[FPSPACE] MSNBC.com (Oberg): "Human failings serve as NASA wake-upcall"

[E.P. Grondine]

Jim,

I think you are misreading the problem.  It isn't people with weaknesses let 
through a faulty screening process; it's that the demands of the jobs are so 
intense, and the experience of spaceflight so unique, that collectively it 
leads to problems for the individuals doing these jobs.

I noted Yuri's morning after, I noted the high divorce rate back so many 
years ago. And my observations were generally ignored - they don't fit with 
the "heroic" and "fun" paradigm the space cadets promote.

In the end, Novak's behavior might just have been extreme enough to start a 
re-examination of the whole behavioural complex.  And if that occurs, it 
will be for the best.

I note that other data, from Russia, on the early cosmonauts psychological 
development is poorly developed at this time.

I think that dealing with this entire complex is going to require a 
re-working of the support environment and work loads, not simply refining 
the screening process further.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas



>From: "Jim Oberg" <jeoberg at comcast.net>
>To: <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
>Subject: [FPSPACE] MSNBC.com (Oberg): "Human failings serve as NASA 
>wake-upcall"
>Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 23:43:52 -0500
>
>MSNBC.com (Oberg): "Human failings serve as NASA wake-up call"
>
>How medical rules were bent - and why remedies are needed
>
>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20167011/
>
>Commentary // By James Oberg // NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC
>
>August 7, 2007, 9:15 pm EDT
>
>    HOUSTON - Over the past few months, space engineers have been forcibly 
>reminded that booster seals and wing panels aren't the only things that can 
>crack in space: Humans can, too.
>
>    To the embarrassment of NASA officials, and to the glee of far too many 
>outside cynics, the public has been treated to a ghastly parade of human 
>failings from space workers that might have led to disaster if they 
>occurred during flight: February's story of a love triangle gone wrong, 
>which resulted in the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak; a murder-suicide at 
>NASA's Johnson Space Center; and last month's tales of heavy alcohol use in 
>the astronaut corps.
>
>    Still more stories circulate among the astronauts themselves. One 
>account focuses on a spaceflier who had a detached retina corrected "on the 
>outside" without NASA's knowledge. Another story tells of a veteran shuttle 
>commander who should have been disqualified on medical grounds, but was 
>allowed one last flight when the medical team acquiesced.
>
>    Engineers are accustomed to measuring the reliability of space 
>hardware. They have developed tests and measurements that can go a long way 
>toward winnowing out the "failure points" in mechanisms, designs or 
>operational plans.
>
>    Where disaster has occurred, investigation boards have determined them 
>to be the result of human failings somewhere along the line - for example, 
>skipping procedures that were already known to be necessary.
>
>    But how about people? How can they be measured, and how can weaknesses 
>be filtered out so that there is not a loss of concentration at a critical 
>time, or a loss of the mental or physical ability to react properly?
>
>    Medical issue is a complex one -- Applying medical standards to 
>astronauts was the main theme of the report issued last month by an 
>independent panel of eight physicians - the report that stirred all the 
>controversy over alcohol use. Commissioned by NASA Administrator Michael 
>Griffin in the wake of Nowak's arrest, the report assessed the space 
>agency's ability to monitor the "psychosocial health of astronauts" and 
>identify "potential system vulnerabilities" in current practices.
>
>    At the same time, I've been conducting a private, informal survey of 
>two dozen former astronauts and flight surgeons, and comparing the comments 
>with information gleaned during my two decades at Mission Control in 
>Houston. The results have convinced me that the issue of maintaining 
>medical standards for flight crews is a complex one.
>
>    The astronauts say some people have flown even though they shouldn't 
>have, and some people have been grounded even though they shouldn't have. 
>Some of these cases have had significant impacts on individuals - and yet 
>this process, for all its flaws, appears to have functioned sufficiently 
>well to forestall any significant impact on U.S. human spaceflight so far.
>
>    This is despite the stories of a few men and women who flew sometimes 
>with illnesses, sometimes with surgical complications, sometimes with 
>physical disqualifications, sometimes with unverified psychological 
>balance.
>
>    Privacy shrouds process -- As with the anecdotes mentioned in the last 
>month's report - such as the stories of pre-flight alcohol abuse, which 
>monopolized the public's attention to the disregard of the report's more 
>central findings - these stories are unverified. (In fact, NBC News reports 
>that investigators have been unable to substantiate the report's claims 
>about alcohol.)
>
>    Medical anecdotes are difficult to confirm because NASA follows the 
>federal government's policy on protecting the medical privacy of employees. 
>"All individuals have a right to medical privacy. NASA respects that right 
>for all its employees, including astronauts," NASA spokesman James 
>Hartsfield told me at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
>
>    "The policy we have with regard to astronauts and missions, that are of 
>high national interest, is [that] we would respect the medical privacy 
>issue unless there is a matter that significantly impacts the mission," 
>Hartsfield said. For example, NASA has in the past disclosed medical 
>conditions that affected launch schedules, spacewalks and other mission 
>activities - while withholding comment on medical matters extraneous to 
>such activities.
>
>    Meanwhile, the medical standards process, in public and in private, 
>remains hit or miss. It seems based on judgments that are sometimes skewed 
>by careerist strategies - for example, not angering people who could help 
>dictate the future assignments of those making the decisions.
>
>    Getting away with such a strategy "so far" may seem not unlike "getting 
>away" with plume leakage from the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, until 
>Challenger ... or getting away with debris damage to the shuttle's 
>underbelly dozens of times, until Columbia. Is it only a matter of time 
>before undetected weaknesses in this component conspire with other failures 
>to create conditions for another tragedy in space?
>
>    The medical stresses will grow more severe as NASA moves through a 
>string of complex missions on the international space station, through the 
>twilight years of the space shuttle era, and onward to a new era that will 
>take humans beyond low Earth orbit. Human weaknesses that may have been 
>tolerable before now may, at some point, reach a breaking point. To 
>forestall such disasters, a fuller appreciation of the history of medical 
>screening is needed.
>
>    A catalog of medical crises -- All of the individuals who responded to 
>my inquiries did so under the condition that their names not be used. The 
>only guarantee of authenticity that I can give in this analysis is that 
>they are all people I have known and worked with, often for decades. I have 
>relied on their judgment and candor in the past, and I still do.
>
>    Only a handful of astronaut medical disqualifications are in the public 
>record. The problems of Mercury astronauts Deke Slayton (heart murmur) and 
>Alan Shepard (inner-ear disorder) are well known, and both eventually were 
>restored to flight status and flew in orbit. John Bull, selected as an 
>astronaut in 1966, was later dismissed after displaying a significant 
>intolerance to aspirin. Doctors insist Bull's dismissal was a good call, 
>even as they express sympathy.
>
>    The famous grounding of would-be Apollo 13 flier Ken Mattingly for 
>indirect exposure to German measles was controversial at the time and 
>remains so. He later flew a very successful lunar mission. One astronaut 
>involved in 1970's Apollo 13 drama noted that Mattingly played a crucial 
>role in developing procedures for reviving the imperiled spacecraft. "Ken's 
>presence on the ground was of inestimable value in returning the crew 
>safely," he said.
>
>    One veteran flight surgeon endorsed the view that astronauts were 
>usually given the benefit of the doubt on medical calls. "I think overall 
>the number of 'breaks' the crew gets far outweigh the hits," he said in an 
>e-mail.
>
>    He said the final fly/no-fly decision was often out of his hands, and 
>over his head: "Most of the time 'management' seems to make the decisions 
>(as they probably should, since I would submit every decision is a balanced 
>risk). They probably don't weigh the medical opinion as much as I would, 
>but that's a biased opinion to be sure." A good example of this might be 
>one very successful pilot astronaut who, it was discovered late in his 
>career, was color-blind. He seemed to fly OK, so the condition was 
>"exempted."
>
>    Renal stones and retinal detachment -- The flight surgeon listed other 
>cases: "We flew a guy with a positive hepatitis antibody [and] we flew [a 
>guy with] known renal stone history." In a more serious case, he added, "We 
>found out about a guy who had a retinal detachment lasered on the outside 
>but didn't report it. [We] only found out after the fact but still could 
>have hit his pension."
>
>    Renal stones, better known as kidney stones, can be problematic for 
>spaceflight because the dehydration that commonly occurs in zero-gravity 
>could lead to rapid precipitation of painful stones during a mission. But 
>after several cases of astronauts receiving private treatment for such 
>conditions (without telling NASA about it), and then flying without 
>incident, NASA seemed to lighten up on that constraint.
>
>    One astronaut on a later flight said in an e-mail: "I do know of a case 
>of kidney stones for one of our payload specialists, which occurred a few 
>months before flight. NASA took him to have them ultrasound zapped, and he 
>was able to fly."
>
>    Bending the rules seemed acceptable in such cases - except, apparently, 
>when the astronaut in question was European, and a history of kidney stones 
>had been the reason NASA gave officially in 1980 for keeping him out of 
>mission specialist training. He later flew several times as a payload 
>specialist, which is a different astronaut classification.
>
>    Case of the arthritic astronaut -- Another aging astronaut reportedly 
>developed an arthritic shoulder prior to his flight. The astronaut had 
>"difficulty raising his right arm above shoulder level," a crewmate 
>reported to me.
>
>    "This matter was never brought up in any briefings or meetings that I 
>recall," the crewmate continued.  "[He] flew with distinction, and his 
>experience and expertise contributed significantly to the successful 
>mission." Back on Earth, the astronaut had the shoulder replaced with a 
>mechanical joint, with good results. Whether the shoulder would have proven 
>a barrier to successfully evacuating the shuttle in an emergency was 
>apparently an issue that NASA never tackled.
>
>    A shuttle astronaut (and physician) pointed out that crew surgeons have 
>brought about medical "saves," in which disputes were resolved in favor of 
>some crew members through successful treatments and other countermeasures 
>before flight. One veteran astronaut told me that in the year leading up to 
>launch of a science mission for which he had been on the "support crew," he 
>was twice notified he might have to step in and fly in the place of a crew 
>member who was struggling with a potentially disqualifying medical 
>condition.
>
>    "In both cases, the problems were actively addressed and resolved," he 
>reported. No medical issues arose during flight.
>
>    Another pilot astronaut gave a similarly positive review for NASA's 
>medical team. "My experiences with flight medicine were all very positive," 
>he said in an e-mail, "and in fact I always felt that they were very 
>proactive in doing everything possible to work through any medical issues 
>to make certain crew members got fair opportunities."
>
>    Bending to the breaking point -- But sometimes, yet another veteran 
>astronaut told me, the bending of the rules got to the breaking point.
>
>    "There was one instance of a shuttle commander with a 
>flight-disqualifying medical episode that the flight surgeons 'nursed 
>along' so that he could make one last flight and not cause the agency any 
>'embarrassment'" he said in an e-mail. "I have names, etc., but really 
>cannot release them."
>
>    The independent panel behind last month's report likely heard these 
>sorts of stories, and more. The report referred to problems with NASA's 
>medical screening process - and concluded, as my own informal survey 
>suggested, that such problems had not received adequate attention for a 
>very, very long time.
>
>    "Many of the cultural and structural issues identified as problematic 
>have existed for many years," the report noted. "The current medical and 
>operational leadership at NASA inherited most of the cultural and 
>structural issues identified in this report, [and] the issues are so 
>ingrained and longstanding that it will take senior leadership action to 
>remediate them."
>
>    Now that the issues have reached the attention of top NASA leadership - 
>and the attention of Congress and the public as well - that remediation 
>seems assured. This year's painful embarrassments for NASA may prove to be 
>a blessing in disguise, balanced against potential future human failures in 
>space that now might, just might, be avoided.
>_______________________________________________
>FPSPACE mailing list
>FPSPACE at friends-partners.org
>http://www.friends-partners.org/mailman/listinfo/fpspace

_________________________________________________________________
Puzzles, trivia teasers, word scrambles and more. Play for your chance to 
win! http://club.live.com/home.aspx?icid=CLUB_hotmailtextlink