Re: Shuttle documentation

Subject: Re: Shuttle documentation
From: Sieczkowski Gina <Sieczkowski_Gina -at- EMS -dot- PRC -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 16:33:52 -0400

> LaVonna F. Funkhouser WROTE:
>
SNIP>Comment: As my husband and I listened to this, we thought
> these were terribly confusing instructions. I wondered
> if the documentation was very poorly written. Why was
> an important procedure starting on Step 6? Why did the
> procedure include going back two pages in the middle of
> the procedure?
>
> This was a great example of documentation in use, live,
> during a major event, and to me it put a negative spot light
> on the procedure writers.
>
> Does anyone here have a guess as to why it was written
> this way?<SNIP
>
A former aviator who works with me explained the possible situation as
follows...

"Out of context, this may seem like a valid problem. However, it may
not be poor documentation. It is entirely possible that, at the time,
the crew was in a situation that required a little flexibility,
something unforeseen in the sequence of events. In my past life flying
jets, we were always doing practice with emergency procedures in the
flight simulators. Often times, the instructor at the console would
give you multiple emergencies, each with its own checklist of actions to
perform. However, when you combined something like a hydraulic failure
with a partial electrical failure, you can get yourself in deeper
trouble by following the hydralic failure procedures by the book, then
going to the electrical failure steps. You end up with fingers
bookmarking different pages of procedures and you have to be familiar
enough with the aircraft systems that you know what effect flipping one
switch will have on other systems. Something like the Shuttle is so
incredibly complex that the crew is not going to be able to know the
effect of absolutely every switch toggle based on possible other system
malfunctions. Thats what the folks in Houston get paid to do...know
their portion of the Shuttle cold and be able to figure out impacts of
different actions taken by the crew. Though it appears to us on the
ground that everything is going smoothly, there are decisions constantly
being made based on actual system performance. My guess is, something
transparent to us on the ground, and maybe even the crew, was going on
with the result that the ground people had to relay a seemingly
confusing set of instructions to the crew who were performing in a
situation that they have never encountered in their training. Execution
of the procedures, even if they seem a bit screwy, are what the crew
gets paid to do."

==========================
Gina Sieczkowski
sieczkowski_gina -at- prc -dot- com
PRC, Training and Documentation
610-260-4276
===========================

> LaVonna
>
> PS: My quotes may not be exact, but they give the general
> idea of the situation. Feel free to correct me if you also heard the
> broadcast.
>
>
> LaVonna F. Funkhouser lffunkhouser -at- halnet -dot- com
> COREComm Webmaster webmaster -at- corecomm -dot- com
>
> http://www.corecomm.com/corecomm/
>
> ~~
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