Orion space program

Secrets of Orion

There are secrets and then there are secrets. Some of them are known. Like hearing in November 2015 that more emails were discovered about Hillary Clinton's email server filled with classified emails. Some, however, are hushed up much better. This is one of those stories.

Working on the Orion program was fun. Meeting people that were building the future spacecraft to go to the asteroid belt was intense. The program continued to have problems both politically and technically. The technical issue was a female engineer whose quality inspection of safety to the parachute system cost an additional fifty-five million dollars to show that the mathematics of her probability would never come true.

On one of the many teleconference that I had to listen into the inspector started yelling and screaming that math does not prove anything.

Myself, I was curious enough to open the document which was a probability statement. The charges to fire the parachute had to malfunction than the door would have to hit the parachute line not once but eight times. The end summary was a one in 32 million chance that all eight charges would goof at once hitting the eight lines attaching the parachute causing a fatality. The math was simple enough for me to understand. So I interrupted the teleconference being only an analyst person new and tired of hearing a woman screaming about a probability. My question was pretty simple. Which part of the math statement in the equation did she not agree with. Silence on the phone. She did not reply. Her comment after a time was to inquire who asked the question and what right did I have to request it. I responded who I was and silence. Someone was laughing; I think they, though they were on mute. The woman just was silent. The meeting continued in a different direction.

Since I had to present on my information at the end of the meeting, I was quick and precession on detail on my topic. The meeting ended, and I stayed online to finish off the minutes. I had not cut off the conference call when I heard two of the NASA team members talk.

“Anyone on?” a voice said over the phone. I tried to get my mute button off, but the headset and paperwork on my desk got in my way. The tone - laughter "Well that was an unexpected meeting," said a person. "Yes, I thought (name of the woman) was going to explode," said the other. "Who is Clinton?" I was not sure, which asked the question. "He took over for Shirley." "Well, he is trying to do his job and keep the program on schedule."

"Yes, I wonder if no one has told him we are punting the program until 2021." "What? Why?" "Unofficially technical problems. The whole program is going to be oil canned for two or three years. After that it will be brought back. By that time, the government will announce that they have been contacted by aliens."

This conversation took place so fast that by the time I got the mute button off that was what I had heard. "Forgive, me," I said with that the conference call talker's hung up. I finished my notes from the meeting and sent them out and checked out.