Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Essay

On January 15, 1919, one of the most tragic and strange disasters occurred in Boston, Massachusetts. It was around forty degrees that day, when two days previously it had been only two degrees. At 12:30 PM 2,300,000 gallons of molasses spilled into the streets near Keany Square after the tank holding it exploded, most think due to a combination of poor design and the drastic temperature flux. The aftermath was tragic, with twenty one deaths and one hundred and fifty injured. The company who owned the tank was quick to blame others, but soon it was found that the tank was poorly constructed, and if more time had been taken, the Boston Molasses Disaster would never have happened.

Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contained the most serious commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history. The events that followed taught the U.S. a lesson learned about nuclear power and the damage it can cause. The Three Mile accident paved the way for reforms in the way nuclear power plants were operated and regulated. the location of the island, the accident, the meltdown, the aftermath, and the media circus were all critical points in the lessons learned.

It was a normal day in New York City, with business workers rushing into the World Trade Center. They thought it was going to be like any other day in the office but they were wrong. These office workers were in for the biggest surprise of their life. Planes flown by hijackers crashed into both the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon was hit by a plane as well. Now there is a memorial in New York where the bases of the towers were honoring the people who died that day.

Seventy three seconds into its 10th flight, on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing the seven crew members on board [1]. The Challenger was the second space shuttle constructed by NASA and had completed nine successful missions prior to the disaster. Following the accident, the shuttle program was suspended for 32 months as President Ronald Regan appointed a Commission, chaired by William P. Rogers and known as the Rogers Commission, to investigate the cause of the accident [1].

Introduction. On 06 January 2005, a cargo train carrying a massive amount of chlorine spilled in Graniteville, South Carolina creating panic and indeed chaos to both citizens and emergency managers on how to properly respond to the hazardous materials released from the train wreckage. The people of the small rural town of Graniteville located just outside of Aiken, South Carolina, where caught in their sleep when Freight train 192 traveling approximately 47 mph struck other consignments spilling a dangerous amount of chlorine gas into the atmosphere. As a result of this disaster, 5,400 individuals were evacuated from their homes whiling causing nine death. The magnitude of such disaster was one that would change any town or city forever.

Following the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, Rescorla invited Hill to New York, where he hired him as a security consultant in order to assess the building 's security. Although no arrests had yet been made, Rescorla believed that the bomb had been planted by Muslims. Hill went undercover in several mosques throughout New Jersey, showing up for morning prayers at dawn. He took on the character of an anti-American Muslim, in order to interview the other visitors to the mosques. He concluded that the attack was likely planned by a radical imam at a mosque in New York or New Jersey. Followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric based in Brooklyn, were subsequently convicted of the bombing.

Some disasters are so impactful, that they forever change the course of history. On March 25, 1911, one such event took place. The infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Fire occurred that day, and left one hundred and forty-six people dead in its wake. While many at the time thought the story would soon pass, and with it all the potential bad publicity, the story of the fire spread quickly, and outraged many people. As a result, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire ended up changing many

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only affected the city of New York, but also the rest of the country. It forever changed the way our country would look at safety regulations in factories and buildings. The fire proved to America what can and will happen if we over-look safety regulations and over-crowd buildings. Unfortunately, 146 lives are taken before we fully understand this concept.

While seated in the Oval Office of the White house, January 28, 1986 President Ronald Reagan delivers his speech The Challenger Disaster; hours after the space shuttle The Challenger explodes while in take off. Thousands witnessed this horrifying event live in person and on television. This mission was very unique allowing the first civilian to ever be allowed in space during a mission. She was aboard The Challenger as an observer in the NASA Teacher in Space Program. Ironically, nineteen years before this disaster, three astronauts were tragically lost in an accident on the ground. President Reagan remembers those astronauts that were lost not only the day of the disaster, but also those who were lost nineteen years before. He conducts

An investigation into the design flaw of two floating balconies above the atrium of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, is discussed in this report. The following investigation includes a closer look at disputes in design between the engineering consultants and the fabrication company, as well as an examination of load capacity. In the design, three walkways were intertwined between the second, third, and fourth floors above the hotel’s atrium (Leyendecker, E., Marshall, R., Pfrang, E., & Woodward, K., 1982). The second floor’s walkway was suspended from the fourth, which was suspended from the roof. The third floor’s walkway was hanging from the roof of the atrium, independent to the other two. When a collapse occurred on July 17, 1981, the fourth floor, which was suspended from the roof, collapsed and landed on top of the second floor. As a result, both floors crashed into the atrium at ground-level (Leyendecker, E., Marshall, R., Pfrang, E., & Woodward, K., 1982). The main causes of the collapse are questionable engineering ethics, negligence, and disputing agencies. These two factors resulted in a poor foundation with lack of consideration of large stress on the structure (Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse, 2006).

The Howard Street Tunnel fire that occurred on July 18, 2001 was a serious emergency that required the participation of local, state, and federal governments in order to properly respond to the incident. The accident occurred in the 1.7 mile tunnel that is located anywhere from

The greatest lesson learned from this tragedy was the need for planned fire drills and accessible fire escapes. If the employers would have made it mandatory that all employees become familiar with the buildings layout, practice fire drills and know their closest fire escape, it would have aided the employees in the hour of despair. The biggest cause for death in this fire was a result of poor pre-fire planning. The building may be fire proof, but the people and contents inside are not.

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.

In addition, after the Challenger shuttle disaster, the Presidential Commission had recommended some solutions to solve and improve the quality, such as hiring experts and establishment of a department to monitor the quality. Also the organizational culture is an issue that leads the disaster. Employee apprehension causes people in NASA management resist to change. Another possible reason analyzed by Jefferson (2002) is government funded firm, which applied quality management the National Health Service (NHS). He reports the failure and attributes it to the NHS culture of “cure, treat and save life”. It indicates that the treatment needs not to be a quality

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.