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A committee decided that the potential danger from cold weather to o-ring gaskets wasn't too serious. That's how the Challenger blew up.
by arbitrage 5y ago
A committee decided that the potential danger from cold weather to o-ring gaskets wasn't too serious. That's how the Challenger blew up.
- OneTimePetes 5y agoCommittees the homeopathic responsibility dilution of any thoroughly dysfunctional organization. Make them agree on the one who should shoulder responsibility for a possible problem, to crash the process.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Forge36 5y agoHopefully they've learn from that mistake. Especially after making it twice.
- throwanem 5y agoIt took 17 years for the lesson to decay to a lethal level last time, and that was 18 years ago. We can hope it's stuck better this time, I suppose.
- raverbashing 5y agoActually the engineering committee of Morton-Thiokol (the real engineers, not the managers) did flag it as risky. But hey, we need to launch, right?
- Verdex 5y agoReading through the history of that is ridiculous. E: Hey we're pretty sure this is going to kill people. M: Are you sure? Maybe we can just do it while thinking really positive thoughts. Meanwhile one of the managers responsible for giving the 'go signal' still blames the engineers. "Hey, if it was unsafe the engineers should have said so." Ignoring that he had been bullying them for hours to shut up about how it was unsafe. The dramatization of the event in one of the documentaries stands out to me. "I'm going to go around the room and if anyone knows that this thing is definitely unsafe, then they need to speak up." WRONG. You go around the room and make everyone explicitly say it's safe. If anyone refuses you don't launch. They might seem like logical duals, but there is a huge difference. This problem was a management problem.
- moralestapia 5y agoOpt-in vs opt-out makes a huge difference.