On the website’s left panel there are three different “disasters” from the past 90 years; choose one and explore its causes and effects, you will have to research beyond these articles, and write a causal analysis of the one you choose. At least 300 words. Be sure to use standard formatting: have an Introduction, several body paragraphs and a conclusion. Do not forget to comment and ask questions about your colleagues’ responses. I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say in your responses. . .
Advertisement
On February 1, 2003, NASA’s shuttle Columbia broke apart as it returned to Earth from a sixteen day mission and all seven astronauts were killed. Many were left to speculate how a disaster of this magnitude was allowed to happen, and NASA created the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) to find out. Of course, the physical cause is the easiest to assess; the physical cause was damage to Columbia’s left wing by a piece of insulating foam that detached and struck the orbiter’s left wing. The foam created a hole allowing superheated air to enter the wing during reentry, leading to the disintegration of the orbiter. One might read this and think, “Why was something so simple as insulating foam never secured it its place?”. Unfortunately, the causes go deeper than what’s on the surface and in a time where space travel was routine, this disaster left man with doubts.
According to the CAIB report,the problem was rooted in “political and budgetary considerations, compromises, and changing priorities over the life” of the shuttle program, and “places as much weight on these causal factors as on the physical cause”. The report concedes that although there was a physical problem with the ship, one of the real indirect reasons was poor budgeting, scheduling, and stress that caused this ship to launch before getting properly inspected. Some of these include a broken safety culture, scheduling pressure, budget constraints, and workforce reductions.
After listing the possible factors that allowed for the failed inspection, each one can be dissected to determine the real cause. It would seem that budget constraints were not the issue. The crew building the shuttle had all the top grade material. According to the CAIB report, the wing was made out of reinforced Carbon-Carbon panel. This strong piece of material proved very sturdy in lab tests. However, budgeting constraints did cause a workforce reduction, which is the next reason. Although there is no link between a smaller workforce and reduced quality, one might argue that the amount of product is significantly lessened. Also, one might argue that a lessened workforce contributes to the next possible cause: scheduling pressure. The remaining workers left on the Columbia project were few, and they had to keep a schedule. In the midst of this stress, a mistake was made securing the panel containing the insulating foam, thus leading to the disaster.
In conclusion, budgeting restraints caused a reduced workforce, which in turn caused scheduling pressures as the small amount of workers had to get a large amount of work done in a small amount of time. The time schedule was adhered to too strictly and the mission went ahead prematurely and without the proper inspections. One might argue that without the budgeting cuts, this wouldn’t have happened. However, that is a secondary reason. The real reason is the machine wasn’t inspected properly. If it were, the time schedule wouldn’t have mattered because NASA wouldn’t have risked sending a faulty machine up in space. Thus, the direct reason the insulating foam came off was because of carelessness, whereas all the other reason’s lead up to it.
Comment by Sami Kaldawi — 06/16/2010 @ 2:14 pm
The interesting thing about this is NASA has a history of carelessness. During early testing on the effects of space travel in humans a test pilot almost died because speed sensors were install backwards. In 2004 a probe crashed in Utah because….the deaccelorators were installed backwards. One of the first interplanatary probes failed because the programing code in the guidance system was missing a hyphen. NASA engineers are supposed to be smart, we dont call them rocket scientists for nothing. I wonder when they will start to learn from their mistakes.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 2:29 pm
I think that these small errors can be overlooked in the grand sceme of the complexity of what they were doing. We can all remember doing something at work that we knew better. We may have not even noticed, but maybe someone else did. When you realize how stupid the mistake was you laugh thinking how strange it is that you committed the erroe. Employees at NASA are no different, but more likely than not, the stakes are much higher, and more people tend to notice the little mistakes. An O-ring in a shuttle is a drop in the ocean in terms of the total complexity of the system, and nobody’s perfect.
Comment by Andrew Eckenrode — 06/16/2010 @ 2:53 pm
I understand people make mistakes. Just seems like there would be more redudancies or procedures in place to catch them. Of course, how many times were disasters narrowly missed because someone was paying attention and caught a mistake? We never hear about those, only the failures.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 3:41 pm
The thing is, they knew about this potential problem and chose to ignore it. Not really an excuse for that…
Comment by David Choi — 06/16/2010 @ 4:05 pm
As for the comment that “No one is perfect.” The problem lies specifically in that explicitly stated pop-psych attitude. When we are dealing with people’s lives and huge sums of the public trust’s money, or even just one’s bosses’ materials ad money, one needs to be perfect. Attention to detail is what the multi-tasking, digital era lacks and it shows in the products we are persuaded to buy, in the governments we elect and in the educations we are giving future generations. The lack of knowledge and substitution of form for content that is exemplified by today’s consumer economy and culture will lead to a crisis of competence in just a few years. The space program losing 25% of its missions to engineering error is just the tip of the ice pick that will kill the US and western nations. la-la-la. Good riddance?
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:11 pm
On August 1, 2007 a steel truss arch bridge over the Mississippi river collapsed. When the 40 year old bridge on Interstate 35W in Minneapolis Minnesota, collapsed 13 people were killed. When I saw the three topics choices I was immediately interested in the bridge collapse because I have an engineering background. When I was in college before studying engineering we did a lot of structural analysis of bridges. I have actually done analysis of collapsed bridges to find out what the cause was. This involves a lot of information I do not have, such as the dimensions of the truss beams, the type of steel used, the method they were fastened together, etc. It also take a lot of math, which I hate, which is why I am not longer studying engineering. But, because of this background, I can come up with a basic theory on the causes. First would be a design flaw, that is some type of error during the design of the bridge. Construction error could also be a cause, the workers during construction do not follow the design or cut corners somehow. Finally improper use could be the factor, using the bridge in a way it was never designed for.
The basic style of the bridge is a tried and true steel truss arch. This is probably the most common type of bridge in use. It is strong, light weight, and inexpensive. The basic style is a good design. There are examples of this bridge style still standing that were built by the Romans. During the time this bridge was built, the standards of bridge building were not as strict as today. This design does not have the redundancies or fail safes found on modern designs. However, the basic design is architecturally sound, I don’t not believe the design is what caused the collapse.
When a government agency decides to do a construction project, the work is don’t by contracts through a bid process. Typically the company with the lowest bid gets the job. This can cause many companies to cut corners and do shoddy work in an effort to lowest costs. However, the construction process is supervised by someone from the agency, and tested and inspected to make sure it meets the standards and requirement called for. I am sure this bridge was no different, someone inspected the bridge during and after construction to make sure it followed the design plans and met the material needs. So, construction errors probably did not cause the bridge to fail.
However, this bridge was fairly old at 40 years. While the design itself is sound, it is typically used for low traffic roads, not an Interstate in a major city. This leads me to believe the bridge was being used outside of what it was designed for. Simply put the bridge was built to meet the requirements of traffic in the 1960 or 1970s, not today. Overuse and age meant the bridge could no long handle the stress of the traffic and failed. The bridge was inspected multiple times before the failure, and the results of the inspections were all the same, the bridge was failing. The bridge was visually cracked, and recommended for replacement. . One clue we used in my engineering class for overstressed bridge failure was where the fail occurred. As soon as I read the article I wanted to see where the failure happened, the middle of the span or the end by the footings, which many times indicates overstress. Videos of the collapse show it started at the end.
This disaster was not caused by a faulty design, or shoddy workmanship. It was caused by the engineers and transportation department in charge of the bridge failing to replace it. Even though they knew it was under stress and loads it was not designed for, and had serious cracks and signs of obvious imminent failure. This is the most common reason why bridges fail. Hopefully, this disaster will reinforce the need for the Department of Transportation to properly inspect bridges and other structures, and immediately replace them when they are being overused or failing. The cost to replace a bridge is far cheaper then the loss of one life.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 2:19 pm
wow, thats pretty crazy that they knew the bridge was failing yet they still failed to do something about it. Hopefully this leads to tougher regulations now that people are aware of the dangers.
Comment by Sami Kaldawi — 06/16/2010 @ 2:40 pm
I recently red an article stating that the nations infastructure, specifically bridges, recieved a D- grade. It was found that more than half of the bridges in the nation needed substantial repairs or had significant deterioration. Think about that next time you drive 70mph around an onramp that rises over 100 feet over the ground (US 60 west to I-10 south).
Comment by Andrew Eckenrode — 06/16/2010 @ 2:56 pm
Unfortunatly most decisions are made by some “bean counter” in an office somwhere who only looks at the financial aspect. A common theme in all these disasters are they were preventable. People just lacked the courage and intestinal fortitude to do the right thing.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 3:07 pm
Someone always knows but the burden, the crushing silence of enterprise and public bureaucracies are always with us and quiets those who know with fear: fear of retribution, loss of livlihood, and rejection by colleagues and friends.
.
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:14 pm
Hopefully this will work…
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 2:20 pm
The actual viewing of the bridge collapsing is really crazy. It happened so fast. The sad thing is that the flaw was known about, yet they did nothing to repair it until around the time it collapsed. Them not doing anything to fix the bridge took the life of 13 people.
Comment by Imari Murray — 06/16/2010 @ 2:52 pm
I dont understand why the lady said you could see smoke. Its a steel and concrete bridge, nothing is burning. It looks like water that was splashed up to me.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 3:03 pm
Yeah I for one didn’t see any smoke. It had to be the water splashing. But we all see different things I suppose and she saw smoke..
Comment by Imari Murray — 06/16/2010 @ 3:08 pm
Smoke sounds more exciting.
Comment by Ceilan Mcdonald — 06/16/2010 @ 3:17 pm
The smoke she referred to was the spray from the water being displaced by the bridge.
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:16 pm
Nicely reviewed and explicated. The most painful part for me was seeing the ice detach the foam during lift off while no one did anything about it. The incident was worse than the O-ring debacle. Thanks to Feynman we got the goods on that one!
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 2:21 pm
How Columbia Ended the Shuttle Program
The Columbia Shuttle disaster happened February 1st 2003. During the launch a small piece of foam insulation broke from the main fuel tank and struck the wing, damaging the thermal barrier that protects it during atmosphere reentry. When the Columbia orbiter attempted to reenter the atmosphere at the conclusion of the mission, the intense heat generated made it into the wing and caused the ship to break up in the sky. This disaster, the Discovery disaster, previous issues, and a rising issues with the budget led to the eventual end of the shuttle program.
The shuttle program was designed to be a replacement for rocket/module type spacecraft like the previous Saturn rocket ship. The new ship would increase usable payload and decrease some of the revolving costs associated with launching a recovering a capsule. It was also designed to increase safety for the occupants of the vehicle.
At the beginning of the program NASA was pleased with the results of the program. However, as time passed the government lowered NASA’s budget. This may have been due to a decrease in defense spending after the cold war. The space program, although used for science and research, has its roots in the military. Before NASA existed, the space program was run by the Army. Many of the first rocket prototypes were even developed using German technology from the second world war, like the V2 “buzzbomb” rockets that devastated Great Britain. By developing the space program, the government may have been banking on developing a means for advanced space warefare, if it was ever needed against a major foe like the Russians or other developed space nations.
After the cold war ended, the need for manned space missions decreased. This is evident by the fact that since the late 70’s there have not been any efforts to go to the moon or anywhere else. Much of the space program since the fall of the soviet union has been research or satellite development for communications.
With the post-2001 recession developing, and the government engaged in a low-tech street to street war in the Middle East, and the 2nd major shuttle disaster, NASA’s orbiter budget may have seemed an unnecessary expense. In addition the simple nature of the cause of the accident made for a compelling argument to change the space program in a major way. In this way, the Columbia disaster has led to the demise of the shuttle program.
Comment by Andrew Eckenrode — 06/16/2010 @ 2:49 pm
Okay.. . . good
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:16 pm
In Minneapolis the I35W buckled down on August 1st, 2007. The disaster killed 13 just because of the fault in the design. The bridge has had the flaw for over 40 years but at the time of the collapse they were planning on fixing it. They waited too long to be quite honest.
The officials were told in the early 90’s that the bridge could collapse but there wasn’t a specific time to when it would fall. But they didn’t really take the time out to reconstruct the bridge; instead they relied on patchwork repairs and inspections. The little repairs obviously didn’t have much of an impact on the bridge because it still collapsed. There have been numerous inspections on the bridge but nothing was done to fix it. Most of the inspections gave the bridge a low rating such as “A 2005 federal inspection also rated the bridge structurally deficient, giving it a 50 on a scale of 100 for structural stability.” It seems as if the inspection ratings didn’t really make a difference to the officials because they really didn’t do much to fix the bridges. They failed to realize that the bridges needed to be closed so they could do the proper repairs on it. It is said the bridge was inspected every year unlike others that got inspected every 2 years.
The officials figured that the cracks on the bridges weren’t too much of a problem and it was pretty stable so they just did little repairs on the bridge. The collapse took place when there were workers on the bridge with heavy equipment and they were working on the maintenance on the guardrails, as well as some other repairs. The director of Infrastructure Technology Institute stated that the construction they were doing on the bridge at the time had to be a major factor of it collapsing.
In conclusion, the officials not putting the inspections in too much consideration was a great factor of the bridge collapsing. If they were to do proper construction the bridge ahead of time, there could have been a chance that the bridge wouldn’t have collapsed in the first place. Innocent lives were lost because of this situation, which could have been resolved a few years back.
Comment by Imari Murray — 06/16/2010 @ 3:53 pm
Thanks
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:17 pm
I agree that this bridge collapse could have been prevented. They should have know from the inspections, and that adding that much weight to the bridge would have impacts. This country should invest more in regulation, and holding companies to those regulations.
Comment by Eric Storey — 06/16/2010 @ 4:32 pm
Unfortunate Ignorance
It is human nature to try and stretch the limits of what is physically capable. With this, though, comes inherent danger. This is illustrated by the space shuttle Columbia disaster, in which the mission was a successful one—minus the reentry of the shuttle into the Earth’s atmosphere. One would expect the safety of the astronaut’s lives to be the highest priority of the mission, making the cause of the disaster something that has to be examined. An investigation by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which searched not only for the direct cause of but the contributing events to the disaster, discovered that NASA’s ignorance, created by an environment strained by a lack of funding, led to the disaster to occur.
Part II of the CAIB’s report states that “The Board is convinced that the factors that led to the Columbia accident go well beyond the physical mechanisms…” The report traces the disaster back to the end of the Cold War, which forced the U.S. to cut NASA’s budget because they were “no longer able to justify its projects with the kind of urgency that the superpower struggle had provided.” This is a very remote cause, but an important one nonetheless, as it put “NASA leadership on a crusade for efficiency.”
This mindset would hinder them from realizing the severity of previously known potential problems about the launch. Foam insulation was necessary to keep the external tank of all shuttles from heating up. Safeguards were placed to make sure this necessity was not damaging to the flight; in the “Flight and Ground Specifications” of NASA, it was mandated that debris from the external tank should be prevented. Yet the material that was used for insulation consistently created debris in previous missions, and engineers before the flight stated that the external tank of Columbia would again “produce the [same] de¬bris shower.” This problem was ignored for the sake of efficiency, though: it did not create a problem before, so there was no point in delaying the flight to fix it.
Alas, the direct cause of the shuttle’s disintegration was this very foam shedding. During launch, a sufficiently large piece of foam struck the left wing, damaging the thermal protection system of the shuttle, which prevents the shuttle from overheating. The shuttle reached orbit, and some suspected damage, but NASA stated that little could be done regardless if problems were present. During reentry, the damaged wing was destroyed, soon breaking it up entirely.
Thankfully, NASA was taught a lesson by this disaster, thanks to the investigation. In this is the power of causal analysis; as long as causes are in the hands of people, previous disasters can hopefully be avoided in the future.
Comment by David Choi — 06/16/2010 @ 4:07 pm
okay, thanks.
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:18 pm
In the middle of the night fifty miles north of Los Angeles, what has been acclaimed as the worst disaster in California occurred when the Saint Francis Dam collapsed in March of 1928. The failure of the dam was unforeseen with engineering knowledge at the time. However, the disaster did lead the way to improved procedures in dam construction. Unfortunately, the human toll was tremendous.
The builder of the dam was William Mulholland. He served as the Chief Engineer of Los Angeles Water and Power for the city. Mr. Mulholland had built a stellar reputation for himself and rose to great professional heights.
Earlier in the day of the disaster, Mr. Mulholland was called to inspect the dam. The workers had notice some water coming through the front of the dam. After inspection, the dam seemed to be fine. Later that evening, the dam proved to indeed not be fine. As water began to seep along the sides and bottom of the dam, the dam began to float. This in turn caused it to break in to huge chunks of concrete and flooding the valley.
When the water came bursting through the valley carrying tons of massive piles of concrete, the people living in the valley were crushed and washed away. According to the March 13, 1928 Los Angeles Examiner, the water produced waves as high as 50 feet. There is record that a total of 450 people died that night. However, there were many unaccounted Mexican Americans who lived and worked in the valley. Mr. Mulholland took the disaster tremendously hard and became reclusive even to his family.
After the Saint Francis Dam Disaster, engineers realized that the geology of the area was the reason for the dam failure. The earth surrounding the dam was weak, causing the water to seep around the edges resulting in the dam crumbling. With this knowledge previous dams built could be inspected to prevent another disaster, and new construction would be different based on this knowledge. Also, the construction of the Saint Francis Dam was under the sole direction of Mr. Mulholland. After this disaster all new construction would have multiple people overseeing the projects to catch any possible problems.
Comment by Eric Storey — 06/16/2010 @ 4:30 pm
AAAWWWWWW! My favorite disaster! I generally favor dam failures, we need the sand.
Comment by syndeeann — 06/16/2010 @ 4:49 pm
One of the most deadly Tsunami’s in the world occurred under the Indian Ocean, next to Indonesia. The tsunami had a power level of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs when it impacted the shorelines. Near the end of the day more than 150 thousand people were lost, millions were homeless in 11 countries. This is what made this tsunami the most devastating one in the world.
Tsunamis are most common in the Pacific Ocean, but not usually the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean tsunami caused waves to be as high as 50 feet in height in some places. Many people described the ocean as a rapid surging of the ocean, more like an extremely powerful river or a flood than the usual giant waves that retreat.
Many of the people weren’t educated enough to know what receding water means. The majority of people that were killed or missing was mainly children; their bodies couldn’t take the pressure of the water. Other adults were killed as well, but were due to smashing against structures.
Many reports quoted survivors saying how “they had never seen the sea withdraw such a distance, exposing seafloor never seen before, stranding fish and boats on the sand.” This shows that this is not normal for type of tsunami. With a power seen like this, one can only wonder what else Mother Nature can bring for our surprise.
What counts for a normal day at the Bahamas are no longer a normal day for Indi. People in the millions were struggling with the reality of tens of their loved ones missing or possibly dead. There was destroyed homes, and destroyed lives. Thousands of corpses, hanging in trees or washed up on beaches, started to rot immediately in the heat. With no food or clean water and open wounds, the risk of famine and epidemic diseases was high. The health officials feared that the death toll might double to 300,000. When tsunamis hit, and you see water receding, you may only have up to 5 minutes to get to high ground before it’s too late.
Comment by Alec — 06/16/2010 @ 5:39 pm
August 1, 2008 the I35 West Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed killing 13 civilians. Investigations have been made to find the cause of the collapsed bridge. The problem was not clearing identified as the bridge’s design information was created in the 1960s. The 40 year old bridge collapsed during repairs, tons of equipment was brought on the bridge. When bridges are made several factors are considered when designing a bridge. Such factors are; air resistance, weight capacity, and materials used to construct the bridge. Bridges are used to link land that is separated by water or canyons. The distances between the two influence the design on the bridge. The bridge is considered a “fracture critical” meaning if a failure of one major part fails the whole bridge is destroyed. The bridge needs to be stable, as vibrations can cause the bridge to shift and soon after causing the bridge to buckle under pressure. Just like roads there is a capacity of weight the bridge can manage. By bringing on tons of equipment on the bridge, maximum weight could have been surpassed. Stupidity could have been the cause of the collation, as safety measurements were over looked. Other consideration of the bridge collapsing could have been the age of the bridge. Over time weight was added by maintenance causing the bridge to become weak. Welding two rods together is not as strong as a whole rod. Years of decomposing materials must be replaced by new materials to maintain structure. At some point a bridge needs to be rebuilt as repairs are not enough. Ignoring minor details can cause a safety issues as the bridge served as a highway. Something important as a highway is used every day, tension is continuous. Multiple problems could have caused the bridge to collapse, but a poor safety measurement is the key factor of the catastrophe.
Comment by Raymond Paul — 06/16/2010 @ 5:49 pm