Columbia Disaster Research Articles

The importance of reinforcing advanced ceramics in space projects

This article addresses the role of advanced ceramics in space exploration, highlighting their importance in tackling the unique challenges of the extraterrestrial environment. Starting with an analysis of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, lessons learned and safety measures implemented in the aftermath of the incident are discussed. The properties of advanced ceramics, including resistance to extreme temperatures, chemical stability, and thermal insulation capability, are explored, along with their applicability in space missions, such as radiation protection, resistance to debris, and propulsion. Strategies for maximizing the resilience of ceramics in space environments are examined, including advanced manufacturing techniques and continuous monitoring systems. Finally, specific applications of ceramics in space components, such as rocket nozzles, propulsion systems, and heat-to-electricity conversion, are discussed, emphasizing the ongoing need for innovation to ensure the success of future space missions.

White Whale, Black Swan

White Whale, Black Swan

A Conversation with … Nigel Packham PhD, NASA Safety Expert who Analyzed the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster.

A Conversation with … Nigel Packham PhD, NASA Safety Expert who Analyzed the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster.

A Rhetorical Analysis of George W. Bush’s National Eulogies

This article offers a critique of President George W. Bush’s national eulogies for the victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the space shuttle Columbia disaster, and Hurricane Katrina. It addresses the problem of limited research of multiple eulogies from the same president. The article examines the eulogies in two phases: first, it places the speeches within the exigencies and constraints of the situations in which they were drafted and delivered and, then, it analyzes their construction using two frameworks, one developed by Michael Robert Dennis and Adrianne Kunkel and the other designed by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. The examination centers around the translation of the theory on the genre of the national eulogy into practice, the most prevalent components and characteristics in the eulogies, and the rhetorical effect of the eulogies, understood in terms of achieving the goals defined by the genre.

Suggestions for More Reliable Measurement of Korean Nuclear Power Industry Safety Culture

Objective: The aim of this study is to suggest some improvement ideas based on the validity and the reliability analyses of the current safety culture measurement method applied to the Korean nuclear power industry. Background: Wrong safety culture is known as one of the major causes of the disasters such as the space shuttle Columbia disaster or the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident. Assessment of safety culture of an organization is important to build a safer organizational environment as well as to identify the risks hidden in the organization. Method: A face validity of the current safety culture measurement method was analyzed by comparison of the key factors of safety culture in the Korean nuclear power industry with those factors reviewed in the previous studies. The current interview method was analyzed to identify the problems which degrade the consistency of evaluation. Results: Most safety culture factors reviewed in the literatures are covered in the list of the Korean nuclear power industry safety culture factors. However the unstructured questions used in the interview may result in inconsistency of safety culture evaluation among interviewers. Conclusion: This study suggests some examples which might improve the consistency of interviewers evaluation on safety culture such as a post interview evaluation form. Application: An extended post interview evaluation form might help to increase the accuracy of the interviewing method for Korean nuclear industry safety culture evaluation.

Maintaining awareness using policies; Enabling agents to identify relevance of information

The field of computer supported cooperative work aims at providing information technology models, methods, and tools that assist individuals to cooperate. The presented paper is based on three main observations from literature. First, one of the problems in utilizing information technology for cooperation is to identify the relevance of information, called awareness. Second, research in computer supported cooperative work proposes the use of agent technologies to aid individuals to maintain their awareness. Third, literature lacks the formalized methods on how software agents can identify awareness. This paper addresses the problem of awareness identification. The main contribution of this paper is to propose and evaluate a formalized structure, called Policy-based Awareness Management (PAM). PAM extends the logic of general awareness in order to identify relevance of information. PAM formalizes existing policies into Directory Enabled Networks-next generation structure and uses them as a source for awareness identification. The formalism is demonstrated by applying PAM to the space shuttle Columbia disaster occurred in 2003. The paper also argues that efficacy and cost-efficiency of the logic of general awareness will be increased by PAM. This is evaluated by simulation of hypothetical scenarios as well as a case study.

Survey of mission evolution and flexibility in the Space Shuttle program

Given the diversity of missions it has accomplished and the myriad of adaptations it has undergone, the US Space Shuttle is widely regarded as a highly flexible space vehicle. With the Shuttle’s upcoming 2011 retirement, it is instructive to survey the history of this vehicle’s flexibility for the insights it can provide to the design and characterization of flexibility in future space systems. Data are presented on the evolution of mission requirements over time for 120 missions performed by the Space Shuttle over a period of some 27 years. Distinct trends in the time domain – as well as their causes – are identified and discussed, and early manifest plans from 1982 serve as a confirmation that these trends were not originally anticipated. Eight examples are then presented of engineering modifications that allowed the Shuttle to adapt and accommodate these requirement changes. Several additional instances of Shuttle flexibility are explored, such as post- Columbia disaster modification, upgrade programs and derived vehicles, and one case in which flexibility was inhibited by an early design decision.

A Reprieve—and Risk

The mission to give the Hubble Space Telescope a new lease on life is just the tail end of a long and bitter battle waged by scientists, who won critical support from politicians and the public, after a previous mission was canceled in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Book Review: William H. Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun (Eds) Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster

Book Review: William H. Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun (Eds) Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster

NASA Calls Back Weiler

In the midst of a budget crisis, NASA has turned to an experienced insider. Last week, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin named Edward Weiler as the associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate. Weiler was made acting chief 6 weeks ago after S. Alan Stern resigned. Weiler most recently served as head of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, after spending 6 years running the science program at headquarters. The blunt-speaking astrophysicist faces rising costs in a host of missions, a flat budget, and a fight among scientists over whether NASA should focus on Mars or outer planet exploration. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is hoping to make Weiler's job a little bit easier with a $200 million addition to NASA's 2008 budget that would pay back science and other programs tapped after the 2003 Columbia disaster. Her proposal is part of a Senate spending measure to fund the Iraq war that was expected to be voted out of committee this week. Its House counterpart contains no money for the space agency, however, meaning that the boost may not materialize. The Senate bill also contains $400 million for the National Institutes of Health and $200 million for the National Science Foundation. Legislators have calculated that the additional funds could support 700 and 500 more grants, respectively. But once again, the money's not in the House version

Diffusion of News of the Shuttle Columbia Disaster: The Role of Emotional Responses and Motives for Interpersonal Communication

This study examined the role of emotion in the process of news diffusion following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Respondents reported both sadness and anger, but sadness was the predominant emotional response. Early learners reported more sadness, but emotional response was unrelated to the initial source of the news. Regarding interpersonal news diffusion, individuals who reported more sadness were more likely to pass the news on to others and spent more time discussing the event. Anger was associated with contacting a greater number of people. Individuals who contacted more people and spent more time in discussion reported stronger emotional (but not informational) motives for talking with others, and were more likely to say that they felt better after interpersonal contact. Overall, the findings suggest that interpersonal news diffusion and discussion function, in part, as ways to cope with emotional responses to news coverage.

Organization at the Limit: Lessons From the Columbia DisasterOrganization at the Limit: Lessons From the Columbia Disaster Edited by StarbuckWilliam and FarjounMoshe, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

The article reviews the book “Organization at the Limit: Lessons From the Columbia Disaster,” edited by William Starbuck and Moshe Farjoun.

The SPQR experiment: detecting damage to orbiting spacecraft with ground-based telescopes

The objective of the Specular Point-like Quick Reference (SPQR) experiment was to evaluate the possibility of improving the resolution of ground-based telescopic imaging of manned spacecraft in orbit. The concept was to reduce image distortions due to atmospheric turbulence by evaluating the Point Spread Function (PSF) of a point-like light reference and processing the spacecraft image accordingly. The target spacecraft was the International Space Station (ISS) and the point-like reference was provided by a laser beam emitted by the ground station and reflected back to the telescope by a Cube Corner Reflector (CCR) mounted on an ISS window. The ultimate objective of the experiment was to demonstrate that it is possible to image spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with a resolution of 20 cm, which would have probably been sufficient to detect the damage which caused the Columbia disaster. The experiment was successfully performed from March to May 2005. The paper provides an overview of the SPQR experiment.

NASA—has its biological groundwork for a trip to Mars improved?

In a 1991 editorial in The FASEB Journal, Robert W. Krauss commented on a recent report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program (Augustine report). He concluded that, although a manned mission to Mars with life sciences as the priority was endorsed by the Committee, it failed to deal realistically with one huge gap; biological sciences have never been given high priority. According to Krauss, this left a void that will cripple, perhaps fatally, any early effort to ensure long-term survival on any mission of extended duration. The gap included insufficient flight time for fundamental biological space research and insufficient funds. Krauss expressed his opinions 15 years ago. Have we better knowledge of space biology now? This question becomes more acute now that President George W. Bush recently proposed a manned return to the moon by 2015 or 2020, with the moon to become our staging post for manned missions to Mars. Will we be ready so soon? A review of the progress in the last 15 years suggests that we will not. Because of the Columbia disaster, flight opportunities for biological sciences in shuttle spacelabs and in Space Station laboratories compete with time for engineering problems and construction. Thus, research on gravity, radiation, and isolation loses out to problems deemed to be of higher priority. Radiation in deep space and graded gravity in space with on board centrifuges are areas that must be studied before we undertake prolonged space voyages. Very recent budgetary changes within National Aeronautics and Space Administration threaten to greatly reduce the fundamental space biology funds. Are we ready for a trip to Mars? Like Krauss 15 years ago, I think not for some time.

Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the Columbia Disaster

Organization at the Limit: Lessons from the <i>Columbia</i> Disaster

All-Risk Response: A Qualitative Study of the Capacity of the Wildland Fire Service

Abstract This article was prompted by the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster response. Twenty-one type 1 and 2 Incident Management Teams (IMT) performed a central role in the operation by directing a ground search of 680,000 ac. This article draws on the broad experiences of the IMTs that participated in the Columbia shuttle recovery to inform the future of all-risk incident management. It reports the findings of a systematic analysis of the perspectives of senior IMT members on the question: What is the capacity of the wildland IMTs to direct major all-risk responses?

Organization at the limit: lessons from the Columbia disaster

Notes on contributors. Foreword: Sean O'Keefe. Part I: Introduction. 1 Introduction: Organizational Aspects of the Columbia Disaster: Moshe Farjoun and William H. Starbuck (New York University). Part II: The Context of the Disaster. 2 History and Policy in the Space Shuttle Program: Moshe Farjoun (New York University). 3 System Effects: On Slippery Slopes, Repeating Negative Patterns, and Learning from Mistake? Diane Vaughan (Boston College). 4 Organizational Learning and Action in the Midst of Safety Drift: Revisiting the Space Shuttle Program's Recent History: Moshe Farjoun (New York University). 5 The Space Between in Space Transportation: A Relational Analysis of the Failure of STS-107: Karlene H. Roberts, Peter M. Madsen, Vinit M. Desai (University of California - Berkley). Part III: Influences on decision making. 6 The Opacity of Risk: Language and the Culture of Safety in NASA's Space Shuttle Program: Willie Ocasio (Northwestern University). 7 Coping with Temporal Uncertainty: When Rigid, Ambitious Deadlines Don't Make Sense: Sally Blount (New York University), Mary Waller (Tulane University), and Sophie Leroy (New York University). 8 Attention to Production Schedule and Safety as Determinants of Risk-Taking in NASA's Decision to Launch the Columbia Shuttle: Angela Buljan (University of Zagreb) and Zur Shapira (New York University). Part IV: The Imaging Debate. 9 Making Sense of Blurred Images: Mindful Organizing in Mission STS-107: Karl Weick (University of Michigan). 10 The Price of Progress: Structurally Induced Inaction: Scott A. Snook and Jeffrey C. Connor (Harvard University). 11 Data Indeterminacy: One NASA, Two Modes: Raghu Garud and Roger Dunbar (New York University). 12 The Recovery Window: Organizational Learning Following Ambiguous Threats: Amy C. Edmondson, Michael A. Roberto, Richard M.J. Bohmer, Erika M. Ferlins, Laura R. Feldman (Harvard University). 13 Barriers to the Interpretation and Diffusion of Information about Potential Problems in Organizations: Lessons from the Space Shuttle Columbia: Frances Milliken, Theresa K. Lant, and Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell (New York University). Part V: Beyond Explanation. 14 Systems Approaches to Safety: NASA and the Space Shuttle Disasters: Nancy Leveson, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, John S. Carroll, Betty Barrett, Alexander Brown, Nicolas Dulac, Lydia Fraile, and Karen Marais (MIT). 15 Creating Foresight: Lessons for Enhancing Resilience from Columbia: David Woods (Ohio State). 16 Making NASA More Effective: William H. Starbuck (New York University) and Johnny Stevenson (NASA). 17 Observations on the Columbia Accident: Henry McDonald (University of Tennessee). Part VI: Conclusion. 18 Conclusion: Moshe Farjoun and William H. Starbuck (New York University). Index

From Challenger to Columbia

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems.

Lost in space: A critique of NASA's crisis communications in the Columbia disaster

The explosion of space shuttle Columbia on 1 February 2003 shocked the nation and threatened to destroy the image and confidence NASA had labored years to restore in the wake of its poor handling of the Challenger disaster. This paper examines NASA's crisis communications regarding Columbia's explosion. It argues that the space agency did most things right in responding to the crisis, but it made errors that reflect serious and long-standing problems with its organizational culture. The paper concludes that NASA's handling of the crisis ultimately helped the agency to maintain good will with Congress, the media, and the American public. It proposes that the space agency must fix flaws with its organizational culture, or it may be forced into the unenviable position of relying on crisis communications to protect its image and reputation.

From liftoff to landing: NASA's crisis communications and resulting media coverage following the Challenger and Columbia tragedies

NASA's public relations effort following the explosion of the Challenger in 1986 is considered an example of crisis communications failure. After the Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA was praised for its successful handling of the crisis. This paper identifies how four newspapers presented NASA's crisis communication efforts following the two crises, utilizing widely accepted crisis communication concepts associated with stakeholder theory. Results showed that the print media reported that NASA followed specific communicative practices and accorded NASA more positive coverage following the Columbia disaster than the Challenger disaster.