[extropy-chat] re: a Titanic blooper

[Amara Graps]

BillK:
>I think it's called human error, Damien. There's a lot of it about.

>"Southwood says it isn't important who omitted the crucial
>instruction, because the responsibility runs wider than that: the
>error should have been picked up during checks. ESA is now mounting an
>investigation into why the mistake was not spotted."

>Anything that involves humans will have errors. That's why peer review
>and backup checks are so important.  If you are an expert, that just
>means you make a better class of mistake.


This looks to me like the several errors happened because there are
usually checks. I don't know yet the details of how ESA handles 
spacecraft command sequences (I'm just beginning to learn), but there 
are always checks.
If the instrument team is responsible for generating the high level
commands, and the same people or JPL/ESA-center/whoever is responsible
for generating the low level commands (there are several "low" levels), the
sequence is checked again at the low-level end. I think that the
instrument team should have checked this in addition to whichever department
at ESA (ESOC?) did the lower-level commands. So then, here, might be
a lot of human error. :-(

Amara



-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it