Challenger Explosion

January 28, 1986, marks the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion. A day that will go down in history as a horrible tragedy for both NASA and America. Seven lives were lost that day, including the life of a high school teacher from New Hampshire. Former President Ronald Reagan was tasked with explaining this tragic event to the US people. Because of this, Reagan postponed the State of the Union Address and spoke about the Challenger Explosion instead. In his address to the nation about the explosion of the space shuttle, Challenger, President Ronald Reagan effectively commemorates the loss of the Challenger crew while also celebrating the crew’s achievements and encouraging further space travel by establishing pathos through his show of empathy, employing strong positive connotation, and alluding to the great explorer, Sir Francis Drake.

The challenger disaster called for certain changes in the NASA organizational structure, culture and operations. The Rogers Commission carried out a full investigation into the causes of the disaster and recommended to NASA certain actions to mitigate future incidents. First of all, there was a creation of a Solid Rocket Motor Joint redesign team who would also analyse the sealing system (NATA Technical Reports Centre, 2010).

Change is needed, and Wilson summarizes the problems of government agencies and offers alternative market solutions and propositions.

The audience’s probable attitude and personality with respect to the Board and its findings are all addressed in the document. The attitude that the audience has is one of grief and distrust in both NASA and the Government. This is made evident in the statement, “The loss of Columbia and her crew represents a turning point, calling for a renewed public policy debate and commitment regarding human space exploration.” By stating that there is a need for renewed public policy regarding NASA’s missions, it is clear that the public opinion about NASA has been tarnished by the accident. They also have the probable objections that the Board was biased and that they do not have any effective results that could help reduce the risk that another accident like this will ever occur. However, the likely attitude that the audiences will have toward the writer are that of hope for the future and America’s return to space. This is shown when the document states, “These recommendations reflect both the Boardʼs strong support for

Memos within a company serve several purposes. They may be used to report meeting agendas, policies, internal reports, or short proposals. Memos may also be used as a tool to inform staff, management, or executives of important information. Two very good examples of this are the memos written regarding the 1978 Three Mile Island Disaster, and the 1985 Challenger Explosion. Both of these disasters were forewarned by employees and addressed by memos to superiors. Bert M. Dunn of Babcock and Wilcox Company wrote a memo to his management to inform them of a potential operator error occurring at the nuclear power plants that needed to be addressed. R. M. Boisjoly of Morton

It holds true that government organizations gradually decline; the enthusiasm is replaced with bureaucracy, employees are resistant to change and overall performance is decreased. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is no exception to this. NASA is an example of bureaucracy having a detrimental effect on an organization. The lines of communication became skewed and were often broken while the organization was locked in an internal battle over who exactly was in charge. While there were heads of each department and heads of each branch, critical information often slipped through the cracks. It was this breakdown in communication and the failure to address known issues that was the direct cause for both the Challenger and Columbia explosions. The explosions, though separated by seventeen years, were incredibly similar. Concerns had been brought to the table and similarly dismissed as “acceptable risk.” This acceptable risk proved fatal for the crews of both space shuttles. Bureaucracy and financial expediency led to reduced federal funding, general distrust from the public, and growing disinterest. The organization that sent men to the moon is vastly different than the organization in charge today. NASA’s beginnings were less clouded in red tape and bureaucratic policies. Ideas were

Ronald Dittemore, manager of Shuttle Program, received reports directly from Wayne Hale (manager of Launch Integration) and Linda Ham (manager of Space Shuttle Program Integration). It is clear that decision about foam issue was made based on communication with Linda Ham, stating that in previous flights had no critical problems with foam. Dittemore did not attempt to receive a professional opinion from the engineers. Furthermore, Rocha sent an e-mail to Dittemore in order to determine whether Columbia’s crew could make a space walk to perform an inspection of the wing. Answer to this e-mail was never received suggesting that communication attempts directly from engineers to high-level managers were rejected. NASA is a complex organization that maintains strict reporting relationship. Information exchange is built on hierarchy and rules did not facilitate fast informal communication between employees and high-level management. This filtering process diminished the information flow to the key decision-makers. To solve this hierarchical structure managers like Dittemore should exaggerate their ambiguous threats, avoid status differences and build trust among employees. Managers ought to communicate with specialists in order to obtain reliable information and understand the situation.

Weather can play an enormous role in historical events that are remembered decades, and even centuries, after they happen. It can turn small events that would go unnoticed in history to events that are remembered as some of the most important in world history. Until relatively recently, when the Weather Bureau was formed in 1870, we lacked the capability to forecast the weather and prevent incidents like these (Robbins). Even though weather reporting from that moment on would become widespread across the country, it would not be enough to prevent disasters such as the Challenger disaster that rocked the country on a chilly day in 1986.

On 1st of February, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia exploded when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere after finished a 16 days mission in space. All seven astronauts were dead because of this incident. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had stopped the space shuttle program for more than two years to investigate this tragedy. In the 16 days period, the astronauts did approximately 80 experiments on different categories, for example, life science and material science [1]. An investigation later has found out that the disaster was caused by a problem on the day that took off on 16th of January.

The case study I chose to analyze was the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion, by Ronald C. Kramer. Kramer, discussed the four main components that led to the catastrophic explosion. These components included the societal context, the final flaw, the persons behind the final decision to launch, and lastly the failure of social control mechanisms. Unlike popular belief, there was more than just one factor that led to the deadly failure of the launch. Kramer discusses these different concepts that point to state-corporate crime as a private business and government agency interacted leading to the explosion.

I believe the most responsible issue is engineers should always strive to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. The ethical issue impacted the events in many different ways. The engineers got too focused on making money, and lost sight of making sure the welfare of the public was protected. They did not think about important safety considerations when working through the engineering process. If the engineers would have focused more on ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of the public was protected, this incident could have been

Before the Challenger disaster NASA was a company that once was never prepared to handle disaster. NASA experienced it’s first disaster in October of 1968 known as the Apollo. When the Apollo occurred NASA wasn't prepared and failed at protecting it’s company and discussing the publics concerns for the disaster. NASA at this time had no exact protocol on handling disasters and acted on impulse which contributed to NASA losing their reputation. After the Apollo disaster NASA made it best efforts to create direct protocols to follow when a disaster occurs that they later was able to use when disaster struck again in the Apollo 13 disaster of 1971. It was at this time that NASA followed the protocol they set fourth for disaster that helped them handle the crisis in a manner that would protect both the company and

The case study I chose to analyze was the Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion by Ronald C. Kramer. Kramer discussed four main components that led to the catastrophic explosion. These components include the societal context, the final flaw, the persons behind the final decision to launch, and lastly the failure of social control mechanisms. There was not just one factor that led to the failure of the launch. As Kramer discusses the different concepts that led to the failure point to state-corporate crime as a private business and government agency interacted.

Unfortunately, there is always risk when it comes to space flight. This makes it difficult to determine what constitutes an “Acceptable” risk. A space agency has many worries such as their reputation with the public and the world, the success of their missions, and most importantly the lives of their staff and astronauts. Engineers are usually technically gifted but lacking in organization. This spawns a need for non-technical managers to oversee the day to day operations of projects and companies. While the engineers worry about the functionality of the project (in this case, a space shuttle), the managers worry about the cost to the company and the infamous pick 2 triangle of good, cheap, fast. This causes a disconnect between the engineers and the management where pressure from anything whether it be the public or CEO, can cause concerns to be overlooked.

More specifically, they were trying to avoid the blame and further their individual motives. When I saw the film I thought to myself there’s no possible way this happens in real life, but the article shows two examples. The Challenger case as well as the Macondo Well blowout showed that even though engineers might have noticed a problem, in the end management or other engineers decided that it was safe enough to proceed. Then during the investigation, the leaders of the company or project managers decided to play innocent and ignorant. The other thing that I found interesting is the “practice defines facts” model. If correlations are found, then they become facts until they are disproven; this is the problem with the model. A fact should not be able to change, if a fact is truly a fact then the evidence should always support it. When we spread misinformation by stating a correlation is fact, it can lead to many people thinking that it is the truth. It goes back to the first articles we read in class about misleading information in science. Not only does the Macondo/Challenger article tie into the film that we watch it also ties into other topics that we learned about ethics. People in certain situations have an innate self-interest that hurts