Last Tab
Budget and schedule pressures occur on every project. Perhaps you can use NASA's experiences to reinforce your judgement that, this time, something's been missed. Do your best, even when your projects don't make the headlines.
NASA documents its failures in remarkable depth and you'll be a better engineer after studying the Mishap Investigation Board reports. The Genesis MIB Report is at www.nasa.gov/pdf/149414main_Genesis_MIB.pdf. The chronology of all Mars missions to date, with links to mission details, MIB Reports, and the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team Summary Report, is at: history.nasa.gov/marschro .htm. Searching for a mission name (or acronym) and "Mishap Investigation Board" or "Accident Investigation Board" at the main NASA site will also turn up other documents.
Just the title of NASA's Lessons Learned Information System database at llis.gsfc .nasa.gov tells you that your review process, whatever it might be, simply doesn't measure up. Read it and weep.
Read Dan Simmon's "Two Minutes Forty Five Seconds" as didactic techno-horror (it's collected in his Prayers to Broken Stones), rewatch Groundhog Day while considering how the townfolk saw Phil's increasingly bizarre behavior during each day of ten thousand years of do-overs, then read Ken Grimwood's Replay for an even scarier perspective.
DDJ
