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Comment by yummybear | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what work environment exists, that would cause a worker to hide their mistakes and endanger the crew, instead of reporting it. And how many more mistakes go unreported?

I hope russia addresses the root issue, and not just fires the person responsible.

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According to Rockets and People by Chertok, they've solved that issue in late 70s by properly organizing the process and setting the right balance between personal responsibility and root cause analysis. However, in the last decade or so the industry deteriorated significantly, lost much of its institutional memory, and the problem reappeared due to low wages and clueless management.

Does the book analyze why that happened industry-wide? Clueless management can't be the root cause, because somebody had to hire those managers.

The book is a memoir of Boris Chertok, one of the leading soviet rocket and spacecraft designers, and was written in 90s. (can't recommend it highly enough, by the way) The rest is my own conclusion. It's actually quite hard to pinpoint a single cause for all russian space industry troubles, most of it goes far beyond a single industry boundary and boils down to the politics, lobbying games and lack of governmental interest in certain industries which are still 99% dependent on the government.

I remember when the Mir had a fire on board. They didn't tell the US crew on board until it was obvious I seem to recall (a while back now). Also, the ground crew reported all was fine, it was only when the astronauts communicated back that it was uncovered. This sort of thing has happened before and will happen again, sadly.

Even in the most safety-conscious and blame-free work environment, I'm not sure you can entirely remove the desire for skilled professionals to cover up expensive errors. It's just a natural human instinct to want to avoid being embarrassed in front of your peers, no matter how understanding they'll be about it.

One approach that sometimes works well is to allow for anonymous error reporting.

In Poland, we consider this THE Soviet Work Culture and everytime it is encountered, it is ridiculed. Unfortunately, it persists.

Related to that, currently reading the book "DRAGONFLY: NASA AND THE CRISIS ABOVE MIR", there was a fire event at the station and Russian space personals circulated in the media that it was just a 10-second fire.

$150/month salary and $50 fine for failures.

Thinly veiled Russia-hate? Its not like US engineers are immune to such ridiculous mistakes. Why make this a Russia thing?

Since the hole was in a Russian Soyuz capsule, it seems likely that Russia will react in some way. I don't think it's "Russia-hate" to hope that they'll take steps to prevent similar issues in the future.

.... because we’re talking about a mistake in a Russian capsule. When we talk about Challenger, then we can talk about the deficiencies in American management.

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