20. “You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS [Thermal Protection
System]. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would
rather not know.
Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die
unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be
done, until the air ran out?”
Psychological wellbeing: Not a state which ducks challenges. It includes the optimism that allows you to set your sights on a worthwhile goal and work towards it without any guarantee of success.
What is culture? Empowerment? Trust. Conflict. Collaboration. Intregrity?
Power of visualization.
Incremental improvements, appreciations.
1. Diet fads. Go back to older fatter self! Apply anology to agile if just have tools and practices. Loose the trust and the backslide is much worse!
Out of 24 tests, 7 failed.
The data team went ahead with was 17 tests had passed.
What was conspicuous but ignored: all the 7 tests that failed had one common thing: Extremely low temperature (on the days of failure the temperature was very low).
We look for what we want to look at. While filtering is a great aid it may have consequence.
How presentations can influence decisions.
Why voicing concerns actively, assertively, continuously sometimes can be critical.
NASA manager Jud Lovingood responded that Thiokol could not make the recommendation without providing a safe temperature.
Thiokol management disregarded its own engineers' warnings and now recommended that the launch proceed as scheduled; NASA did not ask why. Ebeling told his wife that night that Challenger would blow up.
"[W]e're only qualified to 40 degrees ...'what business does anyone even have thinking about 18 degrees, we're in no-man's land.’”
"For a successful technology," he concluded, "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.“
NASA manager Jud Lovingood responded that Thiokol could not make the recommendation without providing a safe temperature.
One argument by NASA personnel contesting Thiokol's concerns was that if the primary O-ring failed, the secondary O-ring would still seal. This was unproven, and was in any case an argument that did not apply to a "Criticality 1" component. As astronaut Sally Ride stated when questioning NASA managers before the Rogers Commission, it is forbidden to rely on a backup for a "Criticality 1" component.
The booster's casing had ballooned under the stress of ignition. As a result of this ballooning, the metal parts of the casing bent away from each other, opening a gap through which hot gases—above 2,760 °C (5,000 °F)—leaked. This had occurred in previous launches, but each time the primary O-ring had shifted out of its groove and formed a seal. Although the SRB was not designed to function this way, it appeared to work well enough, and Morton-Thiokol changed the design specs to accommodate this process, known as extrusion.
On the morning of the disaster, the primary O-ring had become so hard due to the cold that it could not seal in time.
Above the glass transition temperature, the O-rings display properties of elasticity and flexibility, while below the glass transition temperature, they become rigid and brittle.
that "the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed," saying that the same "flawed decision making process" that had resulted in the Challenger accident was responsible for Columbia's destruction seventeen years later.[80]
Boisjoly argues that his superiors were focused on pleasing their client, NASA. This focus prompted an underlying default of “launch unless you can prove it is unsafe,” rather than the typical principle of “safety first.”
Foam shedding. All earlier affected shuttle missions completed successfully. Like challenger ignored. Normalization of deviance.