>But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. That's a myth. I encourage you

>But the Challenger didn't explode because of Silly Shirt Friday. It exploded because management didn't respect their engineers. That's a myth. I encourage you to read Challenger Launch Decision, by Diane Vaughan. Challenger didn't explode because management disrespected their engineers. Challenger exploded because the engineers themselves normalized deviance. They would launch, observe anomalous results, note that the system hadn't failed, and then expand the envelope of normality to include the anomalous results. At no point did the team working on the SRBs say, "No, we should stop the Shuttle program and redesign the booster," not even to other engineers. Repeatedly, in interviews, engineers expressed surprise and shock at the failure, because they thought that the problem of O-ring blow-by was a minor problem that could be fixed with tweaks. Indeed, on many an occasion, they thought that they had fixed it, only for the issue to recur in the future. It's easy and comforting for us engineers to think that Challenger was due to myopia on the behalf of NASA management. But it's wrong. Challenger was the result of cascade failure of rationality all throughout the NASA organization, and the engineers are as culpable as the managers.