I chose to write about the Space Shuttle Columbia engineering failure. NASA sent out a shuttle to orbit the earth for 16 days mission to research how can a life survive being out in space. The mission was completed in success and it was time to return back to earth but with no knowledge of the risk due to a damage to the left wing that they didn’t even know. The reason why the error happened because the team at NASA were not careful enough and wasn’t thinking of finding other options to save those lives.
First of all, Columbia was the oldest and it was on its 25th mission. The lift off itself was risky since this is 20 years after the challenger incident and the space shuttle needed to be replaced due to how old it is, but the lift off was a success. Second day after the launch, the team at NASA inspected the video of the take off, noticed a piece of foam from the fuel tank that attached the tank and the shuttle together, fell off and impacted the left wing leading edge. They considered this (the foam falling) to be common due to the fact that this happened in the past and to most launches so they did not think much of the impact it caused, but what they didn’t know then was that the length of the foam block was 50cm and with that speed, it can cause real damage. Then 2 days later,
…show more content…
The management team saw no safely issue, assumed it to be tile issue which the shuttle can still reenter earth and land, but that’s not the case with this one. The engineer at NASA informed the commander and his crew, shown them the video and they showed no concern and assumed that it was common situation with the foam piece falling off. Engineered suggested the management team to use the U.S. spy satellite to take a picture of the damage to deal with the situation but they didn’t see that it was necessary and they even had 5 meetings but issue no
The shuttle exploded less than two minutes after take-off. What caused the explosion? The cold temperatures caused the o-rings to be affected and a leak from the o-rings on the Challenger caused fuel to ignite. Millions of people and school students stared in shock at what had occurred just before their eyes. Before dying in the accident of the Challenger, Christa McAuliffe would have been the first teacher/civilian, other than astronaut, to fly into space.
Some of my fellow students think this was good luck because ken had not gone with them since he turned out to be very helpful in the rescue mission. I fell it was bad luck, this was not expected it could have led to a tragic situation. It was just bad luck that this fault was not noticed prior to their launch and they were still experiencing bad luck even in the midst of bad luck. Fuel tanks leaking, increasing level of co2, freezing temperature etc. Even at the point of trying to make what reduced the co2 the bag they used got torn. One important factor is that in the midst of all this happening Jim calmed his crew; he was able to manage the change in situation and also deal with the conflicts that arose between jack and
NASA has faced many tragedies during their time; but one can question if two of the tragedies were preventable by changing some critical decisions made by the organization. The investigation board looking at the decisions made for the space shuttle tragedies of the Columbia and Challenger noted that the “loss resulted as much from organizational as from technical failures” (Bolman & Deal, 2008, p. 191). The two space shuttle tragedies were about twenty years apart, they both had technical failures but politics also played a factor in to these two tragedies.
On January 28th, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded upon takeoff murdering seven astronauts in it. The NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, only 75 seconds after liftoff, conveying an overwhelming end to the spacecraft's tenth mission. The disaster killed each of the seven astronauts aboard, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire who would have been the main non military personnel in space (Howell). It was later confirmed that two elastic O-rings, which had been designed to isolate the sections of the rocket booster, had flopped because of cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. The catastrophe and its aftermath got broad media coverage and prompted NASA to temporarily suspend all shuttle
write about my only passion: fire and rescue. This whole project was me, my experiences, and
The first pillar of the SMS model, “policy” establishes a safety commitment, and different ways to meet that commitment. Looking back, in hindsight, we can see many things that should have been included in Colgan Air’s policy. The first thing should be the ban of pilot sleeping in the airport. Fatigue, in this accident and many others, is a serious problem, that had the pilots not been fatigued, they could have possibly recovered the plane. Through the investigation it was also found that the captain had failed three check rides (NTSB).
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...
...y damage, the flight crews were able to land their crippled plane safely. In this case, the Flight 811 did not crash due to malfunction of the cargo door such as, Turkish Airlines Flight 981. Therefore, flight 811 will consider as a crash survivability.
The first essay assignment of the class was a simple five-page narrative essay about any moment in my life that left a large impact on me. This
Engineers and scientists began trying to find what went wrong almost right away. They studied the film of the take-off. When they studied the film, they noticed a small jet of flame coming from inside the casing for one of the rocket boosters. The flame got bigger and bigger. It started to touch a strut that connected the booster to the big fuel tank attached to the space shuttle. About two or three seconds later, hydrogen began leaking from the gigantic fuel tank. About seventy-two seconds after take-off, the hydrogen caught on fire and the booster swung around. That punctured the fuel tank, which caused a big explosion.
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew to monitor the flight instrument during the final 4 minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments and allowed the descent to go unnoticed.
The purpose of this report is to better understand one of the most catastrophic events in the history of space aviation, which occurred on February 1, 2003. A structural failure resulted in the space shuttle Columbia breaking apart upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere [1]. This report will try to explain the engineering failures that led to this tragic accident, and examine the resulting improvements in the field of space travel in order to prevent an accident of such magnitude in the future. The fuel tanks of a shuttle contain liquid oxygen and a hydrogen propellant that is stored at an extremely cold temperature. The design engineers of the shuttle knew that the tank was not insulated properly.
After the accident, a full-scale investigation was launched by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). It concluded that the accident was caused by metal fatigue exacerbated by crevice corrosion, the corrosion is exacerbated by the salt water and the age of the aircraft was already 19 years old as the plane operated in a salt water environment.
I decided to analyze the short story The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant. It was very complex in the way it was written. The use of complex words did make it a little difficult to read. Once you got past the wording, you was able to grasp the meaning and understanding of the story. The Necklace was meant to teach the reader or audience a lesson. This is why I found it fascinating to write about.
I was assigned to do an autobiography for english class. It took me some time to think of stuff and things that have influenced my life. I thought over my life for a while. So to get things started I 'm going to talk about the most influential man I ever got the privilege to meet, My Grandpa. Ed Hansen