Friday, January 28, 2005

The Posting That Will Get Me Fired

Every journal needs the "this post lost me my job" entry.

I love this story.

The space race was at its height. The Americans had embarked on their two-man Gemini missions. The Russians saw this, saw the imminent three-man Apollo mission, and looked glumly at their aging Vostock space-craft. Their own three-man Soyuz was years away (and, in the event, would kill the first man to fly it.)

What to do, to trump the Americans again?

The engineers proceeded to take the old two-man Vostock capsule and strip it down, taking everything out of it and making just enough space to squeeze in 3 couches. The unlucky cosmonauts would be very cramped; there'd certainly be no floating around in orbit. There would also be no space to wear spacesuits, and no space for any kind of escape mechanism. So if anything went wrong, the crew wouldn't stand a chance.

But it would get three men in orbit before the Americans.

The Chief Designer consulted the engineer doing the modifications: "Is it going to work?" he asked
"Of course," replied the engineer, "It will be perfectly safe."
The Designer clapped the engineer on the back, "Thats good," he said, "Because you're going to fly in it..."

The mission was a complete success.

I like this story because I often wonder if my managers would be so keen on pressuring me to take shortcuts if they were patients in the clinical trials my systems run.

(This post is dedicated to the unfortunate occupants of the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger. Maybe if the managers who dismissed the safety fears of engineers were told they were to be bundled aboard, things might have turned out differently.)