Challenger Case Study
Q1. How would you characterize the broader context surrounding the January 1986 teleconference? What impact might that have on the group’s decision making process?
The Challenger Launch decision on January 28th 1986, proved to be one of the crucial decisions ever made as it lead to one of space science's most talked about disasters. The Challenger launch project was faced by a major financial constraint owing to the ongoing Vietnam War. Thiokol won the contract to build the SRBs since they asked for a lower emolument that their competitors and also provided an innovative modular design for the SRBs that would ease the transportation. There were many reasons NASA was pressured to launch, one being the need to launch the 51L space shutter without any delays so the launch pad could be restored in time for the next mission. Also, any delay in the mission would only result in negative publicity through the media. Under such pressurised circumstances, NASA and Thiokol could not look in the right direction and lacked consensus. So, communication breakdown was perhaps the major contributor in the decision making process here.
It is evident that Thiokol was not prepared for the Teleconference since it did not have all the necessary statistical inputs required to arrive at a conclusion. This lead to an internal communication failure within Thiokol. The primary factor for such a communication failure was the lack of structured data and no proper way of seeking the data. Apart from this there was NASA and Thiokol were not on the same side and there was a continuous argument between Roger Boisjoly (The Booster seal expert) and Larry Mulloy (NASA) and complicated the decision make process even more.
The discussion in the teleconference surrounded the grease and the O-rings that could not handle the low temperatures and that both the primary and secondary seals would not function properly. Roger Boisjoly advised that no launches should take place below 53°Fand debated for
The Challenger Launch decision on January 28th 1986, proved to be one of the crucial decisions ever made as it lead to one of space science's most talked about disasters. The Challenger launch project was faced by a major financial constraint owing to the ongoing Vietnam War. Thiokol won the contract to build the SRBs since they asked for a lower emolument that their competitors and also provided an innovative modular design for the SRBs that would ease the transportation. There were many reasons NASA was pressured to launch, one being the need to launch the 51L space shutter without any delays so the launch pad could be restored in time for the next mission. Also, any delay in the mission would only result in negative publicity through the media. Under such pressurised circumstances, NASA and Thiokol could not look in the right direction and lacked consensus. So, communication breakdown was perhaps the major contributor in the decision making process here.
It is evident that Thiokol was not prepared for the Teleconference since it did not have all the necessary statistical inputs required to arrive at a conclusion. This lead to an internal communication failure within Thiokol. The primary factor for such a communication failure was the lack of structured data and no proper way of seeking the data. Apart from this there was NASA and Thiokol were not on the same side and there was a continuous argument between Roger Boisjoly (The Booster seal expert) and Larry Mulloy (NASA) and complicated the decision make process even more.
The discussion in the teleconference surrounded the grease and the O-rings that could not handle the low temperatures and that both the primary and secondary seals would not function properly. Roger Boisjoly advised that no launches should take place below 53°Fand debated for