Challenger Paper

Introduction

Challenger was the second shuttle orbiter to be placed into service after Columbia and was constructed using a body frame that had initially been produced for use as a test article. Its maiden voyage was on April 4, 1983, and made eight subsequent round trips to low earth orbit before it was destroyed during launch for its tenth mission 51-L, on January 28, 1986. It is one of two space shuttles destroyed in an accident during a mission, the other being the Space Shuttle Columbia.

How did this happen? And what let this happen? It was the failure of not only the flight system of the SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) but also the management system at NASA and Morton Thiokol the company that make the SRBs. The management system of the two companies never had a good way to share there ideas.

Management

Temperatures for the next launch date were predicted to be in the low 20°s. This prompted Alan McDonald (Director of the Solid Rocket Motors Project) to ask his engineers at Thiokol to prepare a presentation on the effects of cold temperature on booster performance(Boisjoly). A teleconference was scheduled the evening before the re-scheduled launch in order to discuss the low temperature performance of the boosters. This teleconference was held between engineers and management from Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and Morton-Thiokol in Utah. The engineers knew this would be another opportunity to express their concerns about the boosters, but they had only a short time to prepare their data for the presentation. During the hour long presentation the engineers presented a convincing argument that the cold temperature would have an effect on the o-ring and its ability to seat properly in the joint. The lowest temperature experienced by the o-rings in any previous mission was 53. At that temperature the boosters had experienced o-ring erosion, but since his engineers had no low temperature data they could not prove that it was unsafe to launch. At the end of the meeting Thiokol went off of the net so they could review there data. A senior executive at Thiokol, Jerald Mason, commented that a management decision was required. The data presented to them showed no correlation between temperature and the blow-by gasses. Finally Mason said, ”Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.” The new recommendation was made and went back on line with the teleconference. The new recommendation stated that the cold was still a safety concern, but their people had found that the original data was indeed inconclusive and their “engineering assessment” was that launch was recommended, even though the engineers had no part in writing the new recommendation and refused to sign it(Boisjoly). Alan McDonald, who was present with NASA management in Florida, was surprised to see the recommendation to launch and appealed to NASA management not to launch. NASA managers decided to approve the boosters for launch despite that fact that the predicted launch temperature was outside of their operational specifications.

Launch

The launch of challenger was set for 3:43p.m. on January 22, but due to delays in the previous mission and bad weather at the transoceanic abort landing site it did not launch until January 28, 1986,