NASA started building the space shuttles for the Columbia mission upon its establishment of the Space Shuttle Program in January, 1972. Because of time constraint and a tight budget, while building the shuttle, it assumed that the shuttle would be safer as compared to any other spacecraft, and therefore, did not develop some important safety features such as an escape system for the crew. During the construction, the final step of the construction process was not done in the manufacturing facility but later, by the engineers. Because of schedule constraints, the shuttle was not tested according to normal procedures but analytics model was used to verify the system. Another problem was that even after looking back into the past missions there …show more content…
Due to budget cuts over the years, NASA maintained poor camera lenses and reduced the camera staff. Because of this, they had limited images available to assess the situation. With the available unclear images, they could comprehend that this time the piece of foam was larger than any other. During the days of the flight the team tried to analyze the situation and come up with a solution. Because of the limited resources and information available to them, they did emphasize the uncertainty but still concluded that no “safety-of-flight” issue existed. This is a case of Availability Bias. Availability Bias is the tendency to base judgments on information readily available. In our case, availability of bias caused them to still conclude that the debris didn’t cause any safety …show more content…
This cultural approach didn’t allow the engineers to prove to them that there was a problem with the debris. The engineers follow the usual process of creating a hypothesis, doing an experiment and collecting data to prove or disprove the hypothesis. But during this situation, they didn’t have time to perform the number of experiments that were needed to prove that the debris in fact did cause damage to the orbiter and it might cause problems when the shuttle re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. Since the engineers couldn’t prove that it would be a concern, the team concluded that there was no danger. This cultural difference in the workplace was another cause of the failure of the
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said by Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps on the moon during the NASA Apollo 11 expedition to the moon. No man has ever been to the moon before and NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was the first to get someone to land on the moon. NASA has had many great accomplishments in exploring the "new frontier" that have affected the United States ever since it was first created in July 1958. The idea for NASA first started when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite on October 4, 1957. United States started up its own space travel program and started to work on its own projects that would be better in than the Soviet Union's. This all started the great space race. It was a big race between the Soviet Union and the United States to see who could learn and discover the most. The United States and Soviet Union started building and sending satellites and space ships. Then they tried to see who could make a suit and ship that would be able to allow a living thing to go up in space. They tested out all of the equipment with monkeys and dogs, seeing what would work. Many animals did die in the process but by the results of their testing they were able to build suits and ships that allow human beings to go up in space. Even though they were able to create these machines, that doesn't mean that they didn't have their difficulties and dangers. Two space shuttles were crashed or blown up. There were many key factors that they had learned to fix that resulted in the crashing of those ships. They have made many discoveries and accomplishments like having the first astronauts walk on the moon.
It was on January 28, 1986 at 11:38 A.M. that the shuttle Challenger, NASA flight 51-L, the twenty-fifth shuttle flight, took off. It was the "Teacher in Space" mission. At lift-off, the temperature at ground level was 36° Fahrenheit, which was 15° Fahrenheit cooler than any previous launch by NASA. It was the Challenger's tenth flight. Take-off had been delayed several times. Finally the shuttle had taken off. The shuttle had climbed high in the sky thirty-five seconds after take-off, and it was getting hit by strong winds. The on board computers were making continuous adjustments so the shuttle would stay on course. About eight miles in the air, about seventy-two seconds after take-off, people watched in fear and horror as the shuttle was engulfed by a huge fire ball. All the crew members were killed instantly.
Space travel began in the 1960s with sending humans on single missions into space. Rockets launched into the air and just the tip would land in the ocean after parachuting back to Earth ("Space Shuttle Program," par. 4). The focus of space exploration changed during the 1980s; shifting from the desire for human space flight to the desire to create a reusable spacecraft. Originally called Space Transportation System (STS), NASA created the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) (Heiney, par. 1-2). It wanted a shuttle that was more economical because it could be launched, landed and relaunched and could gather better information. The 1980s began a new era in space exploration and had one the biggest tragedies in the history of space travel.
Investigation revealed that the O-rings became brittle from the 36 degree temperature and failed. The investigation also revealed that the company that designed the solid rocket boosters, Morton Thiokol, ignored the warnings they were given about the potential issues and never passed that information along to the engineers that built the shuttle. But, the NASA managers heard about the design problems and failed to take action (Peter Greier,
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).
Project Mercury Project Mercury, the first manned U.S. space project, became an official NASA program on October 7, 1958. The Mercury Program was given two main but broad objectives: 1. to investigate man’s ability to survive and perform in the space environment and 2. to develop basic space technology and hardware for manned space flight programs to come. NASA also had to find astronauts to fly the spacecraft. In 1959 NASA asked the U.S. military for a list of their members who met certain qualifications. All applicants are required to have extensive jet aircraft flight experience and engineering training.
Finally, in 1997, the US military admitted to lying about the object being a weather balloon. Instead they claim that the wreckage was part of a “top-secret experiment”(Mitton 11) involving some sort of balloon. Steve MacKenzie’s response, “if the object he tracked had been a weather balloon, secret or not, his superiors would have ordered him to ignore it.”(Dudley 35)
The shuttle would never make it into space as it exploded only seventy-three seconds after lift off killing all seven members of its crew. The explosion was blamed on the O-rings, a set of gaskets that sealed the joints between the rocket booster sections. They failed due to being exposed to cold weather. When the O-Rings failed the twin booster rockets separated and few off, the shuttle cabin separated and fell ten miles into the ocean. People who watch the videotape at around one second after ignition could see black smoke coming from the right Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). The black smoke suggested that some type of grease that sealed the O-Rings was being burned.
One of the most robust phenomena in psychology is ingroup/outgroup bias. Past research has shown that while people empathize with almost anyone in distress they empathize more with their in-group - family, friends, or their own ethnic group (Society Of Neuroscience, 2009). Previous studies have shown that stereotypes, that are believed to contain the summary of our cultural beliefs about a group, are often automatically activated these when group members are encountered or even thought about (Scott, 2005).
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia was lost due to structural failure in the left wing. On take-off, it was reported that a piece of foam insulation surrounding the shuttle fleet's 15-story external fuel tanks fell off of Columbia's tank and struck the shuttle's left wing. Extremely hot gas entered the front of Columbia's left wing just 16 seconds after the orbiter penetrated the hottest part of Earth's atmosphere on re-entry. The shuttle was equipped with hundreds of temperature sensors positioned at strategic locations. The salvaged flight recorded revealed that temperatures started to rise in the left wing leading edge a full minute before any trouble on the shuttle was noted. With a damaged left wing, Columbia started to drag left. The ships' flight control computers fought a losing battle trying to keep Columbia's nose pointed forward.
NASA introduced to the world, in 1976, the first reusable manned spacecraft. This became known as the space shuttle. Five years later, in 1981, space flights began with Columbia. Columbia ascended into space for a 54 hour orbiting mission. Later, it descended back to earth, as if it was a regular airplane that just took passengers from Boston to Detroit. Columbia only had two crewmembers, Commander John Young and Pilot Bob Crippen. Columbia completed 27 missions before disintegrating in the descent of its 28th mission in 2003. Challenger was NASA’s second space shuttle. Its first mission was April 4, 1983. Challenger made nine journeys into space, before that tragic January day.
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...
The materials to build a shuttle must be top tier materials. Every time a shuttle launches, some parts are damaged beyond repair and must be replaced. Fuel for a shuttle is also expensive. People must be paid to build the ship and must be paid to work ground control. These expenses, along with others, begin to add up quickly. NASA reported that their average launch costs $450 million (2015, Bray). These funds are being used to do scientific research to help society. Spending that much money just to see space seems ludicrous. However, as Greenberg points out in his cartoon, money has power. A study was done in 1980 to see how many were interested in space tourism. This study found that “over 40 million people would like to take a trip on a space shuttle, and some 55 million would like to take a cruise ship-like space trip” (2015, Chang). In 1994 it was projected that space tourism could bring in about $50 million annually (2015, Chang). Comparing $450 million to the projected intake of $50 million shows just how expensive it would be. $50 million is a large price tag for a suborbital
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.