Challenger Safety Culture

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger “violently exploded” tragically after 73 seconds of flight (Reagan). Ronald Reagan then came out to remind everyone of the importance of mistakes like this and not to let them destroy people's confidence. He stated, “It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

There were four ethical concerns that arose in the case study of the Challenger. The first ethical concern was the defective rocket booster joints design. Roger Boisjoly discovered that the primary O-rings failed to seal the joints in flight 51C. Luckily, the secondary, backup O-ring caught the leak. He believed that the temperature was a factor of the flawed design since the flight analysis shows that the temperature was 53 degrees Fahrenheit. In the NSPE Code of Ethics, it states, “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” Boisjoly followed this code by reporting this to NASA and Morton Thiokol management. However, they just concluded that it was not desirable but acceptable. Therefore, no actions were

On the cold morning of January 28th, 1986, The Space Shuttle Challenger was launched. Seventy-three seconds into the flight, the space shuttle broke apart, causing the seven deaths of its crew members. Roger Boisjoly, a mechanical engineer for Thiokol brought to NASA’s attention about a failing O-ring safety concern in the shuttles rocket booster. After being ignored by NASA Boisjoly tried to bring the issue of the O-ring to people higher up in his company, all of the people ignored Boisjoly in his attempts to get the issue resolved. Thirteen hours before the launch of the shuttle, Boisjoly strongly urged not to launch the shuttle, all attempts failed. After the disaster took place Boisjoly told the press exactly why the shuttle failed to

In 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center people watched in awe for a little more than a minute before the shuttle exploded in flight. This was the first of only two major accidents that occurred during over two decades of NASA’s shuttle program and many would consider it to be a fluke that could not have been prevented or predicted. In truth the Challenger disaster was an accident waiting to happen and was a symptom of systemic problems that were occurring at NASA during that era. The 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster was cause by a number of factors including structural failure of the shuttle, a change in NASA’s work environment from the days of the

Executive Summary Many factors must be examined to find the underlying reason for the horrible disaster of the space shuttle Challenger. We will cover both the technical causes to the disaster and the communication breakdown with NASA. We will also look at the outside pressure that NASA was receiving from the media, congress and the military. Recommendations for NASA and anyone in the communication field will be given. These recommendations will help to avoid any further problems with communication in any organization. The O-rings failed to properly seal the gap in the joint seal. Failure of the Orings was the ultimate mechanical cause to the explosion of the Challenger.

“The data showed that the rubber seals on the shuttle's booster rockets wouldn't seal properly in cold temperatures and this would be the coldest launch ever.” (Berkes, 2016) Having been given this information I would make the decision to launch. “Sending shuttles up with some risk was the norm at NASA, and it was understood that some risk was unavoidable. The possibility of some primary O-ring erosion was found acceptable because of the redundancy of the secondary O-ring. Over a period of time, the amount of erosion that was acceptable grew increment by increment. The Okaying of the Challenger launch was the result of day-to-day decisions made over a period of years - a kind of incremental acceptance of deviance that Vaughan compares to Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil." As she argues, "incrementalism can contribute to extraordinary events" (Tankard, 1996).

In 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Center people watched in awe for a little more than a minute before the shuttle exploded in flight. This was the first of only two major accidents that occurred during over two decades of NASA’s shuttle program. Many would consider the Challenger disaster to be a fluke that could not have been prevented or predicted but, In truth, it was an accident waiting to happen and was a symptom of systemic problems that were occurring at NASA during that era. The 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster was cause by a number of factors including structural failure of the shuttle, a change in NASA’s work environment from the days of the successful Apollo missions, and additional

In this paper we will study the Challenger space shuttle disaster in detail. Our focus will be on different aspects of this event such as the many purposes which were served by the Challenger space shuttle; we will also specifically focus on the media's role regarding this event and see how it affected the entire situation.

A review of the external and internal threats will help determine the weakness of the problem analysis related to the launching of space shuttle Challenger. At the time of the accident, the country was experiencing an economic slowdown. Considering the economic climate, Congress wanted to know if the American people still support the huge requirements of the program. The government ruled out increase in taxes being an election year. Simultaneous to the congressional investigation was a launch of space shuttle Challenger. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wanted a successful launch. A no-launch situation might convince Congress to slash the program’s budget. Furthermore,

While driving frantically through the lush farmland of the Livermore Valley to rescue a 9-year who, along with her classmates had just witnessed the destruction of the Challenger on live television, the question of why was all consuming. Growing up in the sixties and witnessing the moon landing led many to believe NASA was infallible. However, nearly twenty years before Challenger, this proved untrue, as the dangers of space travel were tragically demonstrated when the crew of the Apollo 1 died in an onboard fire during a test run (Howell, 2012). Following the Challenger tragedy, President Reagan (1986, para. 8) stated, ‘We will never forget them, nor the last

These consequences can lead to monumental fiascoes. One such fiasco took place in the mining town of Pitcher, Oklahoma in 1950. A mining engineer warned the miners that their town could cave in at any moment from excessive excavating. He suggested immediate evacuation of the town. The leading citizens of the town held a meeting and mocked the engineers’ warning. A few days later, the disaster hit, taking the lives of those who refused to leave. They followed the poor decision made by the leading citizens of the town. All seven symptoms were present in the 1950 mining disaster. A second example of groupthink would be the events surrounding the space shuttle Challenger, the product of flawed decisions. The evidence was inadvisable to launch the space shuttle at the earliest opportunity. NASA’s perspective was that is was undesirable to delay the launch because of the impact it would have on political and public support for the program. Authorities dismissed potentially lethal hazards as only acceptable risks because of NASA’s engineer’s pressure to launch. The decision to launch the shuttle amounted to a much greater loss than the loss of political and public support. A third example of groupthink involves the group around Admiral HE Kimmel, which failed to prepare for the possibility of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor despite repeated warnings. Informed by his intelligence chief that radio contact with Japanese aircraft carriers

4. In what ways did BP lack the appropriate safety culture? What could it have done to build a stronger safety culture?

Through comprehensive analysis, we identified the root cause of the explosion of Challenger space shuttle. We referred www.nasa.gov and many other websites to learn more about the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster and gather domain knowledge. We referred the NASA report “http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm” to go in depth of the Space Shuttle concept and development phases. All the issues with the project can be categorized into two problem groups. Mechanical and administrative problems. The direct cause of the Challenger explosion was technical - faulty O-rings. But, the decision to launch the Challenger despite the identified risks was a combination of poor communication and a difference in the evaluation of the risk. We are sure

One of the greatest tragedies in history occurred on January 8, 1986. Shortly after it was launched, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher chosen to be the first teacher in space (“Challenger Disaster, n.d.). The explosion was caused by a failure of the O-rings of the solid rocket boosters. The O-rings were unable to seat properly, causing the leaking of hot combustion gases, which burnt through the external fuel tank. The malfunction was not any one person’s or organization’s fault; it was caused by many factors including the decision to launch despite the cold weather, the poor communication between management levels of the National Aeronautics and

In the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, I believe one of the root causes of the disaster was due to the crew not following the safety precautions and process set in place to prevent them. Besides, BP and Transocean did not have a self-monitoring system in place to identify not following standard processes and best practices. Also, because they had not been following protocol, the deviations to the norm became the rule giving the crew a false sense of security that they could push the limits and nothing would happen. Evidently, with the crew, they had experienced some of these same symptoms before and maybe many times before the inevitable happened. For example, “At noon on April 20, some ten hours before the blowout occurred, more fluid left the pipe than expected during a routine test. And around 4 PM, pressure on the drill pipe was higher than expected” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p. 362). Arguably, if the crew had more recurrency training on what to do when they notice deviations to the norm and how to handle safety concerns when they