Challenger Disaster and Groupthink. Then, Discuss How Groupthink Might Have Created Decision-Making Problems for Nasa and Its Booster Contractor

Groupthink refers to defective decision-making in a group. The groups experiencing groupthink does not reflect on all the available alternatives and they want consensus and agreement in the decisions made at the expense of the quality of the decisions. Their basic motive is to minimize the conflict and arrive at a consensus, irrespective of the necessary critical testing and analysis of the ideas behind the decision (Groupthink, 1999). The incident of 28 January, 1986 also involved a wrong decision making process.

The launch was delayed several times before 1986 due to the technical reasons. The launch on January 28 was also delayed for two hours, when a hardware interface section in the system of launch processing (which checks the arrangement of fire detection), failed, while the process of liquid hydrogen tanking was being conducted. However, the officials at the NASA overrode the issues and concerns of the Engineers and commanded a lift off on January 28, 1986. The mission shattered in a dangerous accident that killed the 7 astronauts on board (Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, 2009).

The chief reason behind the cause of the disaster was the failure of the 'aft joint seal' in the right SRB (solid rocket boosters) because of the extremely cold weather. Moreover, one year ago only, a big fault was observed in the design of the solid rocket boosters. These two very powerful rockets were strapped to the side of the External Tank and they accelerated the shuttle. Just two minutes after the launch of the shuttle, the SRB's discharged from the shuttle and they were collected for reprocess. The SRB's were made by a contractor (Morton Thiokol, Inc.) for NASA (Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, 2009).

The failure of 'O rings' in the right SRB resulted in the accident. Design flaws in the joint and extraordinarily cold weather conditions at the time of the launch resulted in the O rings to allow the hot gases to escape out of the booster through the joint. The...