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A comment on Poop and Soda Bottles Threaten Air Force Rocket Program, Investigators Say. Parent comment

Re:Poop and Soda Bottles Threaten Air Force Rocket Program, ... by totalZero on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @02:36PM (#16109115)
> Early in the morning (Friday, September 19), a two-man PTS investigation team entered the silo. Because their vapor detectors indicated an explosive atmosphere, the two were ordered to evacuate. The team was then ordered to reenter the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. Senior Airman David Livingston reentered the silo to carry out the order and shortly thereafter, at about 3:00 a.m., the hypergolic fuel exploded.

Livingston died as a result of that explosion.

This seems tragic to me. I can't believe someone would "order" him back into the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. First, starting a fan motor inside of an explosive environment can be dangerous. Second, how could someone have such disregard for another person's life, that they send him into a room full of explosive gas?

Perhaps the stakes seemed so high, they felt the only way to stop the warhead from scattering radiation in a resulting explosion was to exhaust the silo.

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Re:Poop and Soda Bottles Threaten Air Force Rocket Program, ... by dragonwriter on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:25PM (#16109666)
> This seems tragic to me. I can't believe someone would "order" him back into the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. First, starting a fan motor inside of an explosive environment can be dangerous. Second, how could someone have such disregard for another person's life, that they send him into a room full of explosive gas?

Ordering people to take potentially fatal risks to avoid greater harms is not merely recurrent within the military, it's fundamental to it.

That doesn't mean that there can't be room to debate whether a particular risk ordered was warranted, but one absolutely should not be shocked that a military superior ordered a subordinate to do something that involves a potentially fatal risk.

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Re:Poop and Soda Bottles Threaten Air Force Rocket Program, ... by gumby on Tuesday January 09, 2018 @03:17PM (#16109586)
> This seems tragic to me. I can't believe someone would "order" him back into the silo to turn on an exhaust fan. First, starting a fan motor inside of an explosive environment can be dangerous. Second, how could someone have such disregard for another person's life, that they send him into a room full of explosive gas?

This is the military: it’s sad but not out of scope to order someone to do something dangerous, or even likely fatal, in order to accomplish an objective. Consider “you stay here with this machine gun while the rest of us go back the way we came.”

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