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The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster Presentation

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The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster Presentation The NASA Space Shuttle Disasters A summary of the presentation given by Stephen Carver to the IOSH London Metropolitan Branch on Tuesday 11th November 2012 About the Speaker Stephen Carver is rated as one of the top 3 lecturers at one of Europe's top MBA Business Schools. He has a reputation of taking complex management concepts such as Projects, Programme and Crisis Management and being able to distil them down, into highly informative and fun lectures - often using "storytelling" techniques. Stephen has spent most of his working life in real business and still runs his own, highly successful, Project Management Company. Stephen is an unusual blend of Academic, Businessman and Teller of Tales. He has taught in almost every country in the World and has appeared regularly on National Radio and Television. The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster Presentation On the 28th January 1986 at 11:38am Challenger launched from Kennedy Space Centre Florida for the shuttle programs 25th flight. 73 seconds after liftoff there was an explosion that destroyed Challenger and killed all 7 crew members. The crew consisted of 7 astronauts Commander Francis `Dick’ Scobee (46) Pilot Mike Smith (40) Judy Resnick (36) Ellison Onizuka (40) Ron McNair (35) Greg Jarvis (41) Christa McAuliffe (37) This was not an accident This had been foretold, people in NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) knew of the dangers, but unfortunately the right people did not listen. It all started with the then President John F. Kennedy (JFK) he said in 1963 "we will go to the moon before the end of this decade” (WordPress, 2009). The `space race' to the moon against the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) also known as the Soviet Union had begun. In order to achieve this NASA needed a lot of money and at this point were given a blank cheque, 400,000 people were employed to work on the space programme, and they did it on the 20th July 1969, beating the Russians. Now the goal had been achieved, NASA had a huge workforce that they could not just get rid of, as part of the space race was about politics and votes, in order to get the votes you need to provide employment. NASA found a new project - Mars. NASA realised that in order to get to Mars they will need a lot of fuel and to send a space shuttle from earth was impossible due to weight of the amount of fuel that was required. Engineers estimated that the space shuttle would weigh in excess of three Statues of Liberty with all the fuel that was required to thrust it into space. This NASA realised was an impossible feat so they decided to build a space station. In order to build a space station they were going to need some form of transportation to deliver the men and materials into space where they were going to build the rocket to go to Mars - a space truck, which is what the space shuttle was first called. NASA consisted of four main divisions - John F. Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Washington, Johnson Space Centre in Houston Texas and the Marshall Space flight Centre based in Huntsville Alabama. JFK Cape Canaveral was where they did the assembly and launching Johnson Space Centre Houston was mission control Washington was head quarters mainly politics and government Marshall Space Centre was where the rocket scientists were Marshall Space Flight Centre was first run by a German/American Rocket Scientists, Werner Von Braun who designed the V2 rocket that was used by the Germans during the WWII to rein terror down on Europe. His management style was very autocratic, ie "my way or the highway". The culture in this section of NASA was not a listening one, but just telling, a quality Von Braun adopted as an officer in the German army. Von Braun did not communicate with any of the other divisions of NASA and as a result the Marshall Space Centre became almost cut off from the other sections of NASA, it was known for its arrogance and just did things their way and did not listen to the rest of NASA. Having had an open cheque book for many years it became apparent that costs would need some consideration, as the design parameters of weight, safety and performance were of paramount importance The shuttle craft was powered by liquid fuelled engines; the reason for this was that they could be turned off easily if something went wrong. But these engines were not big enough to propel the shuttle craft into space because of its payload there was no room for additional fuel, so extra fuel tanks were fitted to the outside of the craft. One main tank which was roughly 14 storeys high was fitted containing 5 million litres of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, a highly flammable explosive dangerous material. This fuel tank on its own was not powerful enough, so anther two tanks were added - solid rocket boosters (SRB) which were packed with several thousand kilos of high explosive which was 5 times more potent than TNT. These three tanks of highly explosive fuel now had the power of a small atomic weapon and were able to propel the shuttle into space. The sequence of launch would be that once the SRB's were ignited they would launch the shuttle into the atmosphere then they would fall off, shortly followed by the main tank at which time the shuttle craft would have been despatched into space. Once the SRB's have been ignited you cannot turn them off. Marshall Space Centre were concerned about who got the contract, as the usual politics were involved but eventually Morton Thiokol based in Utah were given the contract to build the SRB's. The next challenge was to get the 14 storey SRB's from Utah to Florida. The SRB's were then constructed in sections pre-loaded full of high explosive and assembled on site in Florida, as it would have been too big to go by road or rail in one piece, not to mention the controversy of transporting such a large amount of explosive across America. Once in Florida the pieces were put together, welding was not possible so they used bolts and flange connections. This meant they had to have an O-ring seal which in simple terms would act like a gasket on a car, or a washer in a tap, to seal the joint between the two metal parts. Bolt and Flange with rubber ring Engineers putting together two pieces of the SRB The O-rings were critical, if they failed the whole SRB would explode which would mean total loss of the mission ie crew and loss of the vehicle caused by burn through, as it would burst resulting in fire and explosion. Morton Thiokol knew there were problems with the O-ring as many of them had failed during testing, so they decided to put in a secondary O-ring as backup in case the first one failed. The first shuttle was launched in 1981 and then again 24 more times after that. NASA wanted to portray an image of them being environmentally friendly, so after each launch they would collect the parts that fell away including the SRB's and reuse them. The recovered parts were examined by the engineers who were horrified by their condition as they were battered and twisted. They also realised that the O-rings were not performing in the way that they were designed to, compounded with the fact that each take off was different as there were burn marks and blow by marks around the O-rings. The space shuttle twin solid rocket boosters separate from the orbiter and external tank at an altitude of approximately 24 miles. They descend on parachutes and land in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast, where they are recovered by ships, returned to land, and refurbished for reuse. Roger Boisjoly was the chief engineer of the O-rings, he told NASA that they would fail eventually, NASA were not concerned. Roger continued looking and examining all the O-rings on return, he decided the one factor that could be the problem was the temperature. He found that the lower the temperature was on the day of launch the higher the O-ring erosion was. In 1985 a group of engineers were tasked with solving this problem. Later investigations showed that this effort however, had become hindered by paperwork, procurement delays and hampered by the rush to launch the shuttle. As they had already made a lot of successful flights through the winter, the managers did not believe Boisjoly's theory and told him he was wrong. Boisjoly went to Dr Lucas who had taken over from Von Braun as the head of the Marshall Centre to plead his case. Boisjoly said "when people go in front of Dr Lucas they know if they use words like think, feel or judgement to explain something that they would be shot down in flames". Boisjoly was unable to convince Dr Lucas and the flights continued. The engineers kept telling the managers at Morton Thiokol that there were problems, but management just told them that `they had to make this thing work, and keep to schedule'. Six months before the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Florida on Jan. 28, 1986, Roger Boisjoly wrote an important memo to Morton Thiokol, his employer, he warned them that if the weather was too cold, seals connecting sections of the shuttle’s huge rocket boosters could fail.
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