Re:Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle (...
by alexhutcheson on Saturday February 08, 2014 @07:24PM
(#7203575)
For anyone else interested in how the organizational incentives and
institutional culture at NASA helped to set the stage for the
Challenger disaster, I highly recommend The Challenger Launch
Decision[1] by Diane Vaughan.
From the New York Times review[2]:
In "The Challenger Launch Decision" Diane Vaughan, a sociologist at
Boston College, takes up where the Rogers Commission and Claus Jensen
leave off. She finds the traditional explanation of the accident --
"amorally calculating managers intentionally violating rules" -- to
be profoundly unsatisfactory. Why, she asks, would they knowingly
indulge such a risk when the future of the space program, to say
nothing of the lives of the astronauts, hung in the balance?
"It defied my understanding," she says.
From the New York Times review[2]:
In "The Challenger Launch Decision" Diane Vaughan, a sociologist at Boston College, takes up where the Rogers Commission and Claus Jensen leave off. She finds the traditional explanation of the accident -- "amorally calculating managers intentionally violating rules" -- to be profoundly unsatisfactory. Why, she asks, would they knowingly indulge such a risk when the future of the space program, to say nothing of the lives of the astronauts, hung in the balance? "It defied my understanding," she says.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995029.The_Challenger_La...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/19074.html