Inner Art of Airmanship Blog

Spaceman Mike Massimino

I just finished the great book Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Mike Massimino. (It came out earlier this month, hardcopy, kindle, iBooks.) It’s an easy engaging read, the personal story of his cool travels through colleges, companies, and on to two amazing Hubble rescue missions on the Space Shuttle. Best astronaut book I’ve read in a while.

Along the way, ‘Mass’ shares some of the secrets learnt getting a PhD from MIT, learning to be an astronaut, and actually fixing the Hubble telescope in high Earth orbit. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“The important thing is having a passion, something you love doing, and the greatest joy in the world is that you get to wake up every day and do it.”

“You can learn a lot by getting knocked down, and I got knocked down over and over again. And every time I got up and kept going. I know there were students in my class who were smarter than me, but I don’t know if there was anybody who worked harder than me.”

“If you work hard and get help from good friends, together you can overcome almost any challenge, no matter how great.”

“We practiced different aborts and failures and contingencies. Over and over and over again.”

“Seeing the Earth framed through the shuttle’s small windows versus seeing it from outside was like the difference between looking at fish in an aquarium versus scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.”

“We spent a lot of time talking about what might go wrong.”

Highly recommend you read the rest of the book to get insights into the real team spirit of NASA, the life of a modern spaceman, and a taste of the Right Stuff.

If an error is possible, someone will make it

By Dave English

“If an error is possible, someone will make it. The designer must assume that all possible errors will occur and design so as to minimize the chance of the error in the first place, or its effects once it gets made. Errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and, if possible, their effects should be reversible.”

Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things, 1988.

fire-button

Pilot error in many cases can also be described as design error. As pilots, not designers, we should be aware of cockpit actions that are NOT easy to detect, do NOT have minimal consequences, or are NOT reversible. Such things require our special attention.

In the airbus cockpit these kind of switches have red boxes around them. At my airline we have six ‘irreversible items’ that require positive confirmation from the other pilot before you flip the switch. The old advice of ‘if it’s red or dusty’ think carefully before flipping the switch is good here. After a bad landing, don’t confuse me saying ‘cheer up’ with ‘gear up’!