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…
In the early spring of 1986, The Challenger was scheduled to launch in the morning from the Kennedy Space Center. The Challenger had seven passengers. One of these passengers was a Christa McAuliffe, a social studies teacher from New Hampshire. She was the first ordinary citizen to be going to space. The social studies teacher had won the opportunity through NASA’s Teachers in space program. The spacecraft was in the air only seventy-three seconds before it exploded and broke apart into the ocean. Everyone was in shock. All the passengers were killed tragically. This put a horrible mark on NASA’s reputation. Some even wanted to close the exploration to space. American was in mourning and everyone felt the blow of the tragedy. However, President Ronald Reagan saw it fit to continue space exploration. He gave an argument and a tribute to America and the families of the lost passengers. His tribute swayed American to see the silver lining in the tragedy and understand why we must continue the journey to explore space.…
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.…
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” These were the first words said on the moon by Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. The Apollo program was a series of rocket launches by nasa to get us to our moon, starting with Apollo 1, and leading through to 13, in this essay, you will learn about 3 of the missions.…
Many people undermine the importance and contributions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as NASA. As president Obama is forced to make severe budget cuts, NASA is among the most affected programs to endure the blow. This issue does not take aback many people, but experts say that what is occurring will affect everyone as well as the economy more than they may believe. These extreme budget cuts recently issued by Congress impinge on the NASA space program by having a large impact on culture, and risking the setback of innovation in today’s machine-driven society.…
In the early morning of February 1st, 2003, the US watched in horror as the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the blue Texas sky (Simberg). The wreckage of the ship and the remains of her seven crew members were strewn all across Texas and parts of Louisiana. Even the most staunch NASA believers contemplated their support for the agency as fire rained from the sky. It had been nearly 17 years since the last fatal disaster of the Challenger explosion, and this served as another frightening reminder that space travel still is not safe. The incident caused the question that everyone asked themselves that day: Is the journey of space travel and exploration worth the sacrifice of human lives? This line of thinking has ultimately lead to the debate over whether we, as American tax payers, should continue to fund NASA in its mission to explore and understand the universe. I propose that NASA is not only an important part of our government, but an absolute critical piece of our development as a human species.…
The Challenger Space Shuttle, one of the most anticipated shuttle launches, was the first mission to ever include a teacher astronaut. Christa McAuliffe, the teacher that was going on the shuttle along with six others, was supposed to broadcast lessons around the country from space. Sadly, all the excitement and joy came to an end shortly after the launch. The mission marked the first time American astronauts lost their lives. One of the worst disasters of manned spaceflight is the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion(Challenger, 2008), which was caused by a combination of natural and man-made issues, and had a permanent effect on safety and regulations of manned spaceflight.…
I vividly remember the day of the Challenger Disaster. I was five years old and in kindergarten. My teacher, Ms. Epton, brought us outside to watch the shuttle launch; something many kids have to watch on television, but those of us living on the coast got to witness firsthand. I remember seeing the fiery glow of the shuttle, the gasps by the adults, and quickly being hurried back into the classroom. Not much was said about what had happened, it was not until later that I fully understood.…
The challenger explosion happened because there was a broken O ring. If the scientists didn’t overlook this problem then those people who died in the explosion would have lived the carelessness of these people cost the other people their life. I think that this could have been easily stopped the flight could have been postponed or even cancelled but it wasn’t and cost 7 people their life the families blame the space program for these deaths.…
Round up Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, Ben Affleck and the rest of the gang from Armageddon. This rag-tag group of individuals has about one month to stop an asteroid from obliterating planet Earth. No, this is not a sequel to one of the best movies of our generation, but an actual possibility. NASA has had its eyes on an impending asteroid for quite some time. If it's anything to actually worry about is still up for debate.…
It all started with one statement: ''I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.'' President John F. Kennedy said this in a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961. But why was sending a man to the moon so important to the United States? Well, the main reason was the US at the time was behind the Soviet Union in space travel developments, And America in the Cold War era it was in welcomed Kennedy's proposal to leap ahead of the competition.…
According to Steven J. Dick (2008) in The Birth of NASA, Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in October of 1957 was a source of embarrassment for America. America saw itself as a “leader in aeronautical and space science and technology” and Russia beating them to space was a slap in the face. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was born July 29, 1958, at the direction of President Eisenhower. At its outset, some of NASA’s objectives included providing national defense agencies with discoveries that would aid in national defense, reestablishing America as the preeminent technological leader of the world and peaceful cooperation between the U.S. and other nations in pursuit of shared goals (para1-9). Today, with the shuttle program gone, and with NASA’s budget getting ever smaller, these original mandates are getting more and more difficult to fulfill. As a result, America is in danger of losing its position as the preeminent leader in space exploration and technological advancement. This paper will be an examination of reasons why the U.S. should continue to fund space exploration despite other problems in the world today.…