...Space Shuttle Challenger Case I have read and studied the Space Shutter Challenger Case thoroughly and I believe that the most important failure of the case study was due to many factors which include personality, communication and motivation among the members of the group. In terms of personality, I believe the part of the failure was due to the mix of strong and weak personalities among the group. The stronger personalities which included Mason and Wiggins used direct pressure to influence Lund in to agreeing with their decision. Mason told Lund to take off his engineering hat and to put on his management hat. I believe that Mason and Wiggins used their strong and domineering personalities to influence Lund. This is a contributing factor to the failure of the space shuttle launch. Another aspect of the failure of the case is due to the poor communication between the Thiokol engineers and management. The Thiokol engineers had expressed their concerns to management about the reliability of the O-Rings being used on the space shuttles but a review committee concluded that they were safe to use and if a problem did arise there were secondary O-rings in place. In the flights leading up to the challengers departure, there was evidence that there were serious problems with the O-rings. On the eve of the launch, the weather forecast was unusually cold for Florida weather, with temperatures in the low twenty’s. Thiokol expressed concern that the O-rings would not work properly...
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...The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was the largest tragedy that had ever occurred in space travel history. The disaster occurred on January 28, 1986. Seventy-two seconds in flight, the shuttle blew up and bursted into pieces. All seven crewmembers on board died either at explosion or water impact. Most people in their teens and older when this tragedy occur, still remember when and where they were…for me it was 8th grade math class and we had it on television. It was a huge deal because the first female school teacher was onboard. The commission found that the Challenger accident was caused by a failure in the O-rings sealing on the right booster rocket housing. This caused hot gases from the pressurization to blow out, or snap the O-ring. (Wikepedia, n.d.) With the O-ring failure, this caused structural failure. On the day of the launch, it was delayed over six hours due to cold weather. This was addressed prior to launch, but it seemed that everyone ignored this vital piece of intelligence. Cold temperatures affect O-rings in every bit of aviation. In the P-3 if the weather is below freezing, a hot start shall be used so O-ring seals won’t split in the propeller which would cause hydraulic fluid leaks in the prop. The key factor besides the O-ring was the supervision and safety councils who oversaw this launch. The night prior to the launch, a meeting was held to discuss scenerios to delay the launch the following day. No one was in attendance from any...
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...On the 1st February 2003, a critical systems failure on the space shuttle Columbia on its re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere. This caused the disintegration of the shuttle leading to the death of all seven crew members. 1. Describe NASA's apparent approach to risk management after Challenger but before Columbia. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart in 76 seconds after launch, killing all of its 7 crew members. On the day of launch engineers were concerned that the temperature was too low to launch (-2.2 C lowest launch temperatures recorded) and that there was too much ice on the shuttle. O-rings would not perform correctly at this temperature. NASA management was told of this issue but it was deemed an acceptable risk and launch went ahead. After the incident, a new safety office was created to allow better communication and risk assessment. NASA’s apparent approach to risk management at this time was probable risk management1. For the space shuttle, linear analysis might be sufficient between probability, impact, and frequency2, with probability addressing how likely the risk event or condition is to occur, impact detailing the extent of what could happen if the risk materialized, and frequency meaning likelihood of occurrence of an event whose values lie between zero and one. 2. What additional risk measures would you recommend to NASA? Justify your recommendations? Firstly, NASA may need to change the organizational attitude...
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...Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster happened on February 1st, 2003, which broke on the way back to the Earth. All the astronauts, including two women died in this disaster. The reason why this disaster happened was a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank which damaged the left wing of the shuttle. Even though some engineers of NASA had doubted that the left wing of shuttle had been damaged, the administration staffs restricted to do advanced research. The engineers of NASA found that the foam shedding and debris strikes could not be avoided and solved, even though the previous design of space shuttle required that the external tank was not to shed foam or other debris. However, this situation was not account for security threat and regarded as the acceptable risk. Thus, the launch was given the go-head. Due to the broken left wing which caused the damage of Space Shuttle thermal protection system, hot gases penetrated and destroyed the internal wing structure which led to the disintegrate of the shuttle immediately over the area of south Dallas. Ignore the Feedback Control Even though the similar situation happened in the prior mission (in the 13th and 16th mission of Columbia, the foam went undetected as well), the administration department of NASA were getting used to those situation which did not cause the serious damage to the shuttle that led to the disaster of the 28th mission of Columbia. Just like...
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...The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster American History Semester 2 Term Paper By: Dhiren Reddy The space shuttle Challenger disaster was a very important event in our countries history. It was a terrible accident which gave it kind of infamy of being a failed space mission. People see an explosion and don’t think twice about the tremendous amount of work, over the years, and the number of aspects that went in to the mission. These included the extreme pre-launch training that consisted of strenuous physical exercises and hundreds of hours of reading and studying, the work NASA put in after the explosion to prevent any incident of this kind from happening again, and finally what actually took place on launch day. All of these thing were...
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...Underlying Cause(s) Superficially, the Columbia space shuttle explosion was caused by critical damage to the Orbiter sustained during launch. Upon ascent, a piece of insulating foam separated from the external fuel tank’s bipod ramp and struck the Orbiter’s left wing, causing a buildup of atmospheric gas in the wing. Which upon reentry compromised the Orbiter’s structural integrity. In-depth analysis of pre-launch decision-making revealed that NASA’s strict flight schedule placed unrealistic time pressures on the management team and engineers. The team was tasked with five launches in one year. As a result, they were constantly looking ahead to the next flight instead of focusing their full attention on the current flight, its mission, and its safe return. The pressure created a mindset that disregarded all concerns. A more realistic time schedule would have remedied this. After all, defying gravity takes time....
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...Columbia space shuttle disaster, as it pertains to the lack of leadership and communication of those involved. Relevancy of Leadership Leadership is necessary in all situations. It is especially essential in the case of accidents. The question I have to ask is why did this incident become an accident? What could have been done to prevent this disaster from happening? Was NASA aware of the possibilities of this space shuttles’ vulnerability?...
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...Columbia Space Shuttle Simulation (LINDA HAM) 1. How would you characterize the culture of NASA? What are its strengths and weaknesses? NASA was created in 1958 to give the United States of America a position in the “space race” after the Soviet Union launched the satellite “Sputnik” into orbit. The goal of NASA was to put a man into orbit before any other country and shortly after that was completed, the new goal was to put a man on the moon. NASA gained recognition from all over the world for it’s success in space exploration but soon, the pressure from the government caused changes would lead to major problems. Culture can be defined as, “a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” During the time of the Columbia Mission I believe NASA’s culture was very static meaning it hadn’t changed in a long time. NASA’s culture focused on major values such as, safety, schedule efficiency, integrity, and communication. But out of these values, schedule efficiency took precedence over the others, which led to disaster. There are many strengths and weaknesses of NASA’s culture but the weaknesses caused the organization to become counterproductive in the long run. The strengths of NASA’s culture are that the organization has a very “can-do” attitude when it comes to task achievement, they have a legacy of excellence and technological advancement, the organization is bureaucratic, and there is a strong sense of pride and teamwork at NASA. There...
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...In 2003, the space shuttle named Columbia exploded upon reentry into the atmosphere, and the tragedy is that there was no crew that came back safely to Earth. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) which had responsibility for investigating this crisis, found that the main factor which made the shuttle blow up was the bad decision made by the Mission Management Team (MMT). Even though the MMT had many pieces of information and evidence from the Debris Assessment Team (DAT) showing that the large foam might have caused damage to the Columbia and how much the DAT worried about the mission, they did not pay much attention. Moreover, the leader of the MMT decided for everyone on the team that the shuttle was safe and the foam strike was inconsequential. In fact, the performance of the MMT is a powerful demonstration of the way in which a small group can bring about critical failure. Small groups, today, is ubiquitous and becoming a substantial part of people’s work lives. Many organizations have made every effort to find how to make groups run successfully and how to make group interactions more productive. Sometimes, group dynamics can contribute to the failure and poor judgments. Surowiecki (2010) said that “instead of making people wiser, being in a group can actually make them dumber” (p. 441). So as to make every member think smarter and work together effectively, avoiding important pitfalls is the best way to reach those goals. [What a successful rethinking and...
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...execute with multi-discipline partnerships, segment technology stacks and general provide core applications to our business partners. However we would suggest we are on the midst of our Apollo moment in technology. 1969 saw one of man’s greatest accomplishments achieved. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon a mere ten years after Kennedy’s bold challenge. A relatively insurmountable task when you consider we hadn’t even sent a man to space 9yrs earlier, and yet now we were walking on the moon broadcasting for the world to see. Yet the 1970’s were not as kind to our bold space explorer’s, the public interest was low and life in space appeared to be relatively routine. It was not until the launch of the Space Shuttle in 1978 that a new vision a new strategy was employed to again challenge the fabric of mankind… this time could we live in space, not just travel in it. Today we know the answers, successes, failures, tragedies and hero’s of the global space community. However it took the reinvention. Mercury, to Saturn, to Apollo and the Shuttle. Along the...
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...to Florida , we're the only ones left so in order to survive we have to get to Florida or farther to evacuate.” “That's like a 13 hour drive but okay let's go Mason decides to take the wheel considering Will has no experience.After driving for what seemed like forever they start to notice some cars have Florida licence plates when all of a sudden the car stopped. “Wow I'm surprised the car went this far” said mason “Yea, but now what” said will “Don't worry we'll just take some gas from another car”said Mason They went over to a car and found the radio was on and that it was live news. *Important announcement, next space shuttle to Florida” They rushed to get the gas into the car and rode off then all of a sudden the ginormous space shuttle rode right above them in a rapid speed they rushed and rushed they saw hundreds of people boarding the space shuttle *BOOM!* the meteor had hit planet earth… *heavy breathing* “ that was the craziest dream ever”he thought,once he realized the room was empty like his dream he freaked out a bit but soon heard voices and was relieved and headed to his next class. “ NO NO NOOO” *BOOM!* ...
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...Online learning is better than a traditional classroom setting and is also convenient. I agree with this because I am doing online learning. I believe that it accommodates the busy lives people have these days. Whether its working or raising a family, its hard to get to a traditional class on time versus getting on your computer at midnight and doing your course work. Some people think that there is too much time being spent on electronics as it is due to the fact that it runs their lives. But without electronics, where would we be now? We couldn’t track space shuttles or satellites without the help of computers. Computers have come along way since the 50’s. They are more advanced than they were back then. Another good thing about online learning versus traditional classroom learning is that you can study at your own leisure and at your own pace. You can’t do that in a traditional classroom learning setting. People without hectic lives prefer the traditional classroom learning so they can get the help from the teacher on a one on one level and be able to turn in assignments to a person not through a computer. They prefer more structured settings and being able to ask for help from fellow students also on a one on one level. I’ve done both, and I prefer the online learning due to more time to do assignments at my own pace and I don’t feel rushed. I felt rushed in a classroom setting. With online learning, you don’t have to worry about carrying books from class...
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...they would look at the problem and write it off as not important the majority of the times. There are barriers in the management that has hinder the reports from coming through to upper management. NASA organization needs to fine-tune the way management works together and needs to realize what is really important to the organization. The safety of the workers and the astrologists should be there mane concurred, not that safety problem makes them look bad. When the upper management would get the report and then they looked at the problem and would say it is not really a problem. Then when the employee or contractor would say it is problem they would tell them to prove that it is, just cause they thought it was fine and wanted to get the space shuttle off the ground. This why fine-tuning is important to this organization they had the right way and procedures. They just needed to change how competitive each department was ageist each other and made that would work together on making the safety concerns. Cation of Running Expectations With the NASA organization they need to expect some unanticipated outcomes to the way the organization was being operated. The way the managers was running the organization was very unanticipated on how things would transpire. They had employees that would be competing on projects and would keep things that should have be alrteated to the upper...
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...CLASS PROPHESY By: Lorenn Glenz F. Raymundo Lend me your ears. In just a minute, we’ll take a trip to the future. Stand back, widen your imagination and enjoy the trip. Let’s explore the year 2031. It’s 6:00 in the morning. I was enjoying my cup of freshly brewed coffee while savoring the sceneries and cool climate of Tagaytay where I bought my new farm house a few weeks ago. When I heard my phone ringing. It was my mom reminding me about my trip back to the United States tomorrow. I’ve been living there for the past three years with my family. I was quite excited because I will be attending the annual meeting of the American Accounting Association next week. So I decided to pack my things. I was about to go to my room, when Kirbey, my dog, jumped on me. I lost my balance… and everything went dark. I can’t open my eyes. My head was terribly aching. But I can see a familiar face though the whole thing was vague. I tried to clear my sight. And my instinct was right. It was Lauren Gayle Dy Tioco. She was the resident doctor in the hospital where I was brought in after the accident. And guess what? She is not just the doctor but she is actually the owner of the hospital. She told me that everything was fine except for my sprained ankle. I just need to stay for a couple of hours and I can be discharged. I invited her for lunch but she refused. She was in a hurry to go to Manila for a meeting with our former classmates Trisha Mae Catalig and Analeen dela Cruz who are now pharmacists...
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...Boeing Management Planning I have chosen that the company I an going to do research into is that of Boeing. Boeing is considered to be a leading company that manufactures jetliners and military aircrafts. Boeing provides products to over 150 countries and employees ore than 165,000 people. (Boeing, 2011). Boeing is also one of the companies that currently works with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), they provide support for the space shuttle. There are many factors that can and will influence the companies overall success, these can be internal factors as well as external factors. I will briefly discuss some of the things that works well for Boeing including management function, ethics, and factors that will influence the company's different aspects of planning. Boeing by the looks if it has a very structured aspect of management, this consists of the Chairman, president, senior vice president, and administration. The company states that they values culture which is what guides them as a business. Boeing has a comprehensive approach when it comes to how they want to me known and that includes the following: • Boeing strives to be creative in the products and services that they provide for their customers world wide (Boeing, 2011) • Boeing their business with a responsible and forward thinking manner. This mean commitment to values, customer satisfaction, safety, quality, and integrity (Boeing, 2011). • Boeing partners with different organizations...
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