he didn’t monitor the briefing itself.

And listening to the briefing, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist [;)] to say to oneself “why was that decision made?”

Oh, give me a break.

See, this is political thinking at its worst. It doesn’t get much worse than losing seven astronauts and a multi-billion dollar spacecraft. When things are this much in the crapper, I’d prefer straight answers. If he doesn’t know, say so and then find the answer.

The cause of my rant in the OP, though, is that I am convinced that Mr. O’Keefe is smarter than this, and he is consciously avoiding the issues brought up the first technical briefing.

BTW, I’ve probably posted more this weekend than I have in the last six months. Please realize that I am completely devasted by the loss of Columbia and her crew. And so help me, I am going to flip out if I hear that the loss was preventable, or that accountants hamstrung the engineers.

10

Poignent

3.b: Astute and pertinent; relevant.

Whatever.

*I don’t believe that an unplanned EVA ever occured on the shuttle without the the robotic arm. Since they don’t carry those nifty rocketpacks all the time, how would the astronaut have safely gotten from the cargo bay to point where they could inpect the ‘bottom’?

The only theories I have heard on how to do this were: (Remember, there are no handholds to get them to the other side of the shuttle)

  1. Tether the astronaut, float out a ways, and ‘spin’ the shuttle using manuever jets. But since the maximum legnth of the tether is 55’, it probably wouldn’t have worked.

  2. Free float some brave soul, and spin the shuttle. How he would have gotten back, who knows?

Remember, at the time, (as far as we know), they had no reason to suspect catastrophic failure. So why would they risk losing (literally) a astronaut?

  • Each tile has a unique geometry. They can’t swag it, as you know, because then you would have added drag (and friction), assuming the tile doesn’t just fall out.

But lets assume they brought tile #32143f3322324fhwd along with them, and just happened to need to use it. No problem. Lets even assume that they have the robotic arm or nifty rocket pack. So the astronaut gets out there, with tile (actually, a tile with a stress isolation pad attached, but that can be done in advance). How does he attach it? Lets even assume that the tile cleanly broke away, leaving bare, clean structure below.

Nothing could be easier! Just apply .008 inch of the silicone adhesive, apply a vacuum over the tile (and gaps), and cure at room temperature for 72hrs, while keeping pressure on the tile. I sense trouble there!
In other words, not something they plan on doing. Why? They’d be dead. They don’t carry all the spare tiles. There is no temporary ‘tile substitute’. If they had the tiles, they have no way to put them on.

In the words of some NASA guy, during a press conference yesterday, “We don’t train for 100% fatal scenarios. You don’t practice what to do if your car drives over a tall cliff, we don’t practice what to do if we loose tiles”

I guarantee that a ‘temporary tile substitute’ will once again be looked at. But we are at the whim of technology on that one.
I overreated on the first post and apologize; Friend of the family was on the Narwhal back in the day, and retired from the Navy after spending time at Charleston (?), teaching, so insuating stupidity was out of line. Frank might have glowed a bit, and was pale as a cavefish, but damn was he smart. :wink:

But I am hearing too many of the wrong questions from the media all day, and it’s wearing on me.

(“Why didn’t we launch a rescue mission?” Uhhh…We didn’t know we needed one, among other reasons?)

Since we still don’t actually know what happened, this is all conjecture. It may have been a frigging micrometeor, for all we know. I trust in the eggheads to tell us as soon as they know.

And as for O’Keefe? He’s a suit. He may have once had technical experience, but to be the head of a gov’t agency, you’re a suit, first and foremost. And I expect precious little from them, especially straightforward answers. Ron Dittemore has his head on right, and will give us the info we need.

11

I think you are absolutely correct here. From a NASA PR perspective, given the media mentality, a banal answer is better than “I don’t know”.

This person may have had valuable information to impart (I really don’t know) and still been unable to answer questions outside of his expertise or experience.

12

OK, I’ll grant you that. (You have to get pretty far down the definition to hit that meaning, though–I read it as “painfully affecting the feelings; deeply affecting: MOVING.”

Actually, my larger question was why every mission was not provided with a safe means of inspecting the craft. I understand that, once up, this mission had few options.

Well, thanks for the apology. Sorry for jumping back down your throat.

Or, “why does the shuttle have to land so fast? After all, it comes to a complete stop when it docks with the space station…” :rolleyes:

I expect that you’re right.

13

Never looked at it from that point of view. Why not some small tethered camera with minimal maneuver jets, or a camera-only ‘robotic arm’. Or something. But I see your point. Why put up a billion+ dollar manned platform that doesn’t have the capability of performing the most basic of self-examination?

14

is it not “Poignant”?

15

Goodbye, cursed Clippy, hello TwistofFate. I officially have a new spellchecker, and just in time for my report to the tech, steering commitee. Expect many, many .doc and .xls files in your email soon.

Goodbuy for now!

16

That’s pretty funny Brutus! :slight_smile:

17

Italics mine

Really? What boat?

18

USS San Juan (SSN 751)
USS Ulysses S. Grant (SSBN 631)

19

Oh. East Coast. Highly unlikely we’ve met, then. Carry on.

20

From the press conference:

EVA: There is nothing to hold onto on the bottom. An astronaut is as likely to cause more damage to tiles than not.

Repairing tiles: They could never find a method that worked.