The Challenger Disaster

In the broadest possible sense, despite the tremendous accomplishments of the engineers, scientists, and management involved in the shuttle program, the greatest mistake in respect to Challenger was enthusiasm. The groundwork for any project from ditch-digging to landing a rocket on the moon, must be laid with careful, methodical work that allows for no shortcutting, for whatever reason. The groundbreaking work being done by NASA, Morton Thiokol, Rockwell, and those at the Marshall Space Center does warrant excitement, but the ultimate goal of the space shuttle program was reliability. This goal, for a number of reasons, became secondary. Because attention was taken off this goal, Challenger proved to be an accident simply waiting to occur.

Enthusiasm imparted a kind of infallibility to the shuttle program that was never warranted, and set the stage for errors in the decision making process. The decision making safeguards that should have dealt with the O-ring problem, were only allowed to operate within the parameters of middle management. Alarms were sounded, but those who could have acted in defense of Ch

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xaggerating claims for the shuttle's performance. In 1983 NASA revised its flight schedule estimate to be two launches a month by the mid-1980s. In quick succession, on the 10th shuttle flight, erosion of the O-rings was noted on both nozzle joints. No action was taken. On the 15th shuttle flight, on January 24, 1985, which took place with a surface temperature of 53E F, both O-rings were severely affected. Roger Boisjoly, Morton Thiokol's top expert on O-rings, was sent to the Kennedy Space Center to inspect the boosters and was horrified to discover that blackened grease, evidence of hot gas impingement, encircled fully half the circumference of the joint. Even the back up O-rings, had been charred by hot gases. In February of 1985, the NASA manager of the SRB project determined that O-ring damage is likely to occur regularly, and that it constitutes "acceptable risk." On July 31, 1985, Roger Boisjoly, MTI's top expert on SRM joints, warned in a memo that if the O-ring problem was not corrected, "the result could be a catastrophe of the highest order..." On August 19, 1985, NASA concluded that the O-ring problem was "not an issue that should ground the fleet." On October 1, 1985, personnel at Morton Thiokol complained tha
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Approximate Word count = 1824
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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