Space Shuttle Challenger Presidential Commission

Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. (1986). Washington, DC U.S. Government Printing Office. 

Let s not kid ourselves, even a seasoned engineer can miss the mark by a fair amount. Whenever I make a presentation, I start by showing the graph in Fig. 39.1. This material was taken from the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, June 6, 1986, Washington, D.C. 

When an especially dramatic or costly engineering failure occurs, a special committee or commission may be empaneled to study the circumstances of the failure and to make appropriate recommendations. Such groups may be convened under the auspices of one or more professional organizations or may be named by a governor or the president of the United States. A notable example of the work of such a commission is given in the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident [14). The Space Shuttle Challenger accident is described as a case study in Chapter 9 of this book. 

Here we examine the circumstances and events leading to the aftermath of one of the most dramatic engineering failures of the twentieth century the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. This material was largely abstracted from the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (1). It also draws from two NASA documents NASA, The First 25 Years, 1958-1983 (2), and The Space Shuttle at Work (3). 

Discuss the mechanism used (a Presidential Commission) to investigate the space shuttle Challenger accident. What other approaches could have been used Under what circumstances is it appropriate to carry out such investigations by a presi-dentially appointed mechanism ... 

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