Space Shuttle Challenger’s Mission Failure
Organizational culture is a crucial factor that management and stakeholders should emphasize. Failure to pay attention to this factor, a negative outcome is likely to occur in the organization. Failure of the space shuttle challenger’s mission is the perfect example, and it has formed a significant basis for several studies concerning the organizational culture. The 1986 unfortunate incident took place amid the high aspiration of many to witness the triumphal landing of the space shuttle in the space. Many people were watching the mission all over the earth. The students had an opportunity to watch the event as one teacher had been selected by NASA to fly via the “Teachers in Space” program.
The mission, however, failed 73 seconds after the taking off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, killing seven crew of astronauts and one civilian teacher. Due to the incident, a presidential commission was convened to establish the cause of the explosion of the space vehicle. The commission comprised of NASA’s astronauts, Neil Armstrong (The first man to land on the moon) and other astronauts. The report submitted by the commission brought into light two major cultural issues at NASA that led to the explosion. First, NASA workers were used to not reporting problems to the launch decision team. Second, the rate of flight of the shuttle was unsustainable due to the size of the workforce.
Components of Culture that could have prevented the incident
Communication
The challenger exploded as a result of the failure of an O-Ring seal in the Solid Rocket Booster that releases hot gases. The hot gases that escaped made a hole in the external tank leading to the failure of the dome of liquid hydrogen and smashed into the liquid oxygen tank. As a result, fuel was released bursting into flames hence causing the accident. Engineers working on the Solid Rocket Boosters, knew that O-Rings had problems but did not inform the management. Also, O-ring erosion had been observed on other flights, but the management did not investigate the issue. A culture of communication would have helped NASA avoid the accident. If the engineers had passed the information regarding the foam from the O-Rings to the management, action would have been taken hence eliminating the danger. There should be a flow of information in an organization to avoid risks and losses.
Safety
The commission’s report shows that NASA started the acceleration of the space shuttle launch schedule. This, in turn, put pressure on systems; thus, the personnel could not handle the frequency with which the shuttles were launched. The investigation found that NASA had not committed enough resources to the attainment of its goal. Therefore the process that must be engaged to launch a mission was flawed. Safety culture could have helped the organization launch missions that were within the capability of its workforce in terms of checking the technical fit of the shuttle.
References
Feynman, R. (1986). Report of the presidential commission on the space shuttle challenger accident. Appendix F.
McConnell, M. (1987). Challenger: A major malfunction. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.