In the following case study, we’ll have a brief analysis of the disaster that took place with the “Challenger Space Shuttle” and the role played by the 3 most important players: Thiokol, NASA and the White House. At the end we will discuss the things that could have prevented not only this but all major disasters that take place in various organizations.…
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after 73 seconds into flames in flight on January 28, 1986 with one of the seven astronauts, a school teacher Christa McAuliffe aboard.…
The sequence of events that led to the bad decision on the part of NASA’s base lie in economic, political, and scheduling backlog pressures. Competition from the European Space Agency put NASA under pressure to come up with a space mission, which would hopefully shed light on the ability of NASA to plan commercialized space departures. NASA also had to prove that its program should continue to be funded; another unforeseen pressure pushing NASA to schedule its record number of Space exploration trips that year than in any other year. Also, the space shuttle mission scheduled before the Challenger had been delayed over and over; a record number of times. The next mission after the Challenger involved a probe being sent into space in order to evaluate Haley’s Comet. If the Challenger and subsequently the next mission were not executed in a timely manner then a doppelganger probe from Russia would beat the U.S. probe to Haley’s Comet. Pressure to launch the challenger, as soon as possible, could have also come from President Reagan’s upcoming State of the Union Address in which he would be mentioning the first teacher astronaut in space. All of these beforehand mentioned pressures led to bad engineering design, and timing, which ultimately led to the failure of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission. In order to evaluate and correct…
Ronald Wilson Reagan became the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. During his presidency, on January 28th, 1986, NASA had launched a shuttle, named “the Challenger.” However, immediately after the launch the Challenger experienced a detrimental fault that caused it to explode shortly after takeoff. Seven courageous crew members were aboard this shuttle, and unfortunately none…
Vanguard, by 1957, was off to a slow start. The first satellite launch facility was only built that year in Cape Canaveral, Florida (Naval Research Laboratory), and TV-2, only the third test vehicle for stage one, was being tested. It was at this time when project…
In its two hundred and twenty eight years of existence, the country of America has seen many tragedies and failures. However, in the eyes if many, the worst of these tragedies was by far the Challenger disaster of 1986. On January 26, the world was shocked as everyone watched the Challenger shuttle explode, killing all seven crewmembers. The challenger disaster was by far one of the worst tragedies of the space exploration era. However, the disaster should not have occurred. In fact, it should have been prevented.…
As the shuttle was getting ready for take off at the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida, Americans (including many children in schools) watched live on television. As soon as the shuttle took for take off it only stayed in the air seventy three seconds until shattering. To deal with the crisis President Ronald Reagan took it into his own hands to send a message out to America. He mentions to the school children that, "...tragedy is sometimes part of the process of expanding our horizons" (This Day in History: Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion Kills Seven). He then speaks of the Challenger crew and how they pulled us into the future.…
That same year President Eisenhower signed the public order which created the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). After the creation of NASA the Space Race would continue to heat up when the Soviet space program launched Luna 2 which was the first space probe to hit the moon. As if that accomplishment wasn’t enough the Soviet continued to soar forward in Space exploration being the first country to send the first person to orbit the Earth. This was done so in a capsule-like spacecraft known as Vostok 1. The United States could not just sit back and be out done, so with much effort they build a smaller, cone-shaped capsule that was found to be far lighter than Vostok. This capsule would be used to test and conduct Project Mercury, an American name for the efforts to send a man into space. The U.S. used chimpanzees to test the space craft, and made one final test in March of 1961. On May 5, 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Later that same month President John F. Kennedy decided to make a bold and powerful statement which would claim that the U.S. would land…
At this point in time, popularity in space exploration was at its peak. Any news dealing with current or future plans of going to space was being broadcast live for the world to see. The Challenger Space Shuttle was a new project NASA was attempting. They were sending a teacher into space and allowing her to present a school lesson while in space. “Because this was the ‘Teacher in Space’ flight, hundreds of thousands of school children were watching as the shuttle exploded (Stuckey).” This horrific scene for…
President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. Headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, the commission included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. Their investigation revealed that the O-ring seal on Challenger’s solid rocket booster, which had become brittle in the cold temperatures, failed. Flames then broke out of the booster and damaged the external fuel tank, causing the spacecraft to disintegrate.(Cole, Michael D.pg.26) After figuring out what had happened NASA decided to cancel all the upcoming launches. After the accident, NASA refrained from sending astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of the shuttle’s features. Flights began again in September 1988 with the successful launching of Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, including the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station. On February 1, 2003, a second space shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, killing all aboard. While missions resumed in July 2005, the space shuttle is slated for retirement in 2011. (www.history.com pg 1) No one ever thought this was going to happen NASA wouldn’t have…
The multiple failures that led the disastrous events on the 28th of January, 1986 were inexcusable. The reason the Challenger Space Shuttle blew up 73 seconds after launch was the result of a faulty sealing system which allowed exhaust flames from the Solid-Fuel Rocket Boosters (SRB) to vent directly on the external tank, rupturing the tank and causing the explosion. There was excessive erosion on the O-ring in the booster field joints. The launch had also taken place in untested temperature conditions and in spite of serious warning on the part of the engineers of Thiokol, the company that manufactured the SRBs. One would think that all fingers point to the Thiokol in this case, however fault lies with NASA itself. Due to the enormous pressures politically and economic considerations, NASA had to launch multiple space shuttle missions in order to justify its budget with Congress. The president also wanted to give his state of the union address while the Challenger was in space. All of these different factors ultimately led to the demise of the Space Shuttle, Challenger along with 7 souls.…
In the presidential speech, “The Space Shuttle "Challenger" Tragedy Address,” Ronald Reagan states his sympathy for the seven lives that were lost in the devastating explosion and how the space program will continue to move forward. Reagan address’s the audience when he states, “We mourn their loss as a nation together.”…
Space exploration was magical for my generation. If you asked any child, especially boys, what they wanted to be when they grew up, many would proudly announce “An astronaut!”. That does not seem to be the case with the youth of today as our space program is not the glory we once knew. For the majority of Americans, the Challenger Disaster was just that, a disaster. After watching the documentaries and listening to the opinions expressed by both experts and those actually in charge of the lethal decisions in the launch, my views have changed. It is hard to imagine money and appearance were the driving motives to launch a shuttle with known complications. The fact the space program…
This speech was given instead of the planned state of the union speech given annually by presidents. On January 28th 1986 a space shuttle took off on the coast of Florida and it…
The Space Race was a period of time in our history that most people today know very little about. Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing into the 1970s, the fight for superiority between the United States and the Soviet Union found its way into space. The Space Race, while often thought of as a not so secret competition between these two powerhouses to get to the moon, was in fact a public forum where they could demonstrate who was more advanced in technology and military force, and in turn whose politics and economics were better. With the Soviet Union making notable advancements in science and technology, their early start in the race seemed as if it would lead to their inevitable win.…