The final sentence from Feynman's report: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." For nature cannot be fooled. If only more would take that simple lesson to heart.
Yes, but I am a bit at a loss on this one, of course we want to show we found the problem, trust us, and we want to move on and fly again ASAP.... Ok fine, but I think I would feel more secure if those responsable were removed from their particular positions, they may have learned and you may keep them but not where they could endanger lives again... I really don't know what to think but I feel like we've heard this ''we don't want to blame anyone'' rather often these last few years, it could be me... but I don't want to lose my job so... Ha ha.
I think he was talking in more of a general sense. What I got from it is that there's no use in prioritizing to *blame* NASA as an organization, rather than make it a better one. In terms of individuals, it is very difficult to assign blame in the hierarchy of miscommunication he suspects the NASA was in. Also I am quite the hippie when it comes to punishments, so his statement resonated with me! :D (Though of course if there was one particularly faulty person, he should get demoted. But what I got from the speech is that NASA in general was acting foolish.)
Hi, from what I know they were all late, they all knew maybe something would go wrong but they chose to protect their jobs rather than people's lives so if they were all involved, you talk, you die, and a couple did but like 9/11, Iraq, the bank bailouts, no one was blamed and the people paid the bill so yes, NASA is important but if it's rotten, saying nothing is allowing corruption and could put more lives at risk so while I was writing I made my mind: the secrecy is over it's time for a cleanup from top to bottom and if my best friend or yours gets fired, so be it, corruption is illegal AND very expensive. Good, now where do we start? Ha ha...
+Roses and Songs Well, it's not like NASA _wanted_ the shuttle to be destroyed. I think it's important to consider intentions in these situations, and that's probably the reason Feynman wanted to move past the question of blaming specific people. Also, the important thing was to _fix_ the systemic problems at NASA, not dwell on who to throw under the bus. Besides, the person who was primarily responsible for pressuring Thiokol into approving the launch (Lawrence Mulloy) was forced into early retirement by NASA shortly after _Challenger_ was lost and about 3 years before he would've qualified for full retirement benefits. It may not sound "harsh" enough for some people, but Mulloy's otherwise excellent record and multi-decade career ended in complete shame so there _were_ consequences for his actions. Unfortunately, the gist of Feynman's work on the Rogers Commission (i.e. the Space Shuttle will _always_ be an experimental craft so you need to listen to your engineers' concerns and *NOT* simply assume everything will be OK just because _so far_ nothing bad has happened) was all but ignored by NASA resulting in the loss of _Columbia_ 17 years later.
What a strange, bygone era, when science and scientists featured on the news. We need far more science journalism - it's the only topic that ever really begets good news!
The space program wasn't perceived as partisan then. It was American. And also, as NDT usually argues, it made people dream about the future. Today, most of the science that hits the news has a party line attached to it, one way or the other. The closest analogue I can think of today for public enthusiasm in the human project of science, with no party divide, is SpaceX. I think it's really interesting that space is once again the frontier of human advancement that captures that sentiment. Perhaps Tesla, by mere association with Elon Musk's vision of the future that also permeates SpaceX, will be able to gain a similar foothold for science in public perception, but in the currently-partisan area of climate change.
Also, you would not be able to put modern physics on TV today. No layman would have a chance of understanding it. Just look how scared idiots got about LHC.
I'm always struck at Feynman's genius for finding apt analogies (where possible) to communicate complex phenomena. His one about the child who repeatedly runs into the street without looking is the perfect sort of elaboration to use in order to get across NASA's negligence in responding to a known engineering defect. 17 years later, the similarly glaring fact that chunks of ice and insulation were pummeling the shuttles during lift-off turned out to be the exact same kind of high-probability gamble he was warning NASA about here. "It can't be a problem if nothing really bad happened before." The child, as it turned out, never was fully educated.
This guy is an un-utterable genuis. Very few people who have a brain that size can explain things so well to a layman, that's why he gets the affection he deserves.
@@davidnewman8629 Read more about him and it becomes clear....I think he's still the only man/person to see a nuclear blast with his own eyes, Google it buddy!....
more than a genius. One of my favorite quote about feybmen is: There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician. -Hans Bethe
Every office culture I have worked in, and there have been quite a few, would fit Feynman's analysis of not wanting to hear bad news. One of the greatest minds of the 20th Century.
I remember all of the times Richard Feynman's name came up during this investigation.He was without a doubt the correct man for the job and at one time he had told Washington he didn't want to be on the committee.A friend of his (maybe a family member) told him that he should do it because if anything was going to be missed then he was the very man with his unique point of view that would catch it.A man with a great mind that I got to meet during the Apollo days.
+Eddie Hayes Yes, there is another interview where he says this was his wife. And his second book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" also describes his wife telling him that. That is a good book and covers the rogers commission in detail. Along with the Engineers he met who pointed him in the right direction. All the NASA engineers new exactly what was wrong. But all had jobs and did not want to rock the boat. So they fed Feynman all that was wrong. Its a fascinating story.
There's a fascinating story about how an engineer showed him something about some O-ring seals in his car, that gave Feynman the idea that they were perhaps the cause of the accident. Of course Feynman was no fool, he realized that he was essentially passed on information that the engineers already knew. What he, apparently, never realized that the original source was Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and Feynman's own colleague on the commission.
My God, what is this interview? The reporters spent their time sharing facts as best they could, sharing responses from both sides. Most of the time was spent interviewing one of the top people actually involved, who spent time explaining what he believes to be true but nuancing his statements. No celebrity tweets. No reporters giving their own opinions, no interviews with random people on the street... Even in this segment a healthy amount of criticism is at its place. But holy shit, you actually get a segment worth making up your own mind about rather than Nicki Minaj telling you what to think about space travel or diverting the issue to how door seals are discriminatory or whatnot.
Hang on...what you are trying to do is measure the modern media with Jim Lehrer. This isn't a fair fight. Jim was the purest form of journalist with the highest level of integrity and hunger for all of the facts regardless of outcome. He just wanted truth. A lot of people will forget he was a conservative due to his nature of allowing the interviewee to deliver the story without a heavy slant toward his beliefs or am editorial pulpit. I miss seeing him leading 'News Hour' and I'm an Australian who was never directly affected by the news his show presented. Still, I relished the hours of essays, deep dives and casual intellectual conversations Jim brought into my lounge room.
Every time I watch or listen to Richard Feynman, I get this childlike wonder and happiness. But, each time, when the recording is over, I get really really sad to think that this great person is not alive anymore :(
Exactly how I feel...I make a point of showing videos of him to my high school students....particularly his "Fun to Imagine" video (available on RU-vid)
@@kashu7691 Agreed and while it's sad that he's gone I would add that I'm just glad that he lived and now his words and lectures are preserved for future generations. People might die but good ideas live on
He lives on in those who take his words to heart - those who keep their childlike wonder and happiness alive, no matter what life and the system throws.
I think the situation is somewhat more complex and reflects problems in societal level than just in the management of individual companies in the space industry. Profitability of a company is often highly dependent on being able meet deadlines, which often forces management to take risks. If a manager has to choose between career advancement linked to some risk and possible bankruptcy, the choice is often clear and the risk is hidden with PR. Feynman is a creature of the academic world, where problems with deadlines and PR certainly exist but do not play such a central role. Note that what we are talking about is a multi-billion dollar project with probably hundreds of subcontractors. If you want to get completely different view of what happened, read Judson Lovingoods review of Challenger Disaster movie in the IMDB.
Everybody now working in commercial-spaceflight projects should see this video...Dr. Feynman has left a warning for all time here (I say that as the son of a toolmaker who worked on both the Apollo and Space Shuttle Orbiter vehicle-assembly projects). His basic analysis of the physics behind the Challenger disaster, makes appallingly clear some VERY senior managers' abdications of responsibility....
But the child didn't learn, and did the same thing again in 2003. They just didn't fix a longterm issue with foam detaching from the ex tank. It was ok before...we've got away with it before, seemed to be the attitude again. Unfortunate they hung onto the shuttle another 8yrs. Lucky no further disasters on NASA's rap sheet. 17yrs from Challenger to Columbia. Now 17yrs on from Columbia. Is NASA's attitude gonna catch them out again??
There is no doubt he was brilliant. And to a rare degree. But there is more to it than that. There's a quote from Einstein to the effect that people think physics is about intelect. But that they are wrong, it is about character. Einstein meant honesty and integrity in context. Feynman was the kind of person who would follow the data and try extremely hard not to let himself be fooled by some elegant theory or clever argument. Always he would look for evidence, evidence, more evidence. And he would search the evidence for something that might be fooling him. And he didn't stop searching the evidence just because he got to a place that agreed with his current pet hypothesis. He wanted to extract the best possible picture of the truth. He wanted to test it from every possible angle and by every possible method. That, combined with his brilliance, was a magnificent thing.
Oh man! What happened to our society where dialogue and intelligence like this has become so rare. Intelligent questions, qualified guests allowed to answer in full with little interruption and no talking over one another.
Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman were humanitarians more than scientists. Learning about physical reality isn’t hard. Standing up to criminals in suits who are utterly greedy and insane is much more important if you want to have a home to live peaceful in…..
Putting the engineers into the role of the mother and NASA management in the role of the child in Feynman's analogy is so cutting but easy to miss if you're not paying attention.
It could easily go the other way, with the children being the engineers -- smart kids who came up with ideas -- and the mothers (management) rejecting them for their own reasons that the children wouldn't understand.
@@paulgibby6932 Sorry; but not really ! The engineers were dealing in facts, & numbers; while the management could only deal in slogans, & emotion. No matter how much the the management chanted the slogans; you still can't get a gallon to fit in a pint pot !
@@fishfoodie I think engineers are often deployed by mangers on problems that the deployers have no intention of actually solving. They can get all the right answers but there is no intention of acting on the results. e.g. global warming... for other examples, some wise person help me please.
Man, his communication skills and human understanding are on another level completely. We desperately need people like him now but sadly our world is more likely to smother likes of him and favor something entirely different kind of style. I hope it's a phase and people like Feynman can flourish again.
The rarest kind of genius - both left and right brain - hugely gifted. Not many mathematical geniuses are also first class communicators and educators, but he was. He was also an artist, a poet, a free spirit with a wonderful sense of humour and a warm heart. Truly one of a kind. RIP. ♥
the man was admittedly mysognistic and openly treated women as disposable garbage if they denied his repeated advances. He was publicly proud of that treatment of women. He was domestically abusive and cheated on his wife. There is absolutely no denying his contribution to the world and field of science. Beyond you and I can ever fully understand. But he didn't contribute much in the way of "being warm hearted"
Like working on physics in a strip bar :-) I'm reading "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman" at the moment. I've found a new hero and example. Mr. Feynman is amazing!
If you get a chance, check out the movie "The Challenger", starring William Hurt (who just died this very day), playing Feynman as he investigates the disaster. Wonderful movie - Hurt captures Feynman's scientific tenacity and personal vulnerability.
Feynman describes in detail most corporate bodies. Once they have a raison d'etre they do not want any ripples in the pond. Every organisation needs someone to not only point out the ripples but to ensure top management take on board the reasons for their being there and do something. He was right about the rubber seals. RIP Richard Feynman. PS his accent is endearing, a similarity to Cockney for its directness and natural ease of finding a mind picture to describe something otherwise complex in verbal argument.
I love how he's actually taking the time to carefully explain the issue through use of metaphor to the reporter and to the people. Most scientists would give their opinion, and the people are just supposed to accept it, without question. He respects the intelligence of all listeners. By explaining, he opens up understanding of the issue, so that a greater many can have a think. What a man, Richard Feynman - the great explainer.
I have full respect of Richard Feynman ! Thank you for showing us what it's like to stand up for the truth even you have so much pressure from the authorities. Respect.
Why compare a brilliant physicist to a rockstar? The title of a physicist should hold its own weight without having to be compared to an infamous musician
The one video from Richard that I have not yet seen.Thanks... Feynman could talk to me for 1000 years straight and I would not be bored for a second.The seekers that search for something closer to the truth are some of the greatest humans ever. I wonder if the one quote from William P. Rogers below is true? But first Richard Feynman's final thought on the Roger's Commission Report. For a successful technology reality must take precedents over public relations for nature cannot be fooled. -Richard Feynman . Feynman is becoming a real pain in the ass. -William P. Rogers, during a break in a hearing of the Rogers Commission on the space shuttle Challenger accident, 11 February 1986. PS - I wish that Richard could have been part of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Mulla Nasrudin "PS - I wish that Richard could have been part of the 9/11 Commission Report." Fuck. Who you kiddin. They didn't want to do the report in the first place, why would you have one of the best minds (not smartest, not most intelligent, but a unique and strong combination of all factors) ever on the face of the earth looking at it? A Feynman-type would have either given answers that certain people didn't want given, or he would have been killed.
+Bernadette Kerr: To clarify my point "They (Bush admin) didn't want to do the report to begin with, so why would they ask the likes of Feynman to look at it?" IOW the Bush admin wanted to push a very specific agenda and his 'report' wouldn't have supported it at all. Feynman et.al. and his kind would have laughed the entire preposterous retconned scenario off the table.
+Bernadette Kerr What do you mean. It is well established that an extremist group took control of Afghanistan and launched the 9/11 attacks soon after the collapse of their Soviet Government that followed the dissolution of the USSR.
he sure does make complex and important physics concepts relatable with his nearly omniscient comprehension of the way everything in the world is related., but i read a few of the dozens of feynman books written in the 80s and 90s and some describe him as anything but humble. numerous reports of him, within minutes, telling anybody he was introduced to that he was a nobel prize winner.
@@TotallyOther Feynman's Caltech colleague (and fellow Nobel Prize-winner) Murray Gell-Mann found him irritating, the way he put so much time & energy into creating anecdotes about himself. And just generally being an asshole, like refusing to wash his hands after using the urinal and just before going to eat lunch at the Caltech cafeteria because it was illogical.
@@mt_gox fits with other stories i read about him. i read part of a biographical book on him and several people said they would informally bet on how many minutes passed between him meeting someone and the moment he mentioned his nobel prize.
Every time I watch this man I get the idea how information becomes knowledge... And how knowledge becomes wisdom....... The epitome of wisdom.... Love from India.... Mr Feynman......
I’m living in fear that one day I will watch all the videos with Feynman.... but still knowing that I just can’t help my self and I’m still looking for the one which I haven’t seen.. What a human being he was .
@@vincentanguoni8938 yes I have seen that one ... it’s really getting harder and harder to find one which I haven’t seen ... and by the way I’m planning to visit that place whenever this pandemic will finally end .. and thanks for suggestion!
Have you seen a video where he openly suspect that he was "steered" in very subtle ways in that inquiries by people "that are smarter than me" ? I have that recollection but couldn't find it again
I'm a fan of Feynman as well , just discovered a biography love story called infinity and beyond which is nice movie about he and his wife in the early days............never knew about it till a couple of days ago !!!!......also a song about Feynman "what would Feynman do" by the Duelists......its on you tube as well............................Erik
What he describes from 3:10 onwards is now known as "Normalization of Deviance". I''m afraid neither NASA or Boeing have learned from that - both the Columbia disaster (2003) and the two 737-Max crashes due to the MCAS fiasco (2018/19) can be traced directly back to that engineering/management attitude.
depressing, isn't it, to go through the Challenger disaster and realize that basically, Columbia was the exact same thing: a problem they had witnessed and documented on multiple Space Shuttle flights but b/c it never caused a disaster, they became complacent. And again there was one stunning demonstration, where they fired a piece of foam about the size that broke off at the same relative speed at heat shield tiles, and were shocked that it left a hole in them. A literal smoking gun. MCAS is in some ways worse -- Boeing actively deceived government regulators and hid information from pilots and airlines. They never disclosed how they made MCAS four times more powerful over the course of development or that it would repeatedly engage -- and as far as I know they have never explained the latter phenomenon. And Boeing killed hundreds more people than NASA.
@@siddharthisai2626 Formulas model and help support explanations but do not prove things. Finding inconsistencies in formulae can help disprove, but empirical evidence is needed to prove theories.
richard feynman relegated to the appendix. such is our government and the military industrial system. wiping history is their game and their aim. other than selling shitloads of weapons, etc. etc. thank you so much for posting this important video.
In his book, he tells that he felt like he was used by the commision. They already knew the answers, but wanted someone like him, who was not political, to break the news to the public.
I mean even on his book surely you are joking mr feynman, he tells about some of his peers told hime media was a whore, and then he said the he reassured that later on on his life
Such a respectful and dignified man. Now I know why he is a nobel prize winner. Not only for his contribution to science but also a reflection of his character too.
I've listened to him since he was on BBC Horizon in the 70's and as a result I have always been good at fixing things. You see/consider/understand things that others do not
Feynman shows a high level of commitment and intuition. I wonder if his sister who was a PhD working for NASA suggested to have him help on the shuttle disaster. She gave a great speech at Caltech you can find on youtube about 2016 where she talked about her brother. I was amazed how young and vibrant she sounded near the age of 90.
Fyneman pretty much summed up the NASA culture. Their 'culture' is to blame, management culture. Change the culture and u change the outcome. Glad he stuck by his guns and didn't give in to chairman Rogers on his report. He said what needed to be said and heard. That's why they brought him on board with the commission, in the first place. A outside source who would have an unbiased, professional opinion. He didn't want to be on the commission to begin with. He was talked, rather begged, to come and sit on the commission board. And they got what they asked for. An unbiased, professional opinion. And from a Nobel peace prize winner physicist
Among everything else that he was, he was also quite the master of analogies... In other words, he had an uncanny ability to explain things simply-- and when he couldn't do that, he would at least be able to give you an idea _why_ he couldn't.
I'd go with Feynman's reasoning in regard to the shuttle explosion,simply because of he way he tried his best to not hide behind complex language knowable only to other physicists, etc. It's not THAT difficult to explain, generally speaking, although extremely difficult for you and I to understand when out comes the huge rolling blackboard and the endless equations, which, at that level, are necessary for "understanding" for the physicist or scientist.
This man was so good at asking tough questions, at Los Alamos, Niels Bohr and his son went directly to a then VERY young scientist, Richard Feynman, BECAUSE he was not afraid to say no. Niels son told Richard that the reason they came to him with their ideas, was because Niels noticed that everyone else was too afraid to tell him his ideas were dumb, because hr hsd great stature. But not Richard. So he told his son, that young kid in the back of my last lecture, i want him. Hes the only one who questioned my ideas. We need to talk to him before we go forward.
Reading the reporting after the Challenger disaster I'll never forget one summation -- it may have been in the New York Times. One article suggested that when NASA was managing the Apollo moonshot in the 1960s its attitude was "Prove to me it's safe to go." By the 1980s its attitude had done a 180 and became "Prove to me it *isn't* safe to go." It was a fatal cultural change.
The only thing that could impact public confidence more than the explosion of the shuttle live in front of the largest audience every to witness a launch was a public effort by the administration to "tone down" and surpress the report examining how the explosion could have happened. Way to go, commission - you played yourself.
Imagine what this man would be saying now about what and why things are happening. Problem is he would be right and insightful but half the population would not listen and would try and call him a fraud.
Definitely a person who is opposite of bullshit, who we need a lot as humanity.. I get angry a lot when I think about it, but then I remember people like him exists and I get calm :)
Science follows Mother Nature....not PR and fantasy. Feynman will not be fooled. Just great video. Hope you all have seen the quite good Challenger Disaster movie...very good portrayal of the process and the man.
+borg22222 Even though the story of the Challenger investigation is fascinating, I personally didn't like the portrayal of Feynman by William Hurt. He somehow seemed smug and IMO wasn't able to convey Feynman's deep appreciation and fascination with nature.
I agree - the Film was brilliant, dramatized i know, but portrayed Feynman well. Brought me to these RU-vid Vids, and I haven't changed my mind. William Hurt portrayed Feynman very well indeed.
Feynman's analogy of the child and parent is perfect. What he should have pointed out is: In this case management is the child and the engineers are the parent [he did] - but THAT is the problem - how can the engineers take a parental role when management is the child - management has control as the child here but should have been the parent.
Yep. And he explained things so well in a way we could all understand it. He would attack a problem starting with the most obvious and simple cause first.
I'm surprised you didn't say the Reagan administration blew up the shuttle over the control of oil. Or something else id|otic Reagan haters would say. Look Poindexter, ALL administrations don't want to hear the truth. Across all political lines. The Carter admin and the hostages. His admin didn't want to hear the cold hard truth that it would happen. The Johnson admin, didn't want to hear what really happened to Kennedy. The obama admin didn't want to hear about the unrest in the Middle East, and said Benghazi was "just a bump in the road." So know it off with your hatred.
