Windsor opened up her paper titled, “Communication Failures Contributing to the Challenger Accident: An Example for Technical Communicators” by posing the question “why did those who knew of the problem with the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters not convince those in power to stop the launch?” She stated that the answer lies in a complex set of factors including, how managers and engineers view the same facts from different perspectives, and the general difficulties of sending or receiving bad news. I agree with Windsor’s viewpoint, however; I was surprised with the fact that both the engineers and managers can look at the same alarming information and not both agree that something needs to be promptly done about it. Although I was surprised about the different views I can see how the managers refused to accept the bad news. This is human nature, you want to believe that everything is working out, you don’t want to believe that something could be wrong or go bad.
When issues with the O-ring first began to occur in early 1984, neither the engineers or the management team at MTI created a sense of urgency towards the issue when communicating to Marshall. The opposite occurred in Marshall’s reaction. Marshall had no problem treating the O-ring situation seriously when communicating downwards to MTI; however, when talking to their superiors, NASA headquarters, the urgent situation became very minor. These three companies were viewing each other as outsiders. This is very realistic and applies to most jobs due to the fact that people don’t like getting criticism from those with “lower” job titles. This sense of division can be extremely problematic when it comes to communicating important information like that of the malfunctioning O-rings.
MTI engineer, Roger Boisjoly, sent a memo to MTI’s Vice President of Engineering, R. K. Lund. He wrote this letter to ensure that the management was fully aware of the seriousness of the O-ring situation. The fact that an engineer was writing a memo to send to his superior informing him of an urgent situation is very unusual due to the dynamic that has been established between superiors and their employees. Roger Boisjoly wrote this memo from an engineers point of view explaining the technical side of the issue and how the result would be “a catastrophe of of the highest order – loss of human life.” At the end of his memo he displayed his true concern and fear that if action was not taken with number one priority they could lose the flight.
Sadly, Boisjoy’s memo wasn’t enough to convince MTI of the urgency of the situation. On January 28, 1986 the launch was scheduled. The temperature this day was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, 17 degrees colder than that of any previous launch. When MTI engineers heard news of this low temperature concerns arose. Refusing to accept the bad news about the temperature, they resisted the recommendation to delay the launch.
As Boisjoly wrote in his memo, there is a disagreement in the seriousness of the issue between management and the engineers and the engineers had a difficult time reporting upwards. Since there was a split between the beliefs of the engineers and managers as to whether the temperature was a factor that should delay the launch a vote was held. Jerald Mason, MTI’s Senior Vice President polled the three vice presidents in the room, first asking Lund who presented the recommendation not to launch. Mason asked Lund to take off his “engineering hat” and put on his”management hat.” When Lund changed his perspective, he changed his position, resulting in the four managers voting unanimously to proceed with the rocket launch. I found this very shocking because it sounds like the managers just wanted to take a shortcut so that they could just keep moving on with the launch of the challenger despite any signs of potential issues.
While we would all like to think that we would do the “right” thing and report an issue to our superiors, it is not always that easy. For example, with the O-ring erosion and malfunctions there where people who could have stopped it; however, engineers might have feared reporting it to the superior management due to moral challenges or financial reasons. If an engineer had reported the issue to management and they chose to do something about it, it would have been a huge financial burden on the company to fix the issue.
Chatting with Charleigh 