This is the internet. The accepted qualifications for stating opinions, even opinons as fact, is having a compatible telecommunications connection, some sort of computer, and a keyboard (caps lock key broken or not).

This is how it should be. Really. People can look at a spiderweb and see a marvel of natural ‘engineering’ with a material with a greater tensile strength than steel, evolved to meet a particular purpose, or they can see a frail gossamer web. The glass is simultaneously half-empty and half-full, an airplane is not a reinforced concrete bunker or a tank. Disagreements over these things, or the importance of these things, is how advancements are made.

Assuming you are an engineer, and assuming you are reasonably competent— are you saying you don’t trust your own knowledge or the science behind it? In fact, isn’t that structure in the museum an impressive example of materials science and engineering? In fact, the 727 had a long and illustrious career, favored by many pilots as their favorite airliner because, among other reasons, it was so robust.

Why are apparently educated people more willing to believe their emotions than they are willing to accept reality and science? Why will they publicly suggest that their colleagues, and they by association, don’t know diddly?

I can’t tell if you are using this as an example of a logical flaw in Ken’s argument, or as a statement of fact. If it’s the latter, you’re wrong.

The oxygen tank that ruptured on Apollo 13 (and, BTW, there were not 12 missions ahead of it, only six manned ones) was not the same as the others. It had been shelved after a minor accident (being dropped), but was later examined and cleared for flight. Unfortunately, between the time it was built, and the much later time it was incorporated into the SM that went on Apollo 13, they’d had a design change in the instrumentation system from 24 V to (I think) 65 V. The tank was still wired for 24 V and during ground testing some of the wires overheated and burned their insulation. This wasn’t a problem until they were in zero-gee and the wires started floating around at random. They just happened to be touching when they started the “tank stir.” The resulting short boiled the LOX around it and caused a pressure bubble that ruptured the tank.

Just keeping the record straight.

- Jack

Well, it depends on the use of the word “near”, which can be used to mean physical proximity, or as a synonym for “almost”. So a “near hit” would be a case of planes which “almost hit”, and a near miss would be a case where “planes missed, but were very near to each other”.

Or, I could just be rationalizing.

We call them “near misses” not “near hits.” I have no idea why.

JP

Much like I misunderstood Phil, thus resulting in my ‘ad hominem attack’ which I already apologized for, I think you may have misunderstood my statements.

What I was quickly trying to say was that when I first read the article I felt that the reporter was more interested in stirring up people’s emotions than telling the important information. It seems to me that you’re reading way too much into my comment on planes falling from the sky and taking it too literally. The article I read, not Phil’s post, made it sound like we should all stay on the ground and not fly again until this mess is cleaned up. You are correct that just because a plane hasn’t crashed doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. There’s also a point where if you ignore too many problems, things start failing. It will then become hard to ignore the problems if planes are falling out of the sky. Most ( or at least some ) companies are smart enough to figure out that that is bad for business and will try and avoid it.

I try and stay on topic. If you think my comments are irrelevant I’m not offended by you ignoring them.

And generally i think studies should be released, whether the results and/or methodology is trustworthy or not.

It’s not clear what the issue is in this case but NASA has always been open about the data that has been collected and pilots have learned a lot from it over the years.

I can’t help being reminded of an episode in Yes Prime Minister where Sir Humphrey (head of the civil service) is telling the Prime Minister how to get around a scientific report with unwelcome conclusions. One of the tactics was to refuse to release the report on the grounds that the results and/or methodology was questionable – and if nobody had questioned them, then to do so!

That is the only scenario in which Luedtke’s statement and NASA’s suppresion of the study and trashing the data makes any sense.

The reason I think something is still odd here is that we have a highly-=placed official saying something really egregious, and then a high-placed official spinning it. Worse, if this survey is public, then why did Luedtke talk about not releasing the data? So clearly there is something weird here.

TruthSeeker, As I said in the entry itself, if it turned out Luedtke was not a political appointee, I would “eat crow”. When it was pointed out that he was appointed, but by Clinton, I made that clear by updating the entry. I don’t think I need to rend my garments here. And you may note that the thrust of nearly this entire blog entry is about the suppression of the results of the survey. So TruthSeeker I don’t think your point holds water.

UmTutSut, you are saying the NASA study in question is NOT the ASRS survey? That would make more sense, but it opens up new questions. What is the NASA study? Is there any more info on it? I guess the Congressional hearings might clear that up.

Most of your statements were irrelevant, except for one ad hominem attack on Phil and the following:

“And while we need to keep an eye on things and keep improving them, don’t you think if things were that bad there’d be more planes falling out of the sky?”

This is logically fallacious, and I can give a simple example that shows why. All of the first 12 Apollo missions had the same design fault as Apollo 13, don’t you think the oxygen tanks on them would have blown up as well?

There are many small things that can go wrong on a flight that could contribute to a disaster. It is wrong to ignore them because they haven’t caused a disaster yet.

And on second thought, I do have problems. Lots of them. But probably not the ones you think.

“Phil, when you turn every government problem back on Bush I think it’s time to admit you have a problem.”

Umm.. when did he do that? He said “Sounds more like the work of another political appointee.” And he was right. It was a Clinton appointee.

Ken, if you turn every criticism of the government into a personal attack on Bush, I think it’s time to admit *you* have a problem.

I was also shocked to learn that flying is dangerous and that there are things that happen that would make people less comfortable if they knew about them. I’m thinking right now of something our government does that a bunch of you might freak out over if you knew about it. Personally, I just think it’s a fact of life. While I’m for making things safer and better, not everything is %100 safe.

Phil, when you turn every government problem back on Bush I think it’s time to admit you have a problem.

And while we need to keep an eye on things and keep improving them, don’t you think if things were that bad there’d be more planes falling out of the sky?

Hey, it’s why surface cleaners compete primarily on their power to kill 99.99% or 99.999% of germs that you aren’t in any danger from anyway.

I find it very likely that most pilots will happily jaw on about that “near miss” at a mile away, or that “near miss” that the air controllers specifically set up and were monitoring, such as two planes landing nearly simultaneously on different runways.

However, the report should be released. NASA should never act like it is has been acting recently.

If the results of a publically-funded study are questionable then the study should be published *along with the questions*. If nothing else, a well critiqued study is a valuable learning tool.

That’s not what’s being done here. The study was suppressed for undisclosed reasons, and the contractor that performed the study has been told to destroy all of the data related to it. Those actions give the appearance of impropriety.

The NASA study so widely commented upon is/was entirely separate from the ASRS, which is still in place and serving a useful purpose.

Second — and more important — there are some significant issues with the methodology of the study, at least, what we know of it. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team – a joint FAA/Industry group that identifies precursors to accidents – was briefed on the survey process and top-level preliminary results in 2003. The FAA has questions about the usefulness of the data because the pilot perceptions it contains apparently lack the specificity we would need to compare the NASA information to our objective data for the same time period.

We (the FAA) have developed data collection and risk analysis tools/program used to spot potential accident trends. In fact, risk analysis and accident PREVENTION is the cornerstone of our safety efforts. The proof that our efforts are working can be seen in the historically low accident rate and the reduction of the commercial fatal accident rate by 65 percent over the last decade.

Les (Friendly Airplane Asylum flack)

Does Bill Corbet know this?

Well, long as you don’t say you’ll eat Tom Servo…

Anyway, this is rather disturbing. And freakish.
I do hope whoever made this descision gets a new job, and that someone else takes this to full disclosure.
After all, these are serious issues that MUST be addressed.

-”When a Clinton person does something stupid all we get is a small little edit line.”

Phil didn’t know this was a Clinton person.
This subject also isn’t about anti-science, but NASA’s public image.

It seems to me that this anti-truth incident has a more direct effect on public safety that the other stuff Phil has written about. Where is the huge outrage? Where are paragraphs railing against this guy and how evil he is for hiding the truth?

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

Seems like we haven’t learned much since then.

If a NASA official made a statement like “We didn’t really land on the moon” and then his boss made a statement such as “We didn’t mean to give the impression that we didn’t land on the moon” then your comparison would be valid. However, to my knowledge this hasn’t happened yet.

Whether or not any data other than personally identifiable information (which is typically withheld from any sort of aggregate report for reasons of privacy) was withheld, the official statements are at odds. And if the only data withheld was in fact the personally identifiable information, then why would NASA feel the need to make any statements at all? It may be nothing (in fact, it probably is), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth looking at.

Then why go off half cocked at a NYT op ed piece that is politicizing something? When you get political, you sometimes become what you once debunked, and it’s can get ugly.

>>> Why can’t people
>>> just be honest and do the right thing in the first place?

Honestly, Phil, you come across as a fantastically naive sometimes.

>>> it seems that something is indeed up.

And how is this any better than any other woo woo conspiracy theorist? Even after “eyesoars” presented a clear and rational response, you still cling to “Ooooo, something is afoot!”