The Causes of Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster
The Columbia Disaster was one of the most tragic events in space shuttle history. In 2003, space shuttle Columbia broke up as it returned to Earth, killing the seven astronauts. This essay will explain the major causes of the Columbia disaster which include technical issue and management issues, and illustrate how pressure impacts engineers work at NASA.
Technical issue of the Columbia disaster
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred when the orbiter disintegrated following the foam shedding, caused by the technical issue which included an inadequate understanding of foam properties as well as faulty design of the orbiter inadequate understanding of foam properties the properties of foam
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Management issue in the space shuttle Columbia disaster
Management issue was one of the major causes of the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Inadequate risk assessment and the flaw in organization culture accounted for implementation of the launch despite there were potential risks, resulting the disinfection of obiter.
Inadequate risk assessment the inadequate risk assessment which included normalisation of deviancewas one of the management issue causing the Columbia disaster. In the case of Columbia disaster, foam shedding had observed in many times in the previous flight, but it did not consider as a safety issue because the orbiter came back safely (Mannan 2012, p. 3093). It was a potential risk of the orbiter that foam shedding occurred during the launch even though it was a common phenomenon. But the engineers in NASA did not pay high attention to the potential risk. Also, extra assessment to test and analyse the property of foam did not apply. Then, engineers did not have inefficient evidence and concluded that foam shedding is acceptable based on strong belief and previous
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Due to the strict schedule, engineers had to complete the mission in a limit time (Guthrie and Shayo 2005, p.60). Engineers rush to launch the orbiter under schedule pressure in order to meet the launch pressure. The schedule pressure led to ignoring the importance of the foam strike on the previous flight and the acceptance of various problems caused by foam shedding.
It is hard to balance budget, schedule and risk at the same time. The pressure of budget and schedule increase the chance of neglecting the potential risks which was abnormal performance of different components, becoming a factor in causing the disaster.
Conclusion
Technical issue, management issue, and pressure are the main causes of Columbia disaster. Inadequate understanding of foam and faulty design cause the foam shedding. Also, the inadequate risk assessment and flaw in organization culture in NASA lead to the acceptance of foam shedding and impact the engineers’ final decision. Furthermore, engineers were under budget and schedule pressure to launch the orbiter, ignoring the potential
R. M. Boisjoly had over a quarter-century’s experience in the aerospace industry in 1985 when he became involved in an improvement effort on the O-ring which connect segments of Morton Thiokol’s Solid Rocket Booster. This was used to bring the Space Shuttle into orbit (OEC, 2006). Morton Thiokol is an aerospace company that manufactures the solid propellant rocket motors used to launch the Challenger (Skubik). Boisjoly authored a memo to R.L. Lund, Vice President of Engineering and four others, in regards to his concerns about the flawed O-ring erosion problem. His warnings were ignored leading to the deaths of six astronauts and one social studies teacher.
This tragic accident was preventable by not only the flight crew, but maintenance and air traffic control personnel as well. On December 29, 1972, ninety-nine of the one hundred and seventy-six people onboard lost their lives needlessly. As is the case with most accidents, this one was certainly preventable. This accident is unique because of the different people that could have prevented it from happening. The NTSB determined that “the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew.” This is true; the flight crew did fail, however, others share the responsibility for this accident. Equally responsible where maintenance personnel, an Air Traffic Controllers, the system, and a twenty cent light bulb. What continues is a discussion on, what happened, why it happened, what to do about it and what was done about it.
On an unusually cool Florida morning in January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 50,000 feet above ground just moments after liftoff killing seven crew members onboard (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009). A presidential commission, dubbed “the Rogers Commission” (hereafter, the Commission) after former Secretary of State William Rogers, was appointed to investigate the cause of the disaster. Although mechanical failure of an O-ring seal in one of the rocket boosters was identified as the physical cause, the investigation revealed something much more disheartening; organizational deficiencies at NASA had allowed potential safety hazards to be disregarded. The disastrous consequences of NASA’s organizational failure prompted calls for the organization to restructure its management to provide for better control and appoint a team dedicated to identifying and tracking potential shuttle safety hazards as well as redesigning the faulty booster joint for NASA approval. Shortly before the two year anniversary of the disaster, NASA officials declared that the Commission’s recommendations for organizational change had been successfully implemented. Unfortunately, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia nearly three decades later and a subsequent investigation revealed that the changes made in the wake of the Challenger disaster had not endured. Factors such leaders’ perception of the change process, the type of change being implemented, organizational vision, resistance to change and other challenges all play a role in how change initiatives unfold (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009). NASA’s narrative is a testament to the complexities and challenges of not only implementing, but also sustaining organizational change.
When the Challenger shuttle was set to launch NASA was feeling political pressure to gain congressional support for the space program, to help gain this support the shuttle crew had a high school teacher on board, Christa McAuliffe, and millions of people were excited and tuned into watch. NASA officials were hoping that this new endeavor would help generate funding since the U.S. budget deficit was soaring and they were afraid that their budget could be cut. Technical failure was the reason the shuttle exploding after take-off but this was not the only reason. With pressure mounting, decisions made by NASA and Morton Thiokol Corporation, the contractor who manufactured the piece with the technical failure, put political agendas in front of the technical decisions, which resulted in the tragedy (Bolman & Deal, 2008).
Lack of proper risk management process: NASA was using a simple risk classification system and the methods used were only qualitative. There was a lack of proper technical and quantitative risk management methods that could have helped them identify the risks and eliminate them.
In the mid-1980’s, the shuttle space program was the focus of the political media since it had failed to deliver on its exp...
The Challenger disaster of 1986 was a shock felt around the country. During liftoff, the shuttle exploded, creating a fireball in the sky. The seven astronauts on board were killed and the shuttle was obliterated. Immediately after the catastrophe, blame was spread to various people who were in charge of creating the shuttle and the parts of the shuttle itself. The Presidential Commission was decisive in blaming the disaster on a faulty O-ring, used to connect the pieces of the craft. On the other hand, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, in The Golem at Large, believe that blame cannot be isolated to any person or reason of failure. The authors prove that there are too many factors to decide concretely as to why the Challenger exploded. Collins and Pinch do believe that it was the organizational culture of NASA and Morton Thiokol that allowed the disaster. While NASA and Thiokol were deciding whether to launch, there was not a concrete reason to postpone the mission.
On January 28, 1968 the space shuttle Challenger was deployed from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. One minute and thirteen seconds after liftoff the spaceship ignited in mid air and all seven crew members were killed. The cause of the destruction of the challenger was a certain part of rubber that relieves pressure on the side of the actual rocket booster called an O-ring. When a space shuttle as used as the Challenger is about to be used for another mission there should be an even more careful with checking everything before liftoff. The Challenger could have been avoided and there was way too much evidence that shows NASA had some kind of knowledge about the consequences.
It’s very hard to say what steps, if any, could have been taken to prevent the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster from occurring. When mankind continues to “push the envelope” in the interest of bettering humanity, there will always be risks. In the manned spaceflight business, we have always had to live with trade-offs. All programs do not carry equal risk nor do they offer the same benefits. The acceptable risk for a given program or operation should be worth the potential benefits to be gained. The goal should be a management system that puts safety first, but not safety at any price. As of Sept 7th, 2003, NASA has ordered extensive factory inspections of wing panels between flights that could add as much as three months to the time it takes to prepare a space shuttle orbiter for launch. NASA does all it can to safely bring its astronauts back to earth, but as stated earlier, risks are expected.
Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage appeared he requested an additional imagery to obtain more information in order to evaluate the damage. This demonstrates that he actually tried to resolve the issue. However, due to absence of clear organizational responsibilities in NASA those images were never received. Since foam issue was there for years and risk for the flights was estimated as low management decided not to proceed with this request. After learning of management decision Rocha wrote an e-mail there he stated that foam damage could carry grave hazard and have to be addressed. At the same time this e-mail was not send to the management team. Organizational culture at NASA could be described as highly bureaucratic with operations under standard procedures only. Low-end employees like Rocha are afraid to bring any safety-related issues to the management due to delay of the mission. They can be punished for bringing “bad news”. This type of relationship makes it impossible for two-way communication between engineers and managers, which are crucial for decision-making in complex env...
Renowned physicist Richard Feynman, who was a member of the Rogers Commission, concluded that “Engineers and managers are not communicating effectively”. (Challenger) Indeed, this occurred throughout the year that Boisjoly spent trying to warn management about the O-rings, and occurred again during the conference call where very likely engineers were not vocal enough in their reservations concerning the defective O-ring design. Although the documentary seems to portray Boisjoly as a lone crusader who is ignored by everyone around him, Jud Luvgood, the head engineer of NASA’s rocket propulsion program, had a different perspective on the incident. He says: “When you’re in a meeting like that, and the question is posed if anybody disagrees with the decision to launch and nobody disagrees, then that means that everybody agrees.” He adds, “I don’t care what they say today, and what they’ve been saying the last 20 years, they agreed to launch”. (Challenger) Indeed, there was likely a failure to communicate between NASA and Morton-Thiakol that led to the disaster. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go all around regarding the accident as a whole. Regarding specifically the decision to launch, Morton-Thiakol made a big mistake by trying to stop the launch literally just twelve hours before its scheduled time. Any concerns should have been brought up sooner, which would have allowed more
Before we look at the images of managing change that were present in the NASA case study let us review a few of the key events in this case study. The case study for this assignment looks at Challenger and Columbia NASA space shuttle disasters and the commission findings on the disasters/recommendations. Now with a short review of the case study what image(s) of change are present in the case study? From the case study the changes introduced are images of managing. These changes are both management of control and shaping. As NASA recovered from the 1986 Challenger disaster, it used the classic Fayol characterization of management such as planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling to correct from the top-down the issues that had caused the Challenger disaster (Palmer Dunford, Akin, pg.24, 2009). NASA approached the changes that need to be enacted as a result of the Challenger and also the Columbia disasters from the change image of a director. NASA ...
Obviously, financial establishments can endure breathtaking misfortunes notwithstanding when their risk management is top notch. They are, all things considered, in the matter of going out on a limb. At the point when risk management fails, be that as it may, it is in one of the many fundamental ways, almost every one of them exemplified in the present emergency. In some cases, the issue lies with the information or measures that risk directors depend on. At times it identifies with how they recognize and impart the risks an organization is presented to. Financial risk management is difficult to get right in the best of times.
...fault with NASA’s top-down design and testing methods, “was designed and put together all at once with relatively little detailed preliminary study of the material and components. Then when troubles are found…, it is more expensive and difficult to discover the causes and make changes.…[A] simple fix…may be impossible to implement without a redesign of the entire engine.” The outcome of this simple issue as we all are aware could have saved billions on the project if time for safety was taken. Instead of the top down approach wouldn’t the outcome been a significantly less expense if we used a bottom-up approach. When we think of safety is there a reason to worry about price with the thoughts of the Challenger incident in mind. Safety has always been a part of the working community not only in aviation but throughout all industry. Aviation being the background of
Relating to the Audience: I believe that the Space Shuttle program has fascinated most if not all of you at some point of time, so much so that it has driven some of us to pursue Aerospace Engineering. Thus, it is a good idea to explore the program’s end result, the reason why it was started in the first place – To build the International Space Station.