There’s an interesting article about how a PowerPoint presentation led to the death of 7 people. The article is here.
Basically, on January 16th 2003, NASA Mission STS-107 launched the Columbia shuttle. During launch, a piece of foam broke off and collided with the underside of the left wing, damaging a protective tile. During re-entry, this damage caused the wing to overheat, and in turn, the shuttle disintegrated, killing the 7 crew members.
NASA knew about the foam that broke off, consulted with Boeing, and concluded that it wasn’t a problem. A subsequent investigation found that NASA based that decision on the following slide.
This slide is packed with words, has a bad title, too many levels of bullets, etc. And the most important part, IMHO, is the last bullet.
“Volume of ramp is 1920 cu in vs 3 cu in for test.”
What does that mean? The foam piece (called “ramp”) that broke off was 640 times bigger than the piece that they tested. In other words, the test doesn’t reflect the situation that they were faced with, making all conclusions based on it, useless.
Think about that the next time that you make a presentation.
Phlogtastic 