Organizational error that caused the failure of the space shuttle Essay - 1

Organizational error that caused the failure of the space shuttle Challenger launch - Essay Example Vaughan argues that NASA managers did not break any rules unlike reported before rather abided by them a bit too strictly. She has pointed out that rather it were the rules that kept on getting more and more accommodative each time a mission was accomplished successfully. Thus rules expanded like a rubber band, enclosing more and more dangers which previously turned out to be false assumptions. It was NASA’s culture where something which has worked once was assumed to work every time. O-ring seals were not a new problem but the previous successful launches prepared the managers’ mind that it is an acceptable risk. She argues that rather than developing new paradigms for unexpected consequences, people change the paradigms to accommodate the consequence or discard them at all. According to her, the same happened in the case of O-ring erosion where the risk level was reduced as the risk did not turn out to be as grave as previously thought. However the reduction in gravit y did not mean that the risk cannot become grave once coupled with some other risks. The O-ring erosion, sub-optimal temperatures & unexpected wind shears, all risks were expected to be less than grave, in the original paradigms but people failed to develop new paradigm for the combination. She has agreed that Challenger’s Disaster was a normal accident (p. 415) & normal accident always happen because of failure to develop new paradigms in extremely complex organization.