University of North Dakota

The Challenger
Disaster
A Case Study

Taylor Mclean
12-13-2016
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The Challenger Disaster

Synopsis of Case

On January 28, 1986, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was

preparing to launch the space shuttle Challenger into space for the ships tenth mission from the

Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. At the time, the Challenger was NASAs

most-flown space orbiter in the fleet (Atkinson, 2012). The 10th launch was riddled with issues

and mishaps that had already postponed the launch date from July 1985 to January 28, 1986. The

long delays were in part due to weather, cargo changes, and the unique crew situation. The

launch was set to have the first American civilian on board, a New Hampshire high school

teacher named Christa McAuliffe, and the fact that the mission was set to launch the first civilian

into space made the launch that much more anticipated, and all eyes were sure to be on the

shuttle at lift off (Biography.com, 2016).

The launch was supposed to be a monumental moment in space travel for the United

States of America, and monumental it surely turned out to be. January 28, 1986 went down in

history as the date of the most tragic space travel accident in the history of space travel itself

when the Challenger space shuttle exploded a mere minute and thirteen seconds into the mission,

and what was left of the shuttle and its contents fell from the sky towards the ocean surface. It is

widely said that the reason for the explosion is an O-ring failure in the solid rocket boosters that

help to power the ship into orbit, but even NASA themselves omits some of the details which

make this case an ethical issue. In the weeks and months following the explosion there was much

talk about the reasoning behind the catastrophic failure and NASA was proved to make efforts
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towards concealing the cause by leaving out the fact that the engineers suggested not to fly in

order to protect the highly respected public image of the space program.

The crew that was lost on that day was made up of seven very intelligent and highly

qualified members: Commander Francis R. Scobee, Captain Michael J. Smith, Lieutenant

Colonel Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Christa McAuliffe and

Gregory B. Jarvis. One of the most tragic things about the disaster is that the people who were

lost in the explosion, werent part of the team that made the decision to launch. There were many

people involved in coordinating the launch and in launch control, but decisions were made by a

select few people in the days and hours leading up to the launch that proved to be fatal for the

crewmembers. A few of the most public people involved in the events that lead to the explosion

were Joe Kilminster of Morton-Thiokol, Lawrence Mulloy, and Stanley Reinartz of NASA

(McDonald, 2015).

Decision Making Process

In October of 1985, an executive engineer at Morton-Thiokol; the contracted company

that was hired by NASA to develop the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) for the launches, sent out a

memo in an attempt to inform everyone at NASA that he had serious concerns about low

temperature launches because of the high risk of critical O-Ring failures on the SRBs. The

engineers at Morton-Thiokol knew that the design was flawed and made that very clear to the

Engineers and Launch Control people at NASA three months before the disastrous launch

attempt in January (Bergin, 2007). The original launch date was delayed for six days due to

weather concerns and technical issues that came up, and because of all of the delays there was an

even higher pressure to complete the launch as soon as possible.

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The night before the rescheduled launch date, the temperature at the Kennedy Space

Center was forecasted to get down to as low as 18 degrees. The engineers at Morton-Thiokol

were concerned that the large O-Ring seals on the SLBs would not operation as designed due to

the cold temperatures. Allen McDonald, former director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor

Project for Morton-Thiokol got all of the engineers at Morton-Thiokol together to make a

recommendation to the lowest safe temperature that the SRB O-rings would function as designed

at, and instructed Robert Lund, the VP of engineering, to make the decision, not program

management. He decided that it was a technical issue and should be decided on based on its

technical merit only. He then arranged a teleconference between the Morton-Thiokol engineers

in Utah, engineers at NASA in Alabama, and the management at the Kennedy Space Center to

discuss the concerns that the engineering team had about the risk for O-ring failure due to such

cold temperatures. The VP of engineering recommended that they do not launch below 53

degrees, but the management at NASA did not agree with that and rebuked that decision. During

that call, the management at Morton-Thiokol asked for a five minute off call caucus to ensure

that they had went through all of the data properly, and when the call proceeded, Joe Kilminster;

VP of Space Booster Programming at Morton-Thiokol came back on the line and said that the

data was reassessed and they had concluded that there was no need for a temperature

requirement.

NASA took that answer no questions asked, but said that they needed it in writing by a

high level Morton-Thiokol official. That official was Allen McDonald, but because of the

decisions made by the engineering team he refused to sign off on the launch. Because of

McDonalds decision to not sign off on the launch and McDonald tried to convince Mulloy and

Reinartz of NASA not go forward with the launch that day. Joe Kilminster signed off on the
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launch on behalf of Morton-Thiokol. Based on the decision made outside of the engineering

teams advice, NASA was preparing to launch a shuttle into space outside of the approved

temperature limits for all shuttle hardware and was going against the launch protocol to do so.

This information proved to not be important to Mulloy, Reinartz, and Kilminster as the decision

was made to continue as planned.

Allen McDonald and his team of engineers realized that they had a moral obligation not

to their company, but to do what was right and what was safe. Instead of following the advice of

the engineering team, NASA and the management at Morton-Thiokol put them in a position to

prove that the O-Rings would fail rather than allowing the decision to be made based on

experience and knowledge (McDonald, 2015). They made the decision to launch not based on

what they knew, but what they didnt know. William Lawrence said that a thing is safe if its

risks are judged to be acceptable, but in this case it is important to understand that sometimes the

ones to judge the risks dont have a good enough understanding of the thing to make that

decision.

The implied social contract of professionals states that all participants must respect

another's decision or recommendation when it comes down to the safety of the public. In this

case, the implied ethical contract was broken because the advice of the engineering team, which

was opposed to the launch, was overridden by management in an effort to not postpone the

launch date any further. The members of the organization that agreed with the decision to

continue with the launch did not put the welfare of the public and the welfare of the crew into

account. There was blatant neglect present in the decision to sign off on the launch, and it proved

fatal for seven mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers that tragic day. The engineers of Morton-
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Thiokol decided it was in the best interest of all participants to not continue with the launch that

day. By doing so they proved that there are situations that arise in the workplace that sometimes

warrant choosing what is morally right over what is thought to be required of you by the

company.

One thing that hindered sound ethical decisions was the level of pressure that was placed

on NASA. In the United States of America, 1986 was supposed to be the Year of the Shuttle

with a launch planned almost once a month for the entire year. There was extreme pressure on

NASA employees and the contracted companies that had a stake in the launches planned that

year and there is no doubt that the extreme pressure that year played a part in the decisions that

were made that fateful night. According to the Space Safety Magazine NASA was blinded by

the success of the early shuttle flights and the agencys management had developed a careless

attitude towards the warnings coming from the engineering community (LaVone, 2014).

Because there is an inherent risk in any type of space travel, the little things were sometimes

overlooked because compared to the overall risks and potential for danger they were miniscule.

It is said that when risks are job related people are more apt to make decisions that are riskier,

and that was something that was definitely present in this case, from the management level to the

astronauts themselves.

In order to make sound ethical decisions, the decision maker needs to have all of the

information available at the time. They need to understand the parties that they have potential to

affect, have a full understanding of the consequences, and they need to be able to know what

obligations are important. The case of the Challenger disaster is the result of a lack of knowledge

on both the problems that exist and the real and tragic results that could occur due to a bad
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decision. Because the decision makers were not the ones strapped into the shuttle, it was easier to

look past the risks and focus more on fulfilling the obligations that were tasked on them by

NASA. Instead of focusing on the moral obligations the management team had to the safety and

wellbeing of the crew, they focused on staying on track with the launch schedule.

The management team at NASA failed to realize that decisions made leading up to the

launch could have detrimental effects on more people than just the astronauts that were

scheduled to fly that day. In the collective responsibility model each member of the decision

making process is held responsible for all others. Along with the collective responsibility model,

in a government setting there is usually a hierarchical responsibility model in place that puts the

blame on the highest level officials when a decision turns out bad, but in the case of the

Challenger those bad decisions were actually made by high level officials. The decision to

launch proved to be one of the most significant events in the history of spaceflight; the deaths of

seven people in a fiery explosion was televised on national television for weeks after the accident

and went down in the history books as one of the most unfortunate disasters to ever be televised.

Future Steps to Avoid Error

One topic discussed in class was the idea of collective moral deliberation and the

importance for decisions to be based on overlapping consensus and not compromise, authority,

or power. This concept was not one that was followed in the case of the Challenger, and instead

decisions were based on authority and were not easily argued in favor of the decision. Situations

similar to this could come up in the science and engineering field out of nowhere and it is

important to be able to recognize them in order to mitigate the risks involved in poor decision

making. Employees need to be trained in the importance of ethical values and their responsibility
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to all stakeholders as stated in the ethical corporate climate model. It is vital that the managerial

team teach by example in the ways of proper moral values and judgement, and decisions need to

be made based upon not only agency loyalty, but with the best interest of all stakeholders in

mind as well. Because of the deception from the members of NASA that surfaced during the

investigation into the cause of the accident there was a widespread feeling of mistrust towards

the space program from the people of the United States in the months and years that followed the

accident. It proves that often times the attempt to cover up a mistake can lead to even more

detrimental consequences for the company. In his interview with The American Society of Civil

Engineers, Allan McDonald states I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime, I

refused to sign it (the launch approval) (McDonald, 2015).\ Allan McDonald proved that day

that going against the expectation of an employer is not always something that reflect badly upon

the employee. He recognized the moral issues and acted in a morally responsible way instead of

following the orders of his employer.

Overall this case proved the importance of making morally right decisions in the

workplace and showed the public the consequences that can come by making rash decisions that

arent backed with scientific knowledge and an understanding of the risks at hand. It put a much

larger emphasis on ethical values in the workplace than the United States had ever seen prior to

the accident and changed the protocols of the space program forever. Because the flight was such

a highly publicized event it put the spotlight on the members of NASA and Morton-Thiokol to

whom were responsible for rushing the launch instead of postponing it once again and proved

that the decisions made in the workplace can have serious consequences on the lives of many.

The case is a perfect example of why ethics applies to more than just human relationships or

petty decisions, but instead has a position within the decision making process for all companies
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and agencies. It proved that if moral values are overlooked in exchange for an attempt to meet

the standards and obligations placed on the employee by both their employer and public

expectations it can result in more serious consequences than just a mechanical malfunction.
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References

Atkinson, J. (2012, October 5). Engineer Who Opposed Challenger Launch Offers Personal Look at

Tragedy. Researcher News.

Bergin, C. (2007). Remembering the mistakes of Challenger. Retrieved from:

www.nasaspaceflight.com/2007/01/remembering-the-mistakes-of-challenger/.

Biography.com Editors. (2016). Christa McAuliffe Biography. The Biography.com website. A&E Television

Network.

LaVone, M. (2014). The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Space Safety Magazine.

McDonald, A. (Narrator). (2015). 5:44 / 20:28 Space Shuttle Challenger Di [Online video]. Youtube:

Association for Civil Engineers.