Shuttle Service Life Extension

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Shuttle Service Life Extension
Michoud Assembly Facility, La. 19, 20 March 03
Safety Message

Bryan OConnor NASA Safety Officer
(1)
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Part of the Story Reacting to the Mishap

• Once harm has been done, even a fool can
  understand it

Homer, The Illiad, Book XVII, 1.32
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Safety Upgrades How do We Know What to Fix?

• One should expect that the expected can be
  prevented, but the unexpected should have been
  expected

Augustines Laws, XLV
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Safety Upgrades How do We Know What to Fix?

• There are things we know that we know,
• There are things we know we dont know,
• There are things we dont know we dont know.

Donald Rumsfeld, U. S. SecDef NATO HQ Press
Conference, June 02
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The Risk Iceberg (3 levels, not 2)

• Mishap recommendations
• Problem solutions
• IFA fixes
• FMEA/Hazard controls
• Close call recommendations
• Ignored close calls?
• Old cert, new environment?
• Inadvertent excursions out of cert/family?
• Hardware talkingnobody listening?

Known Knowns
Known Unknowns
Unknown Unknowns
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Safety Thought of the Day
Flying Safely to 2020 and beyond means
attacking relentlessly all three levels of the
risk iceberg!
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Shuttle Service Life Extension
Michoud Assembly Facility, La. 20 March 03
Safety Message

Bryan OConnor NASA Safety Officer
(1)
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Safety What does it mean?

• The condition of being free from harm
• Secure from the threat of danger
• A technical contrivance to prevent an accident
• Unlikely to produce controversy

Websters Unabridged Dictionary
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Safety How does it fit in our priorities?

• First Shuttle program priority
• Fly Safely
• Note Safety is not the first priority!
• If it were, we would just stop flying and avoid
  all risk
• SLEP means doing what it takes to fly (safely)
  through 2020
• Therefore,
• Supportability and safety share first priority

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Safety What does NASA mean?

• Strategic Plan
• Safety is a core value (not a mission)
• Think of it as an adverb that modifies all Agency
  verbs
• Agency Safety Initiative 1999

• Objectives (in rank order)
• Protect the public
• Protect astronauts and pilots
• Protect our workforce
• Protect our high value equipment and facilities

• Core Elements
• Management commitment
• Employee involvement
• Hazard analysis
• Risk mitigation
• Training and education

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Safety What about maintaining vs. improving?

• Maintaining safety is not good enough
• Todays safety level (even after fixing Columbia
  problems) is only appropriate for a going out of
  business schedule
• Unknown unknowns must be balanced by known
  unknown mitigators or they will slowly increase
  overall risk
• We must also figure out ways to limit the number
  of unknown unknowns
• Overall risk level is too high for a long term
  commitment (OConnor philosophy issue)
• Extending shuttle through 2020 demands that we
  improve safety, not just maintain it
• Real world says that safety improvement upgrades
  will be limited by resources available
• Suggestion do not let mission changes compete
  for SLEP resourcesdemand that new missions bring
  money

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Safety perspective on SLEP priorities

• Fly to 2020 and maintain overall safety at
  current level (this means some improvements
  required to counter unknown risk creep)
• Improve safety with ASI priorities in mind
• Public
• Our people
• Our high value equipment and facilities
• Meet the manifest (schedule dependability and
  current mission success improvements
• Improve the system (efficiencies, and everything
  else that does not fall under 1-3)
• Note new missions bring money