Take Off Your Engineering Hat

Abuhilal, Hussam and Webster, Jack IME 4020-09 (10AM) - Group #12

Due Date: 10/19/2021

Paper #3 - “Take Off Your Engineering Hat”

There were several pressures in place that caused vice president of engineering at Morton

Thiokol, Bob Lund, to “take off his engineering hat” and allow for the managers to vote that the

o-rings on the Challenger’s solid rocket boosters would not cause any safety concerns in flight.

When questioned on his decision to reverse his initial recommendation by Chairman William

Rogers, one should note that there was much at stake for Lund: loss of his job, reputation, and

risking his company’s prestige. However, during deliberations on whether or not to launch, it was

on upper management to provide the burden of proof, as engineers at Morton Thiokol had

already provided ample data through experimentation that showed that the rockets were not safe

to launch due to o-ring thermal distress. NASA’s own motto of “Don’t fly if it cannot be shown

to be safe” had been reversed.

Applying the engineering as experimentation model, a responsible experimenter would

stress the importance of safety and how it was blatantly disregarded by upper management, who

were more concerned with meeting deadlines. It is without a doubt that in the case of the

Challenger disaster, NASA’s public image was put before people’s lives. Though the shuttle

program was experimental and still in it’s most early stages, the risks were still known to the

engineers; the astronauts had little knowledge on the criticalities aboard the rocket. Informed

consent on the overall safety of the space mission as well as the acceptance of responsibility was

absent alongside many security devices, such as an escape mechanism, that would have protected

the lives of the seven astronauts assigned.

Abuhilal, Hussam and Webster, Jack IME 4020-09 (10AM) - Group #12

Due Date: 10/19/2021