Petroski also describes how risk goes hand in hand with engineering and enterprise by briefly discussing the process of design. Though it is almost impossible to look at engineering problems without emotion, it is necessary to do so in order to achieve success.
The engineer’s mission is to never stop searching for safety and improvement. Mistakes will be made, and sometimes these mistakes put lives at risk. As Henry Petroski argues in To Engineer is Human, “It is only when we set ourselves such an unrealistic goal as … building a vehicle that will never break down that we appear to be fools and non-rational beings” (5). Engineers must often fail before they can succeed, and success is often embedded with the causes of future failures. These judgements and sentiments highlight a crucial factor in this story: that engineering, exploration, and discovery are impossible without taking risks. spaceflight program, but only if NASA better managed the risks and crafted better means for safety and the preservation of human life (4). American public opinion seemed to share in these judgements, with significant support for the continuation of the U.S. Yet, he also emphasized how NASA workers wanted the program to continue, with the assurance that all the issues that caused the problem were fixed before the next launch. Michael Hawes, current Program Manager at Lockheed Martin for the NASA Orion program, remembered how Jon Clark, husband of Mission Specialist Laurel Clark, one of seven astronauts who died while aboard Columbia, wondered whether “we would continue to be a space-faring people or would we become a space-fearing people” (3). We see the same pattern of shock and re-commitment after the loss of Columbia. The team involved in the recovery and rebuild of the vehicle wanted to prove that the United States was still capable of conducting spaceflight safely by rebuilding the shuttle and getting to the root of the problems that lead to the incident. The accident was not simply the result of a mechanical mistake or oversight, but was rooted in NASA’s broken culture and the institutional failure to hear and address all concerns. NASA needed to honor the memories of the lost astronauts by finding the fatal mistakes and fixing them. Mullane recalled grieving, wanting to place blame, and desperately looking for a cause of what happened. As he wrote in his memoir, Riding Rockets, “Only the janitors and cafeteria workers at NASA were blameless in the deaths of the Challenger seven” (2). Immediately after the loss of Challenger in 1986, America’s first Space Shuttle disaster, astronaut Mike Mullane remembered how he felt about the program. I will use the Ross papers to narrate the technical investigation, recovery, and rebuild of one of the world’s most complex vehicles. Awaiting teams methodically reassembled what remained of Columbia as each available piece was carefully identified and organized. The goal of the search? Find shuttle parts and uncover what caused the vehicle to break-up mid-flight. But most of the recovery effort was a ground search that involved a massive force, including workers from NASA and a number of Texas service groups. Analysts first relied heavily on the data that was transmitted from the shuttle up until communications were lost. The recovery teams’ job was to piece Columbia, America’s space vehicle, back together again in order to help rebuild the space program. These sources reveal that the true meaning of the disaster was in the recovery. The archives at Purdue University hold a large collection of Jerry Ross’ papers, which include reports from the investigation, lists of recovered items, procedures for the recovery of Space Shuttle pieces, and maps of recovery zones and progress (1). Ross immediately went to work as a member of NASA’s rapid response team, leading and organizing groups for the ground search effort in southeastern Texas and directing the debris recovery team to find the crucial physical evidence. NASA astronaut and Purdue University alumnus Jerry L. Their mission now was to recover the Shuttle and investigate the accident. Were the risks to human life worth the gains? For the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and associated teams involved in the recovery effort, the importance of the greater mission, space exploration, outweighed any particular risks. If the media coverage was any indication, the breakup and destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia on Februwas a major disaster, perhaps even a reason to question the relative benefits and costs of spaceflight. Alexander, Satellite Systems Engineer at NASA Johnson Space Center, Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering, Purdue University