Independent Agency of The Us Federal Government: NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, commonly known as NASA, is an independent agency of the US Federal Government. NASA strives to achieve advances in science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and stewardship of Earth. Some of their successful ventures include the Apollo 11 Mission and the placement of the space probe Juno that orbits the planet Jupiter. Ever since NASA was officially established in 1958, they have continued to breach new barriers of triumph and conquer missions thought to be unattainable. However, despite NASA’s countless accomplishments, they also have had a fair share of failures. One of the most known incidents is the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that occurred on January 28, 1986. This fatal event took the lives of seven crew members in just 73 seconds after launch. After this tragic event took place, a special commission was appointed by the president of the United States to investigate the disaster. Following a long 32 months of investigation, the report indicated that the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger was caused by a failure in the joint between the two lower segments of the right Solid Rocket Motor. The specific failure was the destruction of the seals that are intended to prevent hot gases from leaking through the joint during the propellant burn of the rocket motor. The evidence assembled by the Commission indicates that no other element of the Space Shuttle system contributed to this failure. The committee also revealed a more disturbing discovery which was also a key contributing element to the mishap: NASA's inefficient decision-making process, poor organizational and cultural issues, as well as ineffective communication. The overconfidence bias, escalation of commitment bias, and confirmation bias were all underlying human biases that resulted in poor decision-making at NASA leading up to the disaster.

NASA had many impressive achievements leading up to the time of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s disaster. Their continued success led them to develop the overconfidence bias in their decision-making process, ultimately misguided them into neglecting safety first when making crucial decisions. The overconfidence bias in decision-making suggests that NASA believes too much in their own abilities to make proper decisions, especially when outside of their area of expertise. After further analysis, the Commission concluded that the cause of the Challenger accident was due to a failure of the pressure seal in the aft field joint of the right Solid Rocket Boost. The faulty design of the O-ring problem was known to many engineers at NASA but the overconfidence bias crept in and NASA decided not to perform further trend analysis on the O-ring erosion before the Challenger’s launch. The mission safety was jeopardized due to the distorted view of the decision makers for the launch. Evidence in NASA's system for tracking anomalies for Flight Readiness Reviews failed before the launch. The fact that past shuttle launches have shown a history of persistent O-ring erosion and blow-by makes it clear that NASA executives and engineers were too confident about their early success, and neglected the mission safety by overlooking the supporting data and analysis before making a proper decision. The overconfidence of their accuracy overshadowed the importance of the safety of the O- ring problems identified. The flight was ultimately permitted to launch due to the overconfidence bias portrayed by all parties involved. NASA’s excessive faith in themselves and their judgments allowed them to ignore their vulnerability to bias and errors. Their overconfidence bias made them miss the cautionary indications of a problem that led to the rapid break-up of the Space Shuttle system resulting in irreversible damages.

Due to NASA’s huge reputation and continuation of success, they had a chip placed on their shoulders to come out with a positive result in the Challenger mission. This led NASA to have the human bias of escalation of commitment in their decision-making process. This human bias is defined as an increasing commitment to a decision in spite of evidence that is wrong. Everything seemed rushed for NASA throughout the days leading up to the Challenger disaster. Several problems caused the official launch of the Challenger to be postponed several times. Challenger was originally scheduled for launch in July 1985 but then postponed to late November to accommodate changes in payloads. The launch was subsequently delayed further and rescheduled to launch on January 22, 1986, but did not officially launch until January 28, 1986. Even with six additional days to work with, it was a rash decision by NASA to have the Challenger embark on its mission considering that unsolved problems still existed before the launch took place. The stress that NASA encountered to deliver another successful and timely launch had pushed them to plow forward with their original decisions and actions instead of altering their course. Senior NASA officials argued that new stories about delays and aborted launches in the weeks before the Challenger launch had created ”98% of the pressure” to go ahead with the ill-fated mission.

NASA’s decision to launch the Challenger was saturated with confirmation bias throughout their decision-making process. Confirmation bias occurs when people selectively gather the information that reaffirms their past choice and current decision, and discount information that contradicts them.“Another biggest pressure to launch the challenger was the space agencies on unrealistic schedule, which called for 15 shuttle launches during 1986”. NASA was motivated by all the other successful launches and became inefficient in gathering information because they only focused their time and attention on analyzing successful launches. Many of them started forming views or prejudices that they would like to be true even if they weren’t. Once they formed that view, they embraced information that confirms that view while ignoring or rejecting information that casts doubt on it. For instance, launches in the past have narrowly escaped disaster despite a history of persistent O-ring erosion and blow-by, creating a false optimism for NASA workers that nothing would go wrong. Confirmation bias is clearly displayed here from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. The accident-free past launches had prompted NASA to dismiss any claims that the Space Shuttle Challenger was prone to serious safety issues. Confirmation bias suggests that they didn’t perceive circumstances objectively and only picked information that confirm their prejudices. It developed among anxious individuals while they were in extreme stress to handle a hefty launching schedule.

The inefficient organizational and cultural factors at NASA have made it possible for these human biases to creep into the minds of NASA leaders, thus affecting their decision-making ability. The Commission concluded that the Thiokol Management reversed its position and recommended the launch of 51-L, at the urging of Marshall and contrary to the views of its engineers in order to accommodate a major customer. Despite hours of argument for a launch delay with clear data demonstrating risks provided by engineers, politics, and pressure interfered. Thiokol executives overruled the engineers and agreed with NASA to commence the launch. This shows us the lack of leadership at NASA along with the lack of accountability held by decision makers for their actions or decisions at the organization. To make things worse, no safety representatives or quality assurance engineers were invited to the January 27, 1986 teleconference between Marshall and Thiokol nor did they make any key decisions during the Challenger countdown on January 28, 1986. This has once again shown us the inefficiency of NASA’s organizational structure and their lack of clarity regarding responsibility assignments across organizational lines. The deficiency in communication between the management at NASA had detrimental effects. Thiokol and Marshall individually tried to contain potentially serious problems instead of communicating them forward. They apparently did not support the importance of NASA’s mission, culture, and values by functioning as part of a system working toward successful flight missions, and communicating with the other parts of the system that work to accomplish the same goal.

On April 3, 1986, Arnold Aldrich, the Space Shuttle program manager, appeared before the Commission at a public hearing in Washington, D.C. to describe the five different communication or organization failures that affected the launch decision on January 28, 1986. First and foremost, in order to eliminate human biases and errors, a well-structured and managed safety and quality assurance system needs to be established to flag any doubts or possible mechanical issues. Had these matters been clearly communicated and emphasized in the flight readiness process, it seems likely that the launch of the Challenger might not have occurred and the disaster could have been prevented. If launch constraints were carefully discussed in detail, the heightened indicators of any possible issues could certainly help eliminate the overconfidence bias for NASA leaders and in turn, help them come to a more educated and informed decision. NASA felt the increasing pressure to follow through with the launch after several delays in launching schedules. The unrealistic escalation of commitment led NASA to use irrational human behavior and poor decision-making. For that reason, a properly staffed and highly skilled safety and quality assurance team would have been able to help tackle the many extensive but neglected safety measures. Most importantly, the team must ensure that critical information is passed along and communicated to the proper levels of management. The rigorous pressure NASA faced to meet the demands of the high volume flight schedule led personnel to form the human confirmation bias in their decision-making process. Their confirmation bias led to evidence that only supported existing beliefs and hypotheses. In order to minimize this bias from creeping into their decision-making process, NASA’s missions, values, and procedures must be regularly reinforced and proper training for NASA leaders is crucial. Leaders need to know that research needs to be done on both the positives and negatives of a new venture. This data must be collected and used as a support mechanism rather than a decision-making tool.

Last but not least, for any organization to obtain and maintain its success, an efficient organizational structure and culture are the most important factors. In order for NASA to remain a pioneer of their industry, they need to establish a clear set of priorities to align with the company’s overall goals and mission. These priorities will help workers focus on keeping their core mission at heart and help keep the company stay on track with its identity and purpose. An improved organizational structure will help reinforce effective communication and work processes across organizational lines. A vibrant and collaborative cultural work environment will allow employees to feel passionate about their work and in turn, develop the ability to handle and adapt to new challenges.