3 ms·
It's worse than Challenger. NASA isn't a publicly traded corporation, airlines didn't buy shuttles and people didn't buy tickets on the shuttle. If a 787 crashe
by neurotech1 14y ago
It's worse than Challenger. NASA isn't a publicly traded corporation, airlines didn't buy shuttles and people didn't buy tickets on the shuttle. If a 787 crashes due to a design or manufacturing flaw, Boeing stock price will fall significantly, and customer airlines will be very hesitant to order them.
A closer analogy would be the fallout to both McDonnell-Douglas and the FAA after a series of DC-10 crashes. These crashes doomed the company, and they were sold off to Boeing.
- acdha 14y agoNASA isn't a public corporation – although it seems rather unlikely that a disaster getting Congressional attention would be much easier – but Thiokol was a private business and would thus theoretically have a strong incentive not to lose a key contract due to failures in their components. The problem was that they perceived the risk of perceived flaws as high enough that they chose not to act. Market incentives aren't always as simple as they might seem at first glance.