Teachers In Space Program

The night before the launch, a teleconference between Thiokol and NASA was held to address the concerns regarding the performance of the SRB O-ring seal in cold weather. Thiokol recommended that the launch be postponed since there was no data available for temperatures below 53°F [2]. After internal discussions in the Thiokol group, senior management eventually endorsed the launch, recommending it to proceed, reversing their original decision [2].

After the onset of the space race in 1956, Yeager commanded the Air Force Aerospace Research Pilots School to train pilots for the space program. In this capacity, Yeager supervised development of the space simulator and the introduction of advanced computers to Air force pilots. Although Yeager himself was passed over for service in space, nearly half of the astronauts who served in the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo programs were graduates of Yeager's school.

Perhaps no greater tragedy defines the American Race for Space than the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger before millions of Americans as they watched on live TV in 1986. Building on two decades of successful space exploration kicked off by President Kennedy before his death, by the early eighties the American culture both believed that it was our right to fly into space and that no one did it better than we did. NASA had sent mission after mission into space over more than twenty years, each one accomplishing space exploration goals and building the reputation that America owned the stars. That day in January of 1986 was supposed to be another of those successes as the Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying not only professional astronauts into space but also one everyday person, teacher Christa McAuliffe. Instead, the world watched as after seventy-three seconds after liftoff hopes and dreams exploded with the Challenger - leaving astronauts dead, the space program in jeopardy and America grieving and looking for answers. How leadership responded, what they said and did, would be really important to how the nation dealt with the loss and to the future of the space program. The man for the job was President Ronald Reagan, whose address to the nation appealed to the public on an emotional and logical level and helped to ensure that they

Seventy-three seconds after the countdown clock reached zero the Challenger exploded. Immediately after the explosion President Reagan appointed a commission to find out why the Challenger exploded. "In a five-volume published report, the presidential commission identified the primary cause of

ii. This speech was preceded by the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Seven astronauts, including the first schoolteacher in space, Christa McAuliffe, perished in the explosion, and all of America was in mourning after watching it live on television (Moyer). Since Reagan was expected to give a State of the Union Address and Americans would be watching, he choose to address the disaster at this time. The speech was delivered from the Oval Office because it was a professional speech coming from the president. Being in the Oval Office gave Reagan credibility, and broadcasting it allowed him to reach many

In the 1970’s, NASA started the missions of a new shuttle, Challenger. The Challenger created many milestones, it carried the first U.S. women to go to space along with the first African American person, plus the first seven-person crew, and the first shuttle to include two women at the same time as well, and the first spacewalk by a woman, Kathryn Sullivan.

Look up at the night sky, see the stars, planets and our closest neighbor, the moon. Every human being at one point in his or her life has done this same thing. It is only natural to look up and wonder in awe at whats out there. Human beings are made with an innate desire to expand and explore. In the 1950s when there was no more of Earth to discover, people started looking upwards at the sky to satisfy this internal desire. Hungry for dominance and technological innovation, the United States created NASA and embarked on what would become the greatest voyage in human history. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, space travel and the technology which powered it advanced far beyond what any prior civilization could imagine. Inspiring in humanity hope for a future not on Earth. An analysis of the effects of the NASA space program on the United States reveals a radical shift in educational policies, an influx of new an innovative technologies, and a renewed motivation and hope for the future.

In 1985, she was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project and was scheduled to become the first teacher in space. As a member of mission STS-51-L, she was planning to conduct experiments and teach two lessons from Space

NASA and the US are stunned and scared. NASA was traumatized by the accident. NASA remodeled and redesigned the shuttles features. They didn’t send an astronaut into space for 2 more

The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, also known as the Rogers Commission was formed to investigate the disaster. The Rogers Commission released a report several months later of its findings. Primarily, the commission found that the Challenger accident was caused by 'A failure in the O-rings sealing a joint on the right solid rocket booster, which allowed pressurized hot gases and eventually flame to blow by the O-ring and make contact with the adjacent external tank, causing structural failure. The failure of the O-rings was attributed to a faulty design, whose performance could be too easily compromised by facts including the low temperature on the day of the

However, after further investigations from a special commission by the president, another factor in play was NASA itself, who allowed the launch despite the warnings from its engineers. The warnings of the engineers were blatantly ignored as they were proclaiming that the O-rings may not be able to stand the cold temperatures of that day, and launched the shuttle regardless (Cite About Education). In terms of the NSPE, the engineers were serving their duty by warning the superiors, thus attempting to bring concern to the issue at hand, but sadly to no avail. Without their warning, it may have been substantially more difficult to decipher the cause behind the shuttle’s rapid disintegration. As a necessity however, another investigation that Reagan ordered had to be thorough, so that his team could maximize their potential of finding another potential problem with the challenger.

Then it came time for the Apollo missions. Eleven manned launches into space, 6 of which landing on the moon, carried man farther than ever before. Apollo 1 was scheduled to be the first in the series. Just 4 days before the launch, there was a problem. During a test flight, a fire broke out inside the sealed capsule from faulty wiring. The fire suffocated the 3 astronauts inside. NASA launched a full investigation (Aldrin 3). “It exposed deep flaws in our capsules and procedures”, said Gene Kranz, the retired chief flight director at NASA during the Gemini and Apollo missions (When).

Ultimately the fault lies with every person who was a part of the project, except Roger Boisjoly, 3 of his colleagues, and the manager who refused to sign the ok to launch. According to a broadcast by NPR in 1986, Boisjoly’s and his colleague's concerns were escalated to top management. They explained their worries and gave their evidence to the Vice President of Morton Thiokol, Robert Lund. This was then escalated to another meeting with more engineers and managers, which resulted in the conclusion that launching could be catastrophic

The material was kept at the lowers levels of the decision making process (“The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,” n.d.). This infringes upon NSPE Code II.3.1. It states, “Engineers shall be objective and truthful in professional reports, statements, or testimony. They shall include all relevant and pertinent information in such reports, statements, or testimony, which should bear the date indicating when it was current” (“Code of Ethics,” n.d.). The information regarding the hazardous temperatures was applicable to the arrangement of the launch, and it was not reported to levels I or II at NASA management (“The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,” n.d.).

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