Foam Strikes In The Columbia Disaster

Gerald M. Stern’s novel, The Buffalo Creek Disaster, helps students better understand the civil procedure process by describing the process through an actual case Stern himself litigated. The case began in 1972 after a dam collapsed in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, killing 125 people and destroying many homes. Other than property damage and loss of loved ones, those who survived suffered what Stern referred to as psychic impairment, or mental suffering. Stern’s lawsuit involved 625 plaintiffs suing the Pittston Coal Group, or the stockholder of the Buffalo Mining Company, for compensatory and punitive damages. Stern had to choose a court and a judge, decide how much relief the plaintiffs were seeking, depose witnesses, and work with the defendant’s counsel

The first perceptual bias that is relevant to the Columbia disaster is the escalation of commitment. This bias in the Columbia disaster was observed when NASA found out about the crater in the shuttle and found the serious risks in landing the shuttle back on earth. However, NASA was already too committed to the mission and didn’t listen to the negatives they simply followed through with their campaign. The second bias is the availability bias. This bias is shown when NASA doesn’t push for additional pictures of the crater and doesn’t look for ways to gain additional information from the astronauts themselves. The final bias is the anchoring bias. This bias plays a part in the disaster when the threat of the crater was deemed as not a problem

Rockwell, the shuttle’s primary contractor, did not support the launch due to the possibility of ice leaving the structure and damaging the thermal shield tiles during takeoff. Their concerns were relayed to NASA, but in such a way that NASA chose to proceed with the launch [2]. Though this was eventually determined to be a non-issue in the Challenger launch, the true nature of the problems that can occur when an object strikes the shuttle during takeoff would not be learned until 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry due to damage of a heat shield tile that occurred during takeoff [2]--[3].

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

The Columbia mission, STS-107, was interesting because the public was more aware of the risk that was being taken upon re-entry. During the launch a piece of insulating foam broke away from the external tank surface, striking the left wing. In previous missions there had been evidence of this occurring which to engineers was seen as minor. In the case of the Columbia craft failure, it was more serious because the damaged section of the wing was damaged to the extent of which it allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the structure of the wing, pulling it apart, rendering the craft unstable.

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.

On February 1,2003, the Columbia was set to return to the Earth from its 16 day mission conducting medical experiments. The return was televised, but instead of our nation watching the 7 crew members safely land, the nation watched the shuttle explode, killing all 7 crew members. In a televised address from the White House, George W. Bush stated, “The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind was led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and a longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on” (Gatehouse, “A Nation Mourns”). George W. Bush explains that even though the nation will mourn those 7 crewmen, the need for those medical experiments is still crucial. He believes that the curiosity of not knowing what is in space is more important than the safety of our people. An article in Maclean’s, written by Jonathon Gatehouse,

The time I helped someone out of their house during a natural disaster was about 7 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. Hot, Wind-fed tornado swirled around southern California. The lady that I saved had been through a natural disaster before and never been harmed. So the lady stayed put.

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.

NASA has had three major past tragedies that still linger over the program today. The first major tragedy for NASA came at a fragile time. During the start of the Apollo program three astronauts who were scheduled to be sent into orbit on Apollo One died from a fire. This fire started from an electrical failure in their simulation practice pod as the three men, Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, Roger B. Chaffee, were inclosed in the pure-oxygen chamber. Then, during the eighties when NASA was sending space shuttles into orbit and no longer going to the moon, the space shuttle challenger launched from its

The Kessler Syndrome was brought to light in 2009 when the Iridium 33, a United States satellite, was struck by the Cosmos 2251, an unused Russian satellite. Due to Kepler’s laws of orbital motion and the objects being as close they were to Earth’s gravitational pull, the two satellites collided at about five miles per second (Parker, greeniacs.com). The result of the collision proves Kessler’s concerns, as a cloud of thousands of pieces of broken equipment and satellite parts was created, which is now in Earth’s orbit. The true danger of space debris relies in the speed of each piece. Since each piece travels at around four to five miles per second, smaller pieces could be catastrophic towards future missions (Dunbar, nasa.gov). One such case of debris causing damage comes through the missions STS-50 to STS-114. Over the span of these 54 missions, debris and meteoroids hit the windows of the shuttles about 1600 times, resulting in 92 replacements (Madrigal, wired.com). The shuttles’ radiators have also been hit a number of times, leaving holes in the facesheet. One instance in particular occurred when a 100 micron sized particle hit the window of the STS-50, causing a one millimeter crater (Whitlock, nasa.gov). These instances show how dangerous even the smallest particles can be for spacecraft.

Most societal problems can be easy to identify such as a rise in crime or the effects of a natural disaster such as an earthquake. There is a natural disaster that is currently facing the state of California in particular which is much harder to overcome – the drought. According to state government officials, California is experiencing one of the driest decades in recorded history and the drought is so severe that the governor, Jerry Brown, declared a state of emergency in 2014 because of it. Since the state of emergency, governor issued the first regulatory policy through Executive Order B-29-15 on April 1st 2015 to fight the drought. A drought is unique in that it is very hard to determine when the problem actually started and when it is expected to end since periods of wet weather are almost impossible to know for sure. Therefore, policy to fight the drought can be very tricky seeing that officials really don’t know when the problem will end and therefore, how much to spend in time and resources to combat it now. This isn’t the first drought California experiences and therefore there are certainly lessons that can be learned from the past and from other countries that have experienced severe droughts (Saharan Africa and Australia). However, in terms of assessing drought policy, this paper will strictly focus on analyzing the development, implementation, and outcomes of Executive Order B-29-15 following the assumption of Leslie Pal (2014, p. 97) who states that “the core

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and the lives of all seven of its crew were lost. Within 2 hours of the loss of signal from the Columbia, a commission was formed to investigate, thanks to procedures that had been established following the Challenger disaster 17 years prior. That commission, known as the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), conducted an extensive process of diagnosis of the causes of the Columbia disaster. The Commission's report concluded that the loss of Challenger was caused by a failure of the joint and seal between the two lower segments of the right

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