The next space flight accident: How do we prevent it?

I lately watched NESC Deputy Director Mike Kirsch stand earlier than a roomful of engineers on the Langley Analysis Heart and inform them that with each passing day, NASA breaks a file: the longest stretch with out a main accident within the nation’s human spaceflight program because the Area Shuttle Columbia disintegrated throughout reentry on February 1, 2003. NASA’s problem, he instructed them, was to ensure the file retains being damaged.

Mike’s sobering message set the proper tone for my presentation of “Ideas of Success in Spaceflight,” the category I created with Victoria Kohl on the human habits parts of success and failure in spaceflight tasks. With the NESC’s assist, I’ve given it at each NASA middle, and it is all the time a rewarding expertise.

You possibly can’t spend the day with a gaggle of NASA engineers and never expertise their eager intelligence, ardour, and dedication to excellence. As I lead them by way of case research of the Apollo 1 fireplace in 1967, the Challenger accident in 1986, and Columbia, I inform them that irrespective of how good we’re on the “rocket science,” we invite failure if we do not take note of the attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions we deliver to the work—in brief, our mindset.

Earlier than the Apollo fireplace, there was a widespread perception that as a result of Mercury and Gemini had used pure oxygen with no fires, there would not be any in Apollo. And the Apollo spacecraft program supervisor missed alternatives to forestall the accident because of his perception that the fireplace hazard created by combining pure oxygen with uncovered wiring and flammable supplies was not a “actual” downside, one which warranted slowing the prepare barreling down the tracks to satisfy John F. Kennedy’s end-of-the-decade deadline for a lunar touchdown.

Once I discuss in regards to the Challenger accident, I warning that it is important to concentrate to the tales we inform ourselves. NASA had promised itself and Congress that the Shuttle would make spaceflight routine and reasonably priced, a aim that required unrealistically excessive flight charges. Mounting schedule strain within the lead-up to Challenger skewed choice makers’ perceptions of the SRB area joint anomalies that had occurred intermittently on earlier launches and weren’t effectively understood.

Within the Columbia dialogue, I recount the stunning swiftness with which NASA misplaced the teachings of Challenger and paved the best way for an additional accident with renewed schedule strain and a perception that exterior tank foam shedding was “not a security of flight concern.” Accidents jolt us into new consciousness, however Columbia is a painful reminder that consciousness has a shelf life.

What’s going to it take to maintain breaking the file that Mike spoke about? I consider we should discuss to one another often in regards to the behaviors that both invite success or lead us down the slippery slope to failure.

Are we within the grip of what I name the “actuality distortion area,” created by value, schedule, and/or political pressure, that clouds our perceptions of danger? Are we unconsciously indulging in hard-wired “us vs. them” tribal behaviors that minimize us off from the various “spotlights of consciousness” we should have to navigate the unforgiving calls for of human spaceflight? Are we telling ourselves a narrative that, below clear-eyed scrutiny, does not maintain up?

These are the questions we have to ask ourselves repeatedly. The solutions are vital.