Can NASA STILL be making the SAME mistakes?
I was disappointed to read the article by Jena McGregor in the 02.2005 issue of Fast Company, "Gospels of Failure." Not because of the lessons the article teaches, oh no! I have for years been a student and champion of failure analysis, prevention, and understanding. And McGregor's article is jam-packed with lots of useful knowledge.No, what bothers me is that NASA seems to be making the same mistakes, as an institution, that it made in the Challenger days. McGregor quotes the Columbia Accident Investigation Board:
In our view, the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with [the Columbia Space Shuttle] accident as the foam [that damaged the Shuttle].The article goes on to say that although engineers were concerned about the risks of severe damage to Columbia's heat shield, they were more-or-less told to "prove that we can't launch." You need not doubt that this is exactly the same attitude posed to engineers just before the destruction of the Challenger. What makes this even more mysterious is that NASA more often than not promotes from within -- their managers are engineers too! In short, the same mistakes that put egg on NASA's collective face back in 1986 (when I was an employee) have returned to serve up the eggs again (now that I am not).
I have written about this before: when The West Wing spoke for America and told NASA "This administration has only one priority -- that you guys stop screwing up." But I would go a step further: if NASA is serious about NOT screwing up, then its employees -- all of them -- must become serious about understanding and preventing failures. Do you want to become a new NASA employee? New NASA manager? Then read Diane Vaughan's The Challenger Launch Decision and tell us what it taught you. If you don't do it, you can't be hired; you can't be promoted. Take your time. We can wait.
posted by Ron @ 1:37 PM
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