Excerpt coming from Case Study:
The statement identifies NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) as “working with an unrealistic group of flights” (Cases Study. And. D. ); timelines “which were retained and increased pressure to meet schedules by senior NASA managers” (Case Study. In. D. ). The Opposition disaster was marked by the reality that
“NASA acquired found proof that O-rings had allowed hot wear out to lose through a primary seal. Since 1982 the O-rings was designated a “Criticality 1” issue. Indeed, a January shuttle start in cold weather just a year earlier got shown significant burn through of the O-rings. The day prior to the Challenger kick off, engineers in Morton Thiokol, a NASA contractor, brought up concerns that the frigid temperatures at Hat Canaveral will cause the shuttle’s explode booster “O-rings” to fail – which would mean catastrophe to get the shuttle service. Just several hours before liftoff, Thiokol technicians were promoting that the release be delayed. After hours of discussion, NASA hard pressed forward with the launch anyway” (O’Leary, M. June 2, 2010).
Much like the Challenger event the CAIB report locates “NASA management practices being as much a cause of the accident as the foam that minted the still left wing 81 sec in flight. These practices included: allowing the shuttle to fly with known defects, blocking the flow of critical information up the hierarchy, and insufficient safety monitoring” (O’Leary, M. June a couple of, 2010). As with the O-ring on Opposition, a relatively minor specialized issue was the problem. “Foam had been falloff the reservoir since the very first shuttle flight, and NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) had for ages been trying to fix it. But in each case, NASA decided it absolutely was okay to hold flying. With time, this led to a significant understating or a ordinaire ignoring of an actual risk” (O’Leary, M. June two, 2010).
Obviously, there were systemic organizational concerns which confronted NASA during the period of several decades which triggered the two problems however , what specifically travelled wrong and more importantly how could these areas have been resolved?
At the core of both of these occurrences was an organizational masse “reflecting missed opportunities, clogged or unproductive communication programs, flawed analysis, and useless leadership” (Case Study. In. D. ). After the Opposition flight the Rogers report’s “recommendations included that NASA restructure their management to tighten control, and set an organization dedicated to obtaining and tracking hazards in regards to shuttle safety” (Case Research. N. M. ). But, after the Columbia disaster, the CAIB statement found that “though NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION (NASA) underwent many management reforms in the wake of the Challenger accidentthe agency’s powerful individual space trip culture continued to be intact, while did various practicessuch as inadequate concern over
