The Space Shuttle Challenger.....
Jan 28, 2016 - (Article date) The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them.Why weren't the managers of NASA charged with manslaughter and sent to jail?
Comments (41)
There are so many cases you could have the same remarks on but does it help? NO
Why the strongest always wins!!
Here it was the NASA, an organsation representing the american dream! So back off!!
They will never admit their mistakes!!
Why did they overruled it? Was it snobbery? arrogancy?......?? No one will ever know it.
But 7 young people lost their life for it! May they rest in peace!
Was it worth it all?? I doubt it. I call it science of stupidity.
Now I'm not saying that NASA should be disbanded but the managers responsible should have been sent to jail and new managers should have been appointed forthwith.
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"You Might Have Your Dates Wrong"
"I Believe"
"That Happened Back In The Mid Eighties"
"If Im Correct".......................
"That Was In 1986"....................
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"Id Have Preferred To Have Told you In Email"
"But That....Was Blocked"
"I Think There Was Another Too"
"If I Remember Correctly"
"It Had Blown Apart Over Palestine Texas".....................
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Is that clip from the Texas failure...?
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Its The Take Off From 1986"..........................
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The second Shuttle disaster occurred because a piece of insulation hit the body of the orbiter upon liftoff and damaged the insulating tiles. That's the one where a trail of sparks and flame was traced halfway across the country upon reentry.
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I agree that was not the Challenger in the first video.
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Innocent until proven guilty.
The reason why no charges were filed would be to do with the outcome of any investigation.
Your questions should be about the investigation(s).
Who carried out the investigation(s)?
Were they impartial?
What were the outcomes?
Are there circumstances within the investigation(s) which might warrant charges?
Could enough evidence be found to lead to trial?
If there is no record of the recommendation to postpone the launch, other than eye witness testimony, is that enough to bring people to trial?
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I wonder how they feel about their decision today? Jenny
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No problem. No sweat about misspellings of my handle. It's an odd one, and derived (I believe) from the name of some decades-old software. I just thought it was kinda cool.
Most likely, no charges were filed and no lawsuits levied because space flight (then, and still, probably, now) is a "fly at your own risk" proposition. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, was originally a test pilot for YEARS before flying in an Apollo craft. All American astronauts were/are well trained, well educated, and quite intelligent. The sole exception to this would be Christa McAuliffe, the elementary school teacher who died in the Challenger disaster. Apparently, space flight had become so much an every day, humdrum occurrence that President Reagan designated teachers as the next candidates to fly in the shuttles, so that they could spread the word about America's success. But, as we saw with Apollo 1 and Apollo 13, nothing is for sure.
Certainly I remember getting a phone call at work telling me about the tragedy and to turn on the radio. We didn't have a TV in the office and it was before streaming video via internet.
I see there are several YouTube videos on the subject.
I'm linking one here that could be of interest. Watching it now...
Challenger Space Shuttle - The Untold Story
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It's very easy to say, "That's terrible and someone should pay". It's not so easy to take a lot of evidence and find a way of bringing legal recourse.
If it were that easy, court cases would only last a few minutes.
I'm saying, outrage is not enough to convict people, nor is a single piece of evidence.
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Maybe the hierarchical structure had it's weak points.
If someone is acting in good faith using the resources available to them (including their own skills), how culpable are they?
The trouble with outrage is that it seeks retribution. What function does retribution have? it maybe satisfies our outrage.
Surely, it would be far better to look at what went wrong and try to institute a structure with better safe-guarding?
I'd be more interested in improvement, than seeing more people suffer for a mistake. Remember, each person who goes to prison has family and friends who will be affected - they will receive the punishment too.
People who lose loved ones disastrously, so often take action, like getting laws changed, because they don't want other families to experience their pain. It's a much more positive grieving and healing process on many levels, than retribution. Achieving positive change is also perhaps a more accurate form of justice than causing others to suffer.
Unless you can demonstrate a wilful neglect of some sort, it's better to focus on learning. The rationale you've provided so far doesn't demonstrate wilful neglect: any intent is assumed by a leap of logic.
The O-Ring-Erosion was considered an acceptable Flight-risk!
The original design had one-piece rocket engines that could have been brought in by barge if the manufacturer was near a port. The low bidder awarded the contract wasn't close to a seaport so the engines were redesigned as smaller interlocking components, brought in by rail cars, hence the need for O-rings where the parts joined.
For safety, there were 2 rows of O-rings.
The O-rings weren't designed for or fully tested in freezing temperatures (which makes no sense to me) and the engineer in charge made it clear to management that previous tests showed the first row O-ring had failed. His concern was brought up several times.
The mission had been postponed several times and and the decision was swayed to allow it to proceed.
After reading the article from xqu~ it appears that in the US of A if you murder someone then pay the family a million dollars you get off scott-free, not only that but if you fired the gun you could get the gun manufacturer to pay up to 60% of the settlement......
Isn't this a wonderful world we live in...... explains why the lady is blindfolded
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