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The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)

(mcdreeamiemusings.com)
210 points scapecast | 4 comments | 28 Aug 25 21:44 UTC | HN request time: 1.392s | source
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gjejcjekdnfnwja ◴[29 Aug 25 00:46 UTC] No.45058702[source]▶
As an engineer, that slide looks completely reasonable to me. Its purpose was to communicate technical info, which it did adequately. Keep in mind that the subject matter is highly technical, given that we're literally talking about the Space Shuttle, and more than a high school level of reading comprehension is heavily implied. If the NASA personnel weren't competent enough to review technical data without a pithy summary, that's on them.
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wat10000 ◴[29 Aug 25 01:18 UTC] No.45058926[source]▶
"That's on them" is not acceptable for an engineer when lives are on the line. Part of your job is making people understand what they need to understand. If their lack of understanding means people die, then you need to do your job and figure out how to communicate effectively to the audience you have, not the audience you want.
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1. hinkley ◴[29 Aug 25 01:45 UTC] No.45059100[source]▶
There’s a famous speech someone related from their civil engineering professor, where the professor basically said, if I pass you in this class I am effectively giving you a license to kill. So some of you will not be passing.
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2. wat10000 ◴[29 Aug 25 02:01 UTC] No.45059203[source]▶
My CS undergrad was in the engineering college and so I had a mandatory engineering seminar that was basically "don't get people killed with your work." We covered Challenger, Hyatt Regency, and some other classic failures. I've mostly avoided working on life-critical software so it's not an immediate concern, but that sense of responsibility still stuck with me.
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3. fhdbdnfnndnn ◴[29 Aug 25 02:08 UTC] No.45059245[source]▶
The assumption of competency goes both ways. The NASA personnel should have been able to understand a very standard slide in their field, that any college-educated fluent English speaker would have been able to grasp.
4. hinkley ◴[29 Aug 25 02:52 UTC] No.45059594[source]▶
Also attended an engineering school. I had to take way too much chem and physics. It was weird.

I can be kind of a pain in the ass when it comes to details so I’ve worked on a couple such projects. It’s sobering, but also I think, “better me than” half a dozen corner cutters at my last two jobs. They could do much worse.

That said, I stayed on a commercial aerospace project about 14 months after I didn’t really want to be there because people kept saying the wrong things in meetings and thinking they sounded right.