Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Could the Crew of Columbia Have Been Rescued?" video.

There was also the problem before anything even went wrong where management thought that the probability of losing a shuttle on any given missions has 1 in million. Engineering thought that the same probablity was 1 in hundred. This disparency was never reconciled in any way. As a result, management thought it was okay to accept "minor" risks when something went wrong. And after something went wrong, it was time for "Four Stage No Blame strategy".
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@gogogeedus Even carbon fiber would weight too much. Did you notice that even the main fuel tank was used without paint because the paint would weight too much. And SpaceX does the same thing with BFR. Surely carbon fiber anything would weight more than just paint.
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According to some documents, the risk of losing a shuttle during missing was estimated to be around 1 in million by the management and 1 in hundred by the engineers. Who do you think knows more about the actual risks? Still, the management make all the decisions totally alone.
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@sunderjirahim Each extra 1 kg did cost between $10000-$20000 depending on lauch. And every extra kilogram of spare parts would have reduced other cargo. How many spare parts would you take? Management decided zero.
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Do you mean this? Columbia's Last Flight The inside story of the investigation—and the catastrophe it laid bare The Atlantic
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The Shuttle was doomed from the start because it was too fat. There's no way to boost all those extra kilograms to orbit and back. SpaceX uses the most parts only some way to the orbit because it makes absolutely no sense to get all that extra weight up.
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@davidmoore8741 Considering that taking 1 kg of extra stuff with you with the shuttle did cost between $10000-20000 per kg, it's no wonder the management defaulted to "no".
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@dalecomer5951 Yeah, hindsight is always 20/20 but you have to consider the fact that there must have been a lot of random requests, every one costing somewhere between $100K to multiple millions in fuel costs alone, and for most of those the "no" had been the correct decision. The biggest problem with Shuttle flights was the huge discrepancy between management and engineering sections which was found during the investigation after the accident. If I remember correctly, the engineering department believed that probability of something going catastrophically wrong was around 1:100 for any given Shuttle flight. And the management estimated the same risk to be around one in million. No wonder the management made the decisions they made. It's pretty clear that there was lack of communication between the departments.
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