In this episode and the next one we are going to do something unusual.  We will explore the adoption of sophisticated flight control automation and look for lessons that may apply to the adoption of AI-augmented systems.

To help us understand these lessons, we are fortunate to talk with Professor David Mindell of MIT.  He is the acclaimed author of numerous books in this area, notably "Digital Apollo - Human and Machine in Spaceflight."  In this book he examines both the design of the flight controls for the vehicles that conveyed astronauts to the moon in 1969 and beyond and how the people were trained to use them.

Dr. David Mindell is Professor of Aerospace Engineering and the History of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Professor Mindell has spent more than three decades researching the myriad relationships between people and machines and innovating to improve them.  He is interested in human and machine collaboration; navigation and autonomy for transportation and mobility; ultra-wideband systems; history of aviation and spaceflight; and entrepreneurship.

Mind The Gap: Episode 22: Human and Machine in Spaceflight

This is the second of two episodes with MIT Professor David Mindell.  In these conversations we are exploring the detailed realities of "human in the loop" systems.  In the first session we learned about the Apollo Program's lunar landing control system.  In this episode we are going to explore a contemporary human plus computer control system failure involving a US Navy warship.

We will be looking at a collision in the Singapore Strait in the pre-dawn darkness of August 21, 2017.  The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, determined that the causes of the collision between the destroyer USS John S McCain and the tanker Alnic MC included a lack of effective operational oversight, insufficient training, and inadequate bridge operating procedures.  Also contributing to the accident were the McCain bridge team’s loss of situational awareness and failure to follow steering loss emergency procedures.

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