<story><title>An Accident at SpaceX</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/10/18/2022/space-x-technician-accident</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>happyopossum</author><text>The idea that every accident can be prevented by delight is a ridiculous and utopian trope, and to demonize an entire corporate culture and group of 12k employees without any background information is the height of hubris.&lt;p&gt;Nobody would ever design a ladder that cannot be climbed without a safety harness being properly worn, but many people are injured or killed in ladder accidents at workplaces every year. In your world that&amp;#x27;s a design failure, but out here in reality it&amp;#x27;s often carelessness or sheer bad luck.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>The key question that everyone, especially SpaceX, should be asking is why was it even possible to run the test while Cabada was in an unsafe place?&lt;p&gt;System and safety design- a topic that a rocketry company should be deeply familiar with- should lead us to solutions where bad things are exceedingly impossible. Where you have to be &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; to cause an accident for it to happen. This should extend beyond the product being built itself, to the factory, to the R&amp;amp;D, to every part of the organization where danger exists.&lt;p&gt;And when failure occurs, it behooves you to shout from the rooftop that you messed up, and show the world how you&amp;#x27;re making changes so it can&amp;#x27;t happen again. Being quiet about the failure of your system makes it sound a lot like you aren&amp;#x27;t planning to make any changes to it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bad culture to start in a rocketry company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>knome</author><text>&amp;gt;but out here in reality&lt;p&gt;This, I expect, is exactly the kind of bad cultural attitude that @mabbo was referring to. You&amp;#x27;re advocating for accidents as being an unavoidable cost of business while preemptively hand-waving them as being the fault of careless employees or fate.&lt;p&gt;As @P5fRxh5kUvp2th points out, there are established industry safety measures to avoid exactly these kinds of accidents when working around dangerous machinery, in the lockout&amp;#x2F;tagout system.&lt;p&gt;If tests are locked out while employees are tagged into an area, you can&amp;#x27;t accidentally smack them into a coma with an over-pressurized part blowing out. By requiring tag ins to access dangerous areas, you don&amp;#x27;t have to have employees remember someone is out there, or that a test is coming, or worry about anyone getting confused on either front.&lt;p&gt;Blaming the employee for being where they shouldn&amp;#x27;t be or the other for running tests when someone was nearby is a cop out. It shouldn&amp;#x27;t even be possible for it to happen at all.&lt;p&gt;Design your systems and processes to expect that humans are fallible.</text></comment>
<story><title>An Accident at SpaceX</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/10/18/2022/space-x-technician-accident</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>happyopossum</author><text>The idea that every accident can be prevented by delight is a ridiculous and utopian trope, and to demonize an entire corporate culture and group of 12k employees without any background information is the height of hubris.&lt;p&gt;Nobody would ever design a ladder that cannot be climbed without a safety harness being properly worn, but many people are injured or killed in ladder accidents at workplaces every year. In your world that&amp;#x27;s a design failure, but out here in reality it&amp;#x27;s often carelessness or sheer bad luck.</text></item><item><author>mabbo</author><text>The key question that everyone, especially SpaceX, should be asking is why was it even possible to run the test while Cabada was in an unsafe place?&lt;p&gt;System and safety design- a topic that a rocketry company should be deeply familiar with- should lead us to solutions where bad things are exceedingly impossible. Where you have to be &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt; to cause an accident for it to happen. This should extend beyond the product being built itself, to the factory, to the R&amp;amp;D, to every part of the organization where danger exists.&lt;p&gt;And when failure occurs, it behooves you to shout from the rooftop that you messed up, and show the world how you&amp;#x27;re making changes so it can&amp;#x27;t happen again. Being quiet about the failure of your system makes it sound a lot like you aren&amp;#x27;t planning to make any changes to it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a bad culture to start in a rocketry company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>karlmdavis</author><text>To extend that line of argument a bit, what about a more professional tool&amp;#x2F;system, e.g. cherry pickers?&lt;p&gt;Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you to design and engineer cherry pickers such that the bucket can’t be moved unless a safety harness is attached?</text></comment>