Space Shuttle Colombia

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Space Shuttle Colombia

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Space Shuttle Colombia

The Space Shuttle Program, which ran between 1981 and 2011 and made 133 successful missions, was bedeviled by a myriad of problems that culminated in the loss of Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 and Space Shuttle Columbia seventeen years later, in 2003. Both of these events resulted in the total loss of the space vehicles and the entire crews therein. While both accidents revealed several common challenges, ranging from technical and design issues, communication barriers, overconfidence among the staff at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Columbia’s accident demonstrated that much had not changed at NASA. With NASA overseeing the entire program, its organizational culture was questioned for being persistently dysfunctional. The ensuing analysis focuses on the organizational culture at NASA at the time of Columbia’s accident on the fateful day of February 1, 2003, when the space vehicle disintegrated upon reentry. Although it was established that the accident was caused by a hole created by a foam slab that dislodged from the external tanks (ET) during liftoff, foam-related issues and collisions with other debris were perennial occurrences during the entire space shuttle program. However, the organizational culture at NASA is responsible for normalizing and, consequently, overlooking this problem. In this discussion, organization culture in NASA’s context comprises the shared perceptions, informal traditions, norms, and ways of working exhibited by the operations of individuals in a highly technical organization concerned with extremely hazardous systems.  

Analysis

The analysis of the organizational culture at NASA at the time of Columbia’s disaster conducted under several aspects, which include budgetary constraints, ambitious flying schedule, communication processes, and decision-making processes. Nonetheless, the organizational culture challenges at NASA have a historical foundation rooted in the original conceptualization of the space shuttle program and how it was pitched and supported or pressurized afterwards.

Budgetary Constraints

The Space Shuttle Program suffered a massive 40% defunding following the end of the cold war due to the Soviet Union’ disintegration, which was the sole major rival of the United States (U. S. Senate, 2014). Despite the budgetary cuts, NASA continued its space program’s aggressive focus, including constructing the international space station and missions to Mars. More significantly, the agency did not deescalate its programs. Rather it scaled down on its workforce, especially those involved in safety and maintenance while pushing for faster turnaround times between shuttle missions. The organization continued with its “can do” culture, which saw a developmental space vehicle become elevated onto an operational one capable of performing several missions into space while using many experimental technologies (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2009). Altogether, the limitation in resources meant that many technologies were operationalized with sufficient testing to confirm their operational limits and safety risks they presented.

Ambitious Flying Schedule

The original pitch by NASA was that the Space Shuttle Program could conduct 24 flights per year to demonstrate its economic value and cost-effectiveness (Stone & Ross-Nazzal, n.d.). In addition, Fong (2010) noted that NASA focused exclusively on attaining mission goals and especially a high mission flight frequency, which was taken to be a critical performance and success indicator for the Space Shuttle Program.  

Moreover, the core structure of the international space station (ISS) was earmarked for completion by February 2004, creating untold pressure for the frequent space shuttle flights. The operationalization of the ISS is to be immediately followed by human missions to the moon and Mars, further demonstrating the political influence on the space shuttle program (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2009). The prioritization of frequency of missions over those related to safety demonstrated the high-performance culture that had become instilled and coerced into NASA over time.

Communication processes

The communication practices at NASA were shrouded in secrecy that had become institutionalized (Dick & Launius, 2006). Moreover, the management was increasingly becoming separated from engineers. Evidence of these circumstances attributes the ineffective communication practices to the automation that had pervaded many engineering processes at NASA. For instance, transparency of engineering findings had become obscured and diminished by the use of computer-assisted calibrations and calculations, which had replaced the manual processes.

In turn, face-to-face meetings and briefings have been gradually substituted by computer-enabled communication. Therefore, the concerns of the engineers could not be presented exhaustively and convincingly. At the same time, the managers could not interrogate the engineers’ concerns in an interactive physical communication environment, considering that everyone was on a tight work schedule. Moreover, vital information did not percolate to the highest levels of NASA because middle-level managers feared to deliver negative information to their seniors for fear of being victimized for sabotaging the space program (Pidgeon, 2010). Indeed, employees had been fired for raising objections and concerns on safety, which involved, on some occasions, talking directly to President Bush. Even then, many of the e-mails and other communications went unanswered, and the agency maintained its practices respite the seriousness of some of the safety concerns. 

Consequently, the managers and engineers at NASA have different perceptions of the safety risks posed by the various issues that had been identified before the fated flight. Notably, while the management viewed risks as manageable and flexible, the engineers viewed them from a quality perspective (Dick & Launius, 2006). In turn, the engineers may be termed as having been risk-averse while the management was risk-tolerant.  In the same vein, while the language used NASA was bureaucratic, impersonal and technical, the terms used to designate safety risks were used inconsistently and often gaining waiver status and out-of-family anomaly categorization. In turn, many safety issues that would have caused the shuttle missions to be aborted were over time categorized as “not a safety of flight issue”, in turn, making them accepted risks (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2009). This inconsistent and often ambiguous language contributed to the misunderstanding or divergence in opinions between the engineering and management teams and leadership.   

Decision-Making Processes

The senior management at NASA was informed about the dislodging of the foam panel and that it has struck the wing of the shuttle during liftoff. Besides, NASA employees called for pictures of the wing while the shuttle was in orbit. However, after consultations, the management decided that the incident would not be investigated further. Moreover, NASA officials declined an offer by the Department of Defense to have a close look at the damage on the wing using the surveillance cameras that it had in space. Consequently, the condition of the damage on the wing was not investigated while in orbit or during the return flight, which would have initiated repair and life-saving responses (Boin & Fishbacher-Smith, 2011).

Donahue and O’Leary (2011) revealed that the senior management at NASA routinely ignored the forewarning by the technical crew at the agency, including engineers. In this regard, while engineers’ concerns should have instigated a legitimate and comprehensive inquiry into the safety implications, the management at NASA had for long chosen to ignore issues that had prevailed with every successful mission. In this case, the dislodging of heat insulation foam panels and repeated collisions with debris had not moved the management sufficiently to authorize a thorough search of solutions to avert possible safety breaches. This is despite 14 previous flights that had reported foam shedding, and 7 previous incidents involving the left bipod ramp foam similar to that of Columbia (Starbuck & Farjoun, 2009). This circumstance is called normalization of deviance, in which aberrant occurrences that would otherwise be perceived as problems are accepted and even ignored (Fong, 2010). In the same vein, the decisions by NASA managers and engineers were often influenced by those politicians who did not grasp the safety implications they presented. The privatization of the maintenance of the space shuttles that was ordered by President Clinton in 1996 saw NASA cede control of safety functions and workforce to United Space Alliance, which was jointly owned by Lockheed-Martin and Boeing (U. S. Senate, 2014). Consequently, NASA was unable to oversee and oversight the shuttles’ maintenance at a time when the concerns about their age was heightened.  

Altogether, the engineers and managers used different decision-making approaches, which led to incoherence and inconsistencies in the subsequent actions undertaken by NASA. Specifically, while the engineers had continued using the systems management philosophy, the senior management had adopted the total quality management approach to deliver cheaper, better and faster space missions (Dick & Launius, 2006).

Conclusion

The technical culture that characterized the organizational culture at NASA since the Apollo era had changed gradually onto a production culture during the time preceding the Columbia accident. At this time, the organizational culture was defined by business-like practices, such as rule-following, strict allegiance to organizational chain of command, production pressures, and performance efficiency. Goldin’s era introduced an organizational culture in which performance took precedence over safety, as he led NASA to implement projects and conduct space missions with limited resources due to budgetary constraints. In turn, this created an increased belief and trust in the common occurrences, such as foam shedding, instead of probing safety issues and practices to develop a comprehensive understanding of the danger they posed, especially to the space shuttle crew. Moreover, people in powerful positions could override the opinions of technically equipped individuals to avoid upsetting the power structures in and beyond the agency. Consequently, the information did not flow freely within the organization ad decisions were not taken based on their technical merits. Overall, the organizational culture at NASA lacks coherence, focused collective strategy and responsibility about safety, and openness that would facilitate seamless information flow and organizational learning.  

Recommendations

The following recommendations are made to improve the organizational culture at NASA. Firstly, NASA should adopt a learning culture by changing its processes based on the information amassed from the accident investigations. Self-reflection should be a continuous undertaking at the company because it would help gauge how effectively individuals and the entire organization has learned and changed. Secondly, the bureaucracy in the agency should be deconstructed and replaced by an open organization in which information flows freely across all levels and in all directions. The silo mentality and the exalting of people in positions of power at the expense of judgments made by those with technical expertise should be dismantled by viewing each agency member’s opinions objectively. Thirdly, the agency should deescalate its mission to conform to the changing realities of public-private partnerships and limited resources. This would help the organization focus on the missions that fit its resources. While at it, the organization should prioritize safety over everything else considering that its missions remain high risk undertakings with potential to take lives in a short but often uninterruptable notice.

References

Boin, A., & Fishbacher-Smith, D. (2011). The importance of failure theories in assessing crisis management: The Columbia space shuttle disaster revisited. Policy and Society, 30(2), 77-87. doi:10.1016/j.polsoc.2011.03.003.

Dick, S. J., & Launius, R. D. (2006). Critical issues in the history of spaceflight (Vol. 4702). US Government Printing Office.

Donahue, A. K., & O’Leary, R. (2011). Do shocks change organizations? The case of NASA. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(3), 395-425. doi:10.1093/jopart/mur034.

Fong, K. J. (2010). Risk management, NASA, and the National Health Service: lessons we should learn. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 105(1): 6–8. doi:10.1093/bja/aeq139.

Pidgeon, N. (2010). Systems thinking, culture of reliability and safety. Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, 27(3), 211-217. doi:10.1080/10286608.2010.482660.

Starbuck, W., & Farjoun, M. (2009). Organization at the limit: Lessons from the Columbia disaster. John Wiley & Sons.

Stone, R. & Ross-Nazzal (n.d.). The accidents: A nation’s tragedy, NASA’s challenge. The Historical Legacy, 32-41. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/584719main_Wings-ch2b-pgs32-41.pdf.

U. S. Senate (2014). Columbia accident investigation board’s report on the Space Shuttle Columbia accident. U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-108shrg89806/pdf/CHRG-108shrg89806.pdf.