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I primarily use this journal as a chronicle of my life, filtered for the public domain. As a secondary purpose, I sometimes share musing on various topics. Generally speaking, I do not use it for commentary on the news-worthy happenings of the day, as many on my friends list do.
However, the following snippet, lifted from an Associate Press article, caught my eye and was too good (awful?) to pass over for public comment:
NASA to Decide if Gap Fabric Needs Repair
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 9, 2006
The early consensus is that it probably won't pose problems during the shuttle's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, but engineers pulled an all-nighter to recommend what, if anything, needs to be done, NASA officials said.
Right. So NASA wants to reach a decision based on the recommendation of a team of sleep-deprived engineers. Somehow, this seems less than brilliant, and not indicative of a functioning "safety-culture."
As a physicist, I learned a long time ago that working when tired is usually a bad idea. Pulling all-nighters to make progress usually hurts, rather than helps, productivity. For instance, I learned that working through the night coding usually means spending the next two days debugging that code. Mind you, this comes from somebody long entrenched in the culture of all-nighters; at Hampshire College, I never began a paper earlier than 10pm the night before it was due. These days, however, I reserve my all-nighters for working on papers and talks, which require far less consciousness than the actual physics work.
But NASA thinks that working its engineers through the night is the way to decide what is safest for the astronauts? Hoy vey!
However, the following snippet, lifted from an Associate Press article, caught my eye and was too good (awful?) to pass over for public comment:
NASA to Decide if Gap Fabric Needs Repair
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 9, 2006
The early consensus is that it probably won't pose problems during the shuttle's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, but engineers pulled an all-nighter to recommend what, if anything, needs to be done, NASA officials said.
Right. So NASA wants to reach a decision based on the recommendation of a team of sleep-deprived engineers. Somehow, this seems less than brilliant, and not indicative of a functioning "safety-culture."
As a physicist, I learned a long time ago that working when tired is usually a bad idea. Pulling all-nighters to make progress usually hurts, rather than helps, productivity. For instance, I learned that working through the night coding usually means spending the next two days debugging that code. Mind you, this comes from somebody long entrenched in the culture of all-nighters; at Hampshire College, I never began a paper earlier than 10pm the night before it was due. These days, however, I reserve my all-nighters for working on papers and talks, which require far less consciousness than the actual physics work.
But NASA thinks that working its engineers through the night is the way to decide what is safest for the astronauts? Hoy vey!
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