Nasa Failure

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Recommended: The history of the challenger space shuttle disaster

Columbia and Challenger: Organizational Failure at NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration commonly known by the abbreviated term of NASA is the pioneer when it comes to Science and technological developments and researches with regard to all areas of space flight and space science. The scientific researches they undertake are extremely risky due to its highly technical fields as well as human involvement in those pilot projects. The tragic failures of Challenger Space Shuttle in 1986 and Columbia space shuttle in 2003 highlights the risk involvement in these projects and cost of failures is very high because of the human lives lost. It is argued that these mission failures are mainly due to the fact of Poor organizational structure …show more content…

Learning from mistakes and existence of blame culture
For a high tech savvy and innovation lead company like NASA it is critical they learn from their mistakes and there is a proper knowledge management system implemented to improve the learning process and distribute knowledge which seems to be lacking in NASA and it is evident by the failure in Colombia Shuttle after exactly about 17 years for the Challenger shuttle failure.
It may be because of the blame culture that exist in NASA where rather than learning from mistakes and move forward as an organization they may be focused on finding who is exactly responsible for the mistakes and blame them and chase them away. It is important to minimize errors in a company like NASA, but at the same time they must have a proper system to guide learning from past …show more content…

It was a known fact the Challenger as well as Columbia space shuttle tragedies took place because of exacerbation of well-known design failures.
The Quality control mechanism needs to identify the ability of parts in the space shuttle to face reactions from wind, humidity, temperature etc as well make sure the design measures are 100% accurate and the necessary resources are allocated in the designing process to achieve optimum quality in design and should always try to be proactive rather than being reactive which can reduce quality failure cost as well increase effectiveness of the design to face any vulnerabilities. It is recommended to have a separate team to monitor quality related aspects and make sure the competencies and skills of this team are intact. Systems like PRACA with relevant resources will definitely help to maintain the quality levels as required, but should be continuously monitored and any necessary changes should be warmly welcomed and in a dynamic industry like this flexibility in operations is key.
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