The Columbia shuttle disaster presents some challenges for engineers. The accide

Question

The Columbia shuttle disaster presents some challenges for engineers. The accident analysis that followed the Challenger disaster almost 20 years earlier resulted in everyone having a pretty good idea of the reliability of the system. Since Success/Failure of a mission is a binary outcome, the Binomial distribution would govern our understanding of the future outcome so the system based on expected reliability. Discuss the ethics of the circumstances that resulted in the Columbia shuttle disaster. Considering the predictions that were made years before the disaster, as well as the reliability of the Binomial distribution and its implications, what could or should the engineers associated with the program have done differently? What obligations do we have as engineers when we find ourselves in this kind of position? Ultimately, why did the system fail, and who shares the responsibility?

Explanation / Answer

This is less of a mathematical problem and more of a case study, as the answer will necessarily need us to probe the particular scenario of the Columbia shuttle disaster. I would suggest you to do a detailed reading of that and present points accordingly. Here I am giving as many points as I believe are relevant.

The failure of a space program is definitely a complex situation, more than that of a simple Binomial distribution. It is definitely not as straightforward as repeating a coin flip. There are multiple factors and situations occuring coherently that govern the overall coordination and execution of such an event. The issue is, those heading such a project are always doing a tradeoff between multiple parameters and it is never the case that they have secured the lid on any chance of failure. They definitely want it to be successful but sometimes, as in this case, what happens is that the potentially dangerous situation becomes inaccessible or uncontrollable. After reading the root cause of failure, which is worn out tiles that could not sustain the heat and wind, it seems that the head architects had not envisaged this situation due to repeated use of the shuttle.

This shuttle launch was already delayed by few years, and yet it did not take into account the safety that was required. Perhaps the engineers and head architects were under some kind of boundation to deliver the project, and that may have led to overlooking of all necessary measures.

Even more so, the explicit record of such an impending catasrophe is visible in the launch footage, whereby a foam striking Columbia's left wing was ignored by NASA. Some theories say that this could have well been rectified, if deemed critical, but was never tried.

On the fateful day, when the temperature and tire pressure readings from the vehicle were lost, it was symbolic of the overall discord of the project architects from reality. The ethics were lost in terms of ignoring both latent and blatant warnings that were given of such an eventuality.

Overall, the system failed, not due to the series event of a Binomial distribution, but more so because it was not coherently planned and even the negative feedback in terms of the strike on left wing were not taken care of. The responsibility lies on the unscientific ambitious outlook of the architects who were somehow in the imagination that the system should take care of itself.

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