The Challenger Disaster And NASA's Organizational Culture Essay." (70 Characters)

Challenger Disaster

Question:

Write an essay on The Challenger disaster.

The Challenger disaster occurred on January 28th, 1986 when the American shuttle orbiter Challenger broke down 73 seconds after the takeoff. There were seven astronauts aboard the shuttle who all lost their lives in the incident. The mission was stated to be one of the landmarks in the history of NASA but it ended in such a disaster. The spacecraft was on its 10th mission and consisted of seven astronauts. The spacecraft was developed with the aim of creating a reusable spacecraft and as such, was develope3de in 1976. However, some technical malfunctioning in the craft’s machinery was what caused the disaster. The main reason for the tragedy was located as the malfunctioning of the two O-rings that separated the craft. The O-rings had been frozen by the cold temperatures on the morning of the launch and as such, it could not carry out its function. This was seen as a managerial flaw that cost the lives of the seven astronauts on board the shuttle. The management was held responsible for a simple routine inspection could have saved the lives of the astronauts. The management at NASA again created a controversy in 2003 when the spacecraft Columbia met with a disaster. The spacecraft was successful in its launch and also completed the mission but the spacecraft was destroyed in its return journey. The craft exploded as a result of friction with the Earth’s atmosphere. This prompted an investigation into NASA’s work culture and it was found that the management was once again at fault for not monitoring all the processes before the takeoff as per the required standards. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board was behind the process of investigating all the reasons for the accident. It was found that there was a hole in the thermal protection tile that allowed superheated air to enter the craft and destroy it. This was a result of the negligence on the part of the management and as a result, the work and organizational culture came under fire.

The Challenger mission was originally scheduled to be on the 22nd of January 1986 and included seven astronauts. The inclusion of Christa McAuliffe made it a special mission as she was about to become the first civilian in space. However, the spacecraft met with a disaster on its 10th mission and as such, created a lot of controversies for the management in charge of the operation (Bhatia, 2002). The O-ring problem was indeed a managerial mistake that resulted in such a disaster. The O-ring fault was a result of the management and engineering at Thiokol that was responsible for the manufacture of the Solid Rocket Motor (Schultz and Eberhardy, 2015). The Rogers commission, Media and the House of representatives covered the story conventionally but no one took into account the real reason behind the tragedy. The work culture at NASA was highly responsible for the accident as it was a normalization of deviance that created such loose measures for the inspections and other processes (Britton, 2005). There were also factors at work that created a scarcity of funds and competition resulting in lower quality of work. The production also resulted in getting institutionalized which contributed to the reasons for the disaster. NASA however, did not learn from the mistakes in this incident and continued such a work culture with deviant practices.

Managerial Mistakes

The recurrence of a disaster like the Challenger was seen in 2003 when the reusable spacecraft Columbia met with a disaster on its return journey owing to similar managerial carelessness. The breach in the thermal protection shields was a reason for the spacecraft to meet with the accident on its entry into the Earth’s atmosphere (NASA's organizational and management challenges in the wake of the Columbia disaster, 2004). The reason for such an accident was again a loose managerial system that did not take into account the possible outcomes of such a careless step. The management at NASA did not consider the problems they had noticed prior to the launch of the craft as a possible reason for the accident (Cole and Cole, 2003). The main problem that lay, in this case, was the refusal of the management to work in order to remove a problem that they had noticed. The problem was noticed but not given much priority. The attitude toward such a high-risk sensitive project is one of the management faults that cannot be overlooked.

The disaster of the Challenger mission was analyzed by the Rogers Commission that located the exact reason of the failure. The Rogers commission was a presidential body that identified that the reason for the accident was the failure of the O-ring that was set on the spacecraft. The function of the O-ring is to seal a critical joint in the solid rocket booster also abbreviated as SRB (Elish, 2007). The Rogers commission thus found that the management was responsible for its flawed decision-making process. The presidential commission identified the cause of the accident as a technical flaw of the O-ring that could not sustain owing to such a dynamic change of temperatures. However, the commission led by William Rogers held Thiokol, the company responsible for the manufacture of the rocket parts as the one responsible for the accident. The commission also held NASA responsible for the accident owing to its managerial system that took serious matters lightly (Engdahl, 2014). The presidential commission found out that the personnel at NASA violated a number of regulations that included both internal rules for safety as well as industry standards that ensured the safety of the astronauts. The personnel aimed more towards the achievement of organizational goals rather than creating a system that was designed for the safety of the astronauts and the related staff. The organizational misconduct was thus a big reason for the disaster that followed soon after. The challenger case exhibited a number of flaws traditionally associated with organizational misconduct (Zobel, 2010). Competitive pressure and scarcity of resources, the organizational characteristic that facilitates wrongdoing, and ineffectiveness of the regulatory mechanism were some of the cause of the failure of the mission. The scarcity of resources made the organization prioritize the organizational goals over human safety (Guthrie and Shayo, 2005). The managers, in this case, assessed the risks in a few key places and overlooked the others. The managers engaged in misconduct while competing for scarce resources. There was no systematic risk assessment procedure that could have avoided the disaster. The scarcity of resources and the competitive pressures forced the managers to go ahead with amoral calculations that resulted in the decision to launch. The middle management was also at fault as they had not informed their superiors about the teleconference with Thiokol regarding the problem with the O-ring (Stein, 2010). The work culture was also another factor at play resulting in the accident. The managers and engineers at NASA constantly made decisions with the presence of residual risks. One such residual risk was the defect in the O-ring that made the craft face the problem that resulted in the disaster. The work culture was thus one where the managers and the engineers worked with a constant presence of uncertainties (Haerens, 2012). There was also a concept of acceptable risk that contributed to the event. While the concept of an acceptable risk sounded problematic for the investigating bodies and others associated in the aftermath of the accident, it was a norm at NASA to begin missions with a certain amount of residual risk. The normalization of deviance was also responsible for the disaster that occurred. The managers and engineers did not take into account the strict regulations for the development of the O-ring that held the structure together. Also, accepting risks became a part of the work culture that the managers and engineers in NASA were accustomed to. The benchmarks for the acceptable risk criteria were significantly increased which led to the deviance in the manufacture of the O-ring which ultimately spelled doom for the spacecraft (Jenkins and Lassiter, 2002).

NASA's Work Culture

After the incident, however, NASA refrained from performing manned missions for two years and performed developments in the spacecraft designs. However, on February 1, 2003, the spacecraft Columbia met with an accident owing to similar reasons of management and decision-making flaws.

The Columbia disaster was followed by a similar procedure with the formation of a body for the investigation of the matter. The body was named Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) and performed the investigation that pointed out major flaws in the decision-making a process of NASA. The report published by the CAIB found out that the disaster was caused by a faulty design in the external tank. A bit of the insulating foam severed the tank soon after the dispatch and struck the main edge of the Shuttle's left wing at a speed of 670-922km/h. the report revealed that it was the decision-making process that was again at fault for this disaster (Koestler-Grack, 2004). The normalization of the deviation at the workplace was again seen in the structure of the operational framework of NASA. It was foam debris that created a hole in the shields and as a result, allowed the main body to come in contact with the external friction resulting in the subsequent explosion. There was also a system of a photo analysis after the launching of the probe and the debris was located. However, the managers at NASA considered it as a matter of least concern as it was normal for most of the crafts to possess some amount of debris (Z, 2003). NASA also revealed that the foam strikes had been seen in almost every crafts and it was not a major issue to be taken care of. The revelation by NASA itself proved the lack of an efficient decision-making process at the organization (Kortenkamp, 2008). The incident was, in fact, a recurrence of the managerial decision-making flaws during the failure of Challenger. It was thus the flawed reasoning of the management that cost the lives of the astronauts. It was once again a normalcy of deviation (Zappa, 2011). While the matters of foam strikes should have been taken seriously, it was considered as a residual risk that eventually turned into a major one. The system thus needed a total overhaul that could bring back system and efficiency at the workplace. The CAIB also found out that NASA placed organizational success above the lives of the astronauts in an attempt to reach their goals. The process was thus one where the spacecraft that was being used was an old one and should not have been used. The decision-making process that allowed the program to go forward was thus at fault for letting it pass (Lieurance, 2001).

What lessons NASA had or had not learned from the Challenger Disaster changes they had implemented prior to the Columbia Disaster and the appropriateness of those decisions

The Challenger incident had lessons both theoretical as well as practical for the decision-making processes at any organization. The greatest lesson that this incident contained was the need for creating a strict framework for the work culture. Deviation in the workplace should be monitored and in no way should it be one which puts human lives at risk (Likins, 2003). The mistake, in this case, was socially organized and systematically produced. The work culture was thus one that needed to be monitored as it contained a lot of loose ends in the structure. The structural secrecy that led to the lack of being able to gain information was also responsible for the disaster. As a result, NASA did, in fact, implement a few new measures to overcome the previous failures. NASA refrained from sending manned missions for the next two years after the challenger incident. NASA also redesigned certain parts of the shuttle in an attempt to make it safe from the earlier problems. The shuttle was put to use only for unmanned missions like the launching of Discovery in 1988 (McDonald and Hansen, 2009). The craft was also used for providing maintenance for the Hubble space telescope and also performed an important function in the manufacture of the international space station. NASA reformed its safety measures after the incidence with the development of an entirely new framework that demarcated the safety measures clearly and created benchmarks which strictly needed to be followed. NASA developed a system that monitored the functioning of the entire craft and the problems associated with it that can cause any problems. The system also created a system that regulated and monitored if the conditions were fit for the launch. However, the changes were not long lasting as a similar incident was seen again in the Columbia disaster. The explosion of Challenger in 1986 should have been a wake-up call for NASA but it was seen that by 2003, the standards that were created after the challenger incident were not in existence anymore. It was seen that there was the same level of negligence that was seen earlier in the challenger mission (McNeese, 2003). NASA had forgotten from its past mistakes and had let the very regulations that paved the way for its success after the disaster slip away. The regulations were no longer in existence and the procedures did not take into account the various risk factors that were responsible for the earlier disaster. Thus, the decision-making process did learn from its earlier experience and also devised measures to combat any such future occurrences (NASA explores, 2008). However, the organization failed to keep the measures in place owing to the lack of a body that formulated the means for monitoring of the activities of the organization. The presence of such a body would have kept things in place long after the disaster occurred. The Columbia craft encountered similar problems and experienced a similar fate. That could have been easily avoided had there been a system in place that monitored if the various levels of the organization followed the regulations regarding the various measures that were the norms of the industry (NASA Shakeup, 2002). The problem that lay in the system was that what once caused the fate of the Challenger was now considered as ‘normal’ by the management and decision-making bodies.

Columbia Disaster

The strategic decision failure was a result of a number of factors at work during the operations of the missions. The missions failed not due to a single decision failure but were, in fact, the result of an existing system that created the situations that led to the final disaster. If we were to say that the challenger mission failed due to a slight mistake of the inspecting team, we would be thoroughly mistaken. This is because; the careless attitude of the people who were in charge of the process was responsible for the overall light inspection(Jones, 2004). The careless attitude was further created by the work culture that was prevalent from the beginning in the organization. Also, it is impossible to locate when a disaster would occur but there needs to be a system that takes into account the possible disasters that could pose a threat in the future. In such a case, NASA failed in even developing a framework that would assess the potential risks. The failure of the Challenger mission was due to such a light attitude towards the risks. It is true that space missions do involve a certain amount of risk but not assessing any risk are a way to leap into certain death. The lives of the astronauts lost in the process could have been saved had there been a simple decision-making strategy that accounted for the potential risks. NASA did develop a system for the smooth functioning in the aftermath of the disaster. However, it must be remembered that NASA continued using the craft even after it risked the satellite Discovery that was launched after the Challenger disaster(Monger, 2014). This goes on to prove that the decision-making process was still flawed as it supported the decision to go ahead with the use of the craft even after it caused such a disaster. The attitude of the organization was thus one that did not take into consideration the safety measures and continued using a flawed system. The result of such continued flawed decision-making process was seen in the Columbia disaster in 2003 that claimed the life of seven astronauts. The tragedy was more into public view as an incident of loss of human life. The Columbia spacecraft was a reusable craft that had previously performed and the possibility of foam debris creating fatal consequences was not taken into account by the management. The officials responded that they did not consider the need for the process of removal of the debris as it was a common matter. The decision making process that allowed the launching of a craft that had such a certain flaw was thus responsible for the loss of human lives. The decision making process was again flawed as they did not learn from the previous mistakes(Moore, 2011). The challenger disaster prompted the development of a system that had the means to counter the various risks that were likely to be seen in the future. However, by 2003, that system although officially present, was not given much more importance. The disaster of Columbia was the result of such an attitude.

Rogers Commission Findings

Conclusion and recommendations

The Columbia disaster might have been a significant tragedy in the human history. But it cannot be doubted that it was the fault in the decision-making process that led to NASA making more systems that could provide better safety for the future generations of astronauts(Bazerman, 2002). The investigation by the CAIB resulted in the demand for a measure that would individually examine each spacecraft before it was launched. However, NASA completely chose to retire of the programmes that possessed such a high threat. NASA must, at present aim at the development of a system that overlooks the decision making process. There should be strict adherence to the safety measures that are a norm. Government involvement, although present, must involve a deeper level of penetration into the various systems that requires thorough examination. There should be involvement of the government as an external body that monitors the various processes and puts human life ahead of organizational goals in an effort to create a safer atmosphere for the astronauts(Harrison, 1998). The problems in these sectors do not mean that NASA should only consider the recurrence of such events in the future. The decision making body should also take into account the other factors related to the programmes that could provide a possible risk for the future operations. The decision making process should be governed by certain measures that provide the organization with the much needed support about which decisions to take.

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