Space Shuttle Challenger Teleconference Case Study

Case study #2: The space shuttle challenger teleconference

Question #1

Engineers at Thiokol had vigorously opposed the launching of Challenger but their warning had not been heeded by top management decision makers, who said having no knowledge that the issue about O-ring and low temperatures had been subject of intense controversy before authorizing the launch.

Past successful launches and external pressures on NASA to meet customers commitments, which translated into a requirement to launch a certain number of flights per year and to launch them on time, may occasionally have obscured engineering opinions. NASA top managers were subjected to strong external pressures to accept very ambitious goals, which were internalized within the organizational structure of the agency and felt by its managers. Constrains made it increasingly difficult for NASA to reach its goals in an acceptable way – that is, with the high level of safety expected. The disjunction between the organizational goals of NASA and acceptable means available to meet these goals created structural strains within the agency which attempted to resolve them by resorting to means that were less safe, rather than by changing its goals and proceeding more cautiously.

Neither Thiokol nor NASA responded adequately to internal warnings about the faulty seal design. Furthermore, Thiokol and NASA did not make a timely attempt to develop and verify a new seal after the initial design was shown to be deficient. Overwhelming problems were just denied. This is a result of the “go fever”, the attitude of being in a rush or hurry to get a project or task done while overlooking potential problems or mistakes, which characterized all the Nixon’s and Reagan’s space eras.

So, the causes that lead the “changing hat” were a serious flaw in decision-making process and the misalignment of top and bottom levels’ goals. Engineers were more interested in fixing functional issues before recommending the launch in order to...