For pondering and critiques:

James Oberg: The real significance of the ISS thruster test failure

May 8 // The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/619/1

Last month’s failure of a test of a pair of rocket engines on the International Space Station has taught a whole series of unexpected lessons and has answered questions that the station’s operators hadn’t even intended to ask. Yet since nothing actually happened, a senior NASA spokesman said it was a “non-event”.

But that’s nowhere near the truth. The incident and repercussions of it further underscore that operating a space facility as complex and poorly documented as the ISS is an irremediably non-deterministic process. That is, anything can happen, at any time—and blindside everybody involved