The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, Enlarged Edition, Vaughan
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The Challenger Launch Decision
Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, Enlarged Edition
Enlarged
Diane Vaughan
With a New Preface
9780226346823
9780226346960
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The Challenger Launch Decision
Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, Enlarged Edition
Enlarged
Diane Vaughan
With a New Preface
The classic, groundbreaking account of how the culture of NASA helped lead to the Challenger disaster
When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans became bound together in a single, historic moment. Many still vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. Diane Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that fateful decision, contradicting conventional interpretations to prove that what occurred at NASA was not skullduggery or misconduct but a disastrous mistake.
Why did NASA managers, who not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were warned against it, decide to proceed? In retelling how the decision unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders, when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong, normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them. In a new preface, Vaughan reveals the ramifications for this book and for her when a similar decision-making process brought down NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.
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620 pages<br>54 line drawings, 2 tables<br>6 x 9<br>© 2015
History:<br>American History,<br>History of Technology
Sociology:<br>Collective Behavior, Mass Communication
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“A landmark study."
Atlantic
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables<br>Preface to the 2016 Edition<br>Preface
One The Eve of the Launch<br>Two Learning Culture, Revising History<br>Three Risk, Work Group Culture, and the Normalization of Deviance<br>Four The Normalization of Deviance, 1981–84<br>Five The Normalization of Deviance, 1985<br>Six The Culture of Production<br>Seven Structural Secrecy<br>Eight The Eve of the Launch Revisited<br>Nine Conformity and Tragedy<br>Ten Lessons Learned
Appendix A Cost/Safety Trade-Offs? Scrapping the Escape Rockets and the SRB Contract Award Decision<br>Appendix B Supporting Charts and Documents<br>Appendix C On Theory Elaboration, Organizations, and Historical Ethnography<br>Acknowledgments<br>Notes<br>Bibliography<br>Index
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