Space Shuttle Challenger Research Paper

The challenger disaster that took place in January 28 has led to the explosion of the shuttle itself and the death of all the crew members including the chosen teacher. A real disaster that occurred due to some wrong decisions and overriding some important information from professional employees within the company is considered a real catastrophe. Applying pressure on senior management team of the company that has developed the rocket in order to change their opinion about launching can be considered to be another catastrophe. All these misjudgment actions from the NASA team and the Morton Thiokol team have lead to the challenger real crisis.

During the year of 1986, on January the twenty sixth, a horrific shock was felt around the country. After Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon, Americans felt a great sense of national pride and invincibility but many Americans learned on that fateful day that nobody is invincible; one of the worst catastrophes of the United States space program occurred on that day. About forty five seconds after liftoff, Americans witnessed the destruction of the breathtaking challenger space shuttle. Even though the disaster caused nationwide sadness, the reasons for its failure are clear. Named after the British ship that sailed across the Atlantic hundreds of years, could carry more than two thousand pounds the challenger was truly a glorious achievement.

Although I believe that the engineers should have done more to stop the launch, I also do not believe it is fair to blame them for the catastrophe. Hindsight is 20/20. Had the engineers known what would happen, they obviously would have done more to stop the launch. I believe that most of the blame should be placed on the ones who the engineers alerted to the problem, yet ignored their warnings. This example shows how important a code of ethics really is. It often really is a matter of life and

Unfortunately, neither of those two goals were achieved because Challenger had a catastrophic failure just 73 seconds into flight. At the memorial service at Johnson Space Center President Reagan is quoted as saying “Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain.” Upon investigation by the Rogers Commission, a team of scientists and engineers, found the O-ring that seated the field joints together on the solid rocket boosters was what had caused the catastrophic failure of shuttle orbiter Challenger.

The significant engineering failure that will be analyze is the Space Shuttle Challenger. In 1986, the Challenger faced many launch delays. The first delay of the Challenger was due to the expected weather front and presence of the Vice President (ENGINEERING.com). Since rain and cold temperatures were expected to move into the area, they didn’t want the Vice President to make unnecessary trips. However, the launch window became perfect weather conditions since the weather front stalled. The second delay was due to a defective microswitch in the hatch locking mechanism. By the time the problem was fixed, the winds became too high and the weather front had started to move again.

The initial threat to the ability of NASA to sustain the dramatic changes in the wake of the Challenger disaster started well before the lives of the astronauts were lost. The lack of centralization of management and the fact that different aspects of the organization had locations ranging from D.C. to Florida allowed for no one to really accept and own up to the fact that they were at fault. No one group or person took responsibility, so it was cast upon the entire NASA organization and no one took it upon themselves to make sure that a disaster of this caliber would ever happen again.

By the time the nation moved into the 1980’s, the space shuttle was developed and ready to be launched by early 1981. However, the cost of the shuttle program was significantly higher than the agency anticipated. This fact, along with culture that NASA retained lent itself to breakdowns in communication and safety procedures which were its hallmark during the Apollo era. Plainly stated, the organization realigned itself in a manner that “put the Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance offices under the supervision of the very organizations and activities whose efforts they are to check” (Rogers Commission, Chapter 7, 1986). The presence of multiple contractors working independently made it nearly impossible to align information that could be analyzed. These failures in communication and structure were culminated in the tragedy of the Challenger in 1986. According to the Commission (1986), further contributing to the tragedy was “as flight rate increased, the (Marshall) safety, reliability and

The Challenger disaster was not only a disaster in terms of the destruction of the spacecraft and the death of its crew but also in terms of the decision-making process that led to the launch and in terms of the subsequent investigation into the "causes" of the disaster. The decision to recommend for launch was made by lower-level management officials over the objections of technical experts who opposed the launch under the environmental conditions that existed on the launch pad at the time. Furthermore, the lower-level managers who made this decision--both NASA and contractor personnel--chose not to report the objections of the technical experts in their recommendations to higher levels in the management chain- of-command to

This week’s assignment brought back a lot of memories for me. It made me think back to what I was doing and how this tragedy impacted not only me, but also the United States as a whole. Going through this simulation gave me a little more insight into what actually happened and how this tragedy could have possibly been avoided had NASA’s management team taken heed to the engineers and others who advised them to bring in someone to do a complete inspection of the shuttle. During this simulation, I viewed this tragedy through the eyes of one of the many engineers that were employed at NASA during this tragic time. I feel that this tragedy was the result of a combination of leadership and process failures.

The failure of the O-Rings during Challenger’s launch ultimately resulted from the varying shortcomings made in the decision process which allowed the risk to be present. Groupthink played an influential role in dominating the process and naturally pushed the risk to the wayside. In the wake of the Challenger incident, many lessons regarding professional and decisional bias have been examined and regrettably noted as being very preventable through the use of more careful examination. While the errors made in the decisional process throughout the tenure of the project were made by many individuals, it is important to note that the subtle behaviors exhibited are all naturally occurring phenomenon within individuals. In the light of tragedy, it is very easy to blame the shortcomings of individuals to instill comfort within ourselves and to dismiss the actions of others as being completely ignorant. However, human behavior is the foundation of the decision making process and therefore carries with it imperfection. When minor effects are left unguarded and then coupled with a variety of pressuring restraints it becomes more reasonable to see why mistakes are made and why accidents

The Challenger Space program was one of the most delayed missions in the history of United States government’s space programs. In order to prevent the disastrous decision making process caused by Groupthink the administration involved in managing the Challenger space program should have encouraged those involved to speak freely on the subject without repercussions, had a separate entity determine the final decision on whether or not to launch, and invited outside experts to determine the authenticity of concerns. Many of those who were under contract with NASA felt pressured to refrain from objecting due to prior setbacks in design and construction. The managers of NASA should have remained neutral in their stance to the launch even though

On February 1st, 2003 seven Americans lost their lives while returning to earth after finishing a mission for mankind. These Americans were aboard the space shuttle Challenger that broke apart during reentry into the earth’s atmosphere and was completely destroyed. After an extensive investigation the cause of the accident was determined to be the result of a hole that was punctured into the leading edge of the aircraft during takeoff (NASA). This hole resulted in an excess heating on the leading edge of the wing and then the failure of the wing. This was just the physical cause of the accident that destroyed the shuttle. There were other aspects

Instead, they maintained their current trajectory of making decisions qualitatively. NASA should have improved their risk management processes as more data was gathered. Databases could have been compiled with the information from previous flights that could have provided probabilistic risk assessment and trends for future flights. If NASA and Thiokol had used quantitative data when assessing the erosion and blow by incidents, they likely would have come to a different conclusion when they decided to launch the Challenger shuttle.

The challenger disaster that took place in January 28 has led to the explosion of the shuttle itself and the death of all the crew members including the chosen teacher. A real disaster that occurred due to some wrong decisions and overriding some important information from professional employees within the company is considered a real catastrophe. Applying pressure on senior management team of the company that has developed the rocket in order to change their opinion about launching can be considered to be another catastrophe. All these misjudgment actions from the NASA team and the Morton Thiokol team have lead to the challenger real crisis.

NASA has been sending space shuttles to space for many years but no one could have predicted that the Challenger space shuttle would have disintegrated in space. The factors that contributed to the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disaster was NASA’s organizational culture, the pressure to launch early, and communication with individuals in space is very poor and so errors in occurrences and faults detected could not be tackled.