On January 28, 1986, at approximately 11:39 am EST, the United States suffered one of its worst tragedies when the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after its take off after an O-ring seal in one of the rockets failed. This seal failure resulted in a flame lean from the rocket booster, which consequently infiltrated the external fuel tank, causing a fire which destroyed the structure of the external tank. In addition, the aerodynamic forces quickly broke the orbiter. (Dalal,945) The shuttle was disintegrated and killed all seven crew members (including a teacher).
Eventually, some of the vehicle pieces were recovered from the ocean following thorough search and recovery.
The logistics and theories for failure have been documented by numerous engineers. At pre-lift off, the three space shuttle main engines were ignited at 100% performance levels. There seemed to be nothing wrong. With computer control, they began to throttle upward to 104%. At this point, the Space Rocket Boosters were also ignited and their hold-down bolts were released through explosives, thus freeing the Challenger from the launchpad. This initial ascent allowed the gaseous hydrogen vent arm to retract from the External Tank; however, pad cameras reveal that the arm never re-latched back to the shuttle. Scientists were able to rule out the retraction as a cause for the disaster.
The Essay on Werner Von Braun Rocket Space Solar
Von Braun is well known as the leader of what has been called the "rocket team," which developed the V-2 ballistic missile for the Nazis during World War II. The V-2 s were manufactured at a forced labor factory called Mittel werk. The V-2 rocket was the most used in space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. A liquid propellant missile extending some 46 feet in length ...
Review of the the launch film revealed that smoke puffs were emitted at T+2.733 seconds from the right hand Space Rocket Booster, which is located near the external tank. The smoke was released by the opening and closing of the aft field joint in the Space Rocket Booster, whose casing had inflated under the ignition power. Because of the inflation, the metal casing was bent, allowing a gap for hot gases ( 5,000 °F) to leak through. While the main O-ring should have been able to close the gap, the low temperature prevented the ring from sealing quickly enough. Additionally, the secondary O-ring was not in its correct position because of the bent metal. Nothing could stop the gases from escaping, so both O-rings were vaporized across the arc. Even at that point, aluminum oxides which were released from the burned propellant sealed the joint and were able to replace the O-ring seal for a period of time, before the joint caught on fire.
The Rogers Commission Report investigated O-ring performance, and found that information regarding O-ring performance under thermal pressure had been disregarded in the launch preparation. After testing 23 pre-accident launches of the Challenger to predict O-ring performance, analysts were able to predict the O-ring use under the specific launch conditions presented on that fateful winter morning. Statistics and binary data show that there is strong evidence that temperature can and does affect the O-ring under thermal distress. According to this data, at the given temperature on flight day (31 ° F), the Challenger yielded over a 13% probability of critical field-joint O-ring failure. Some scientists recommended delaying the flight because all of the previous performance tests were done at temperatures of least 53 °F. If the flight had been postponed, the probability of failure would have been minimized to only around 2% (Dalal, 947).
This study reveals how recognition of crucial statistical data could have averted such a tragedy .
Many believe that the Challenger disaster was an organizational technical system accident. Later reports of the Challenger system blame the O-ring failure to design failure in terms of temperature effects, physical size, materials, as well as the effects of their re-usability and processing. These issues, surprisingly, had been noted for some amount of years, as the Presidential Commission Report (1986) had discovered that the O-ring was having problems as early as 1977. Due to lack of communication, poor organizational response, imprudent technical decisions, and failure to comply with safety standards, the O-ring problem was never addressed. Even the President derided NASA’s safety program as the “Silent Safety Program” (Vaughan, 319).
The Term Paper on Ethics Behind Challenger and Columbia Disastors
... temperatures; however they acted in recklessness and irresponsibility with the issue. Thiokol engineers were very concerned about the O-ring’s failure ... a live conversation with Challenger’s astronauts during the address. Under all this political pressure, NASA managers had to ... with recklessness and violated the code of management ethics regarding “sound judgment”; maybe the engineers didn’t follow ...
Other experts believe that the Challenger explosion had nothing to do with technical negligence. Insight experts raise concerns about the replacement of the asbestos made putty around the O-rings. Questions regarding the new putty had surfaced, especially since in 1977, reports revealed that this new eco-safe, freon-free foam had destroyed 11 times as many ceramic tiles in a shuttle than the asbestos putty. The reason was that the change in foam-blowing agents produced an increased pressure and stress concentration in the foam. NASA, however, has concluded that the affected O-rings were actually using the old asbestos foam. Nevertheless, reports have also shown that NASA, itself, is not completely aware of the different mechanisms for foam loss.
The Rogers Commission which has been the most significant source of information regarding the Challenger crash has also been criticized for its lack of objectivity and implied exculpating of NASA. First, the chief commissioner of the report William Rogers, used to represent Lockheed, the corporation that manufactured the shuttle. Additionally, several of the other members of the commission were in fact NASA employees. During the course of the investigation, top NASA official Judson Lovingood, who was a deputy director of the shuttle projects office denied any faulty machinery aboard the Challenger. Just a day later, in closed hearings, NASA officials began to discuss the history of the O-ring problems. Documents proved that the O-ring dilemma was discussed at all agency levels, filtering in and out of the bureaucracy. Instead of admitting the agency’s negligence, NASA dodged questions regarding the O-rings, and deferred all answers as currently under investigation. Despite months of accumulating evidence, and an exposee in the New York Times revealing the history of the O-rings, the final report in the Rogers Commission still stated that NASA had no documented information regarding the recent history of the critical state of the O-rings or joint. (Cook, 3)
The Term Paper on Challenger Space Shuttle
It was a cold, crisp, and damp morning on the Florida Space Coast as the space shuttle Challenger raced through the sky at speeds approaching mach 2 at an altitude of 104, 000 feet when something went perilously wrong. All of America watched, including the family members of the seven doomed crew members, as Challenger exploded into an expansive ball of fire, smoke and steam. An "Oh... no!" came as ...
The controversy of the Challenger crash still resonates today, as there have many articles written on the ethical implications behind NASA’s unwillingness to admit its ineptitude in part of the disaster. On a more hopeful note, the Challenger disaster is now being used as a case study for engineering safety, as well as ethics on corporate whistle-blowing, group decision-making, and modes of communication. Not only are universities basing curriculum on these topics, but references to the Challenger in pop culture have been numerous, ranging from comic book characters to song titles. This unfortunate event has made an indelible mark in the USA in more ways than one.
Berlau, John. Shuttle Tragedy Debate Continues – The Nation
Insight on the News, Oct 14, 2003, pp 1-4
Cook, Richard. The Rogers Commission failed; questions it never asked, answers it didn’t listen to – Challenger accident
Washington Monthly, Nov, 1986, pp 1-10
Siddhartha R. Dalal, Edward B. Fowlkes, Bruce Hoadley. Risk Analysis of the Space Shuttle: Pre-Challenger Prediction of Failure. Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 84, No. 408 (Dec., 1989), pp. 945-957
Vaughan, Diane. Theorizing Disaster: Analogy, historical ethnography, and the Challenger accident
Vaughan Ethnography. 2004, pp315-347
