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Technical writing reason for challenger disaster
Challenger disaster cause
Explosion of the space shuttle challenger essays
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On the fateful day of Jan. 28, 1986, America launched the challenger space shuttle but unexpectedly, this will be the last time the shuttle and its crew would leave the ground. On that day, the challenger had engineering errors that resulted in the shuttle exploding in the air and killing the crew. What went wrong? According to Denise Chow, journalist of New York daily news, an investigation revealed that a seal, called an O-ring, right solid rocket booster had failed at liftoff, allowing pressurized hot gas to escape from inside the booster. This vaporized material impinged on the strut connecting the solid rocket booster to the shuttle 's huge orange external tank, causing both pieces of hardware to break down. She went further into stating …show more content…
Following a two-year examination, the definite reason for the blast was revealed that the failure of a frozen O-ring, which sole purpose was to to seal the joints on the booster rockets, which caused the right booster to rupture. There’s still no findings on the exact reason for the Columbia accident on the grounds that the rocket broke down on reentry. In the event that none of the recording gadgets locally available made due, there might be little proof for NASA specialists. There is still hope for some more information as time goes on searching for pieces of information in the large amount of digital data recorded on the ground from instruments aboard Columbia that monitor the spaceship 's functions. Communication was abruptly cut off moments before the breakup. Correspondence was unexpectedly cut off minutes before the separation. It might remain always obscure to what extent Columbia 's group survived, however a cataclysmic blast of the art at 18 times the speed of sound at 207,000 feet would likely bring about moment passing, specialists …show more content…
Yet it is the main propelling framework the U.S. has for kept an eye on flight, and it is one that authorities said they plan to use for an additional 20 years before another era of shuttle can be created. As in the result of the Challenger blast, the van program has been suspended until specialists can make sense of a feasible reason for the mishap. The presidential commission examining the Challenger mishap put a decent part of the fault on defective administration rehearses at the space organization. Key data was not being identified with top administration, for example, the developing worry about the O-rings. It additionally blamed NASA for withholding data from the general
Two tragic incidents, the Challenger Space Shuttle crash of 1986, and the Three Mile Island near meltdown of 1979, have greatly devastated our nation. Both these disasters involved failures of communication among ordinary professional people, working in largely bureaucratic companies. Two memos called the “Smoking Gun Memos,” authored by R. M. Boisjoly, of Morton Thiokol, and D. F. Hallman, of Babcook and Wilcox, will always be associated these two incidents. Unfortunately, neither of these memos were successful in preventing the accidents of the Challenger and the Three Mile Island near meltdown.
The Hindenburg was a luxury airship, from nazi Germany. This "Titanic of the skies" (no pun intended) was destroyed by a flash fire in 1937 while landing in New Jersey after making its 10th transatlantic crossing. Thirty-five of the 97 people aboard and one ground crew member were killed when the blimp burst into flames and was rapidly consumed by the fire.
The Space Race began when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into space in 1957. The United States’ answer to this was the Apollo program. While the Apollo program did have successful launches, such as the Apollo 11 launch that landed Americans on the moon, not every launch went as smoothly. Fifty years ago, a disaster occurred that shook the Apollo program to its core. On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 command module was consumed by a fire during one of its launch rehearsal tests. This led to the death of three astronauts, Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom, Edward Higgins White, and Roger Bruce Chaffee. The fire was caused by a number of factors, most of which were technical. These causes range from the abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere of the
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 public affairs sector of NASA had learned from the Apollo 1 tragedy that withholding information from the public greatly affected the public’s image of the program. Not properly informing the public on current issues also goes against the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics third canon, ‘Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner” (National Society of Professional Engineers [NSPE], n.d., para. 2). The first statement in the rules of practice, section 2, states that all information should be disclosed to the public (NSPE, n.d.). During the Apollo 13 mission, NASA informed the public of the incident promptly and honestly. This is in direct agreement with the National Society of Professional Engineers Code of Ethics third canon. Effective communication and action after a crisis has a tremendous impact on the entity involved. One example is how Johnson and Johnson handled the Tylenol poisoning case in 1982. Because of their efforts, the public’s image of the company greatly improved (Kauffman, 2001). NASA was not only bound ethically to be completely transparent with the public, but they were also bound legally since they were a public entity and received funding from the
Morton-Thiokol Inc. had engineered the space shuttle's solid rocket booster (SRB) based on the Air Force's Titan III design because of its reliability. The SRB's steel case was divided into segments that were joined and sealed by rubber O-rings. Although the Titan's O-rings had occasionally been eroded by hot gases, the erosion was not regarded as significant. A second, redundant O-ring was added to each joint to act as back-up should the primary O-ring failed.
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).
Even though there were many factors contributing to the Challenger disaster, the most important issue was the lack of an effective risk management plan. The factors leading to the Challenger disaster are:
On January 26, 1986, one of the greatest disasters of our time occurred. The shuttle, Challenger, blew up in front of a live audience. The space launch was being broadcasted across the United States live from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This launch was one of the most publicized launches due to the first civilian going into space and also that the launch had been delayed six times before.
NASA failed to listen to them and went ahead with the launch witch ultimately led to the death of 7 innocent people. After the accident President Ronald Reagan made the Rogers Commission which is a group made for the investigation of the Challenger accident they found out that NASA “disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching on such a cold day and had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.” Showing that after all the people that were not listened to were right and NASA allowed this to happen.
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.
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 Hindenburg was a German passenger ship scheduled to leave Germany Spring of 1937. While attempting to dock in Township, New Jersey, it caught fire, and flames began to overwhelm the airship. Instead of successfully docking at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, it crashed at an altitude of almost 300 feet.
Fiske identifies the scandal as a management issue, not a PR issue (Fiske, 2011). The failure to acknowledge and properly report initial incidents created the implosion at Penn State. The board of trustees was not informed emphasizing the problems within the
...the government removed the remains of the wreckage and bodies of those who died on the ship. They also buried the bodies in Arlington National Cemetery and some at their hometowns. A memorial with the ship’s mast was placed in Arlington National Cemetery to honor the lives lost from the explosion.