Comments on: NASA Security Badge Holder May Pose a Safety Hazard http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/08/nasa_security_badge.html Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:31:30 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Al B. Shure http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/08/nasa_security_badge.html/comment-page-1#comment-3593 Al B. Shure Sat, 16 May 2009 19:41:13 +0000 http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/?p=1904#comment-3593 The badge holder purchased is not a safety or any kind of a hazard to any one or anything. Alarmists at Kennedy Space Center just don't like the badge holder and abused the equipment and screamed "safety, safety." Just look at the video of how the Kennedy safety people forced the appartus to fail. When you abuse it, most equipment will fail. What did the safety people in the agency expect? Drive a car too fast, reving the engine past its tolerances, and it will fail. Same holds true for a plane or a train. We've all seen video of bleechers failing at sporting events. Yet we don't see the safety folks at Kennedy (or headquarters) screaming that the stands where the astronaut's family sit to watch the shuttle launches are unsafe - do we? Why? There is video proof that they fail and can cause bodily harm if not death. Yet the safety people are silent. When working in a clean room environment or on a flight line, the badge holder, nor any other loose equipment should be dangling from some one's neck. So the possibility of it snagging on hardware reflects poor procedures in place from those who set policies and safety standards for work performed in such environments. Any badge holder or lanyard has the capability of snagging on equipment. So the badge holders are not a safety issue in such environments. The safety people in NASA are the "Chicken-Little's" of the agency. If they were in charge when Gemini, Mercury and Apollo were considered, the United States would have never flown in space. They are the reason that the USA will remain third rate in space exploration. Safety folks need to get a grip and wake up to the real world! The badge holder purchased is not a safety or any kind of a hazard to any one or anything. Alarmists at Kennedy Space Center just don’t like the badge holder and abused the equipment and screamed “safety, safety.” Just look at the video of how the Kennedy safety people forced the appartus to fail. When you abuse it, most equipment will fail. What did the safety people in the agency expect? Drive a car too fast, reving the engine past its tolerances, and it will fail. Same holds true for a plane or a train. We’ve all seen video of bleechers failing at sporting events. Yet we don’t see the safety folks at Kennedy (or headquarters) screaming that the stands where the astronaut’s family sit to watch the shuttle launches are unsafe – do we? Why? There is video proof that they fail and can cause bodily harm if not death. Yet the safety people are silent.

When working in a clean room environment or on a flight line, the badge holder, nor any other loose equipment should be dangling from some one’s neck. So the possibility of it snagging on hardware reflects poor procedures in place from those who set policies and safety standards for work performed in such environments. Any badge holder or lanyard has the capability of snagging on equipment. So the badge holders are not a safety issue in such environments.

The safety people in NASA are the “Chicken-Little’s” of the agency. If they were in charge when Gemini, Mercury and Apollo were considered, the United States would have never flown in space. They are the reason that the USA will remain third rate in space exploration.

Safety folks need to get a grip and wake up to the real world!

]]> By: Visitor http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2008/08/nasa_security_badge.html/comment-page-1#comment-1853 Visitor Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:58:20 +0000 http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/?p=1904#comment-1853 The story was first reported on NASAWatch and SpaceRef see http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28935 The story was first reported on NASAWatch and SpaceRef see http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28935

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