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

My dad headed up the redesign effort on the Lockheed Martin side to remove the foam PAL ramps (where the chunk of foam that broke off and hit the orbiter came from) from the external tank, as part of return-to-flight after the Columbia disaster. At the time he was the last one left at the company from when they had previously investigated removing those ramps from the design. He told me how he went from basically working on this project off in a corner on his own, to suddenly having millions of dollars in funding and flying all over for wind tunnel tests when it became clear to NASA that return-to-flight couldn't happen without removing the ramps.

I don't think his name has ever come up in all the histories of this—some Lockheed policy about not letting their employees be publicly credited in papers—but he's got an array of internal awards from this time around his desk at home (he's now retired). I've always been proud of him for this.

It's funny how the thankless jobs of quality assurance become so critical so quickly. And I mean that ironically of course.

To folks out there: do the important work, not the glamorous work, and you'll not only sleep well, but you might actually matter as well.

Yes, but first it has to go horribly wrong. Same for security. After the breach there is plenty of budget.

I worked in security for a while, but luckily on the vendor side and not the consumer side. The old yarn in that area is when everything (security wise) is fine, management asks you "What are we paying you for?". When it inevitably turns pear shaped they ask, "What are we paying you for?"

Fun times.