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A TALE OF TWO ACCIDENTS

Chun Wei Choo

in The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions

This chapter analyzes two organizational disasters that led to the loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003. These decision and information failures highlight interactions ... More

This chapter analyzes two organizational disasters that led to the loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003. These decision and information failures highlight interactions between meaning, knowing, and acting that can impede learning in any organization. Thus, sensemaking driven by beliefs and past actions can be a way of seeing as well as a way of not seeing problems and risks. Knowledge creation can be compromised when vital knowledge is not transferred, and when knowledge use is controlled by organizational agendas. Repeated patterns of decision making can entrench rules, induce overconfidence, and lower vigilance.Less

Challenger

Ned O'Gorman

in The Iconoclastic Imagination: Image, Catastrophe, and Economy in America from the Kennedy Assassination to September 11

Chapter four looks at a second American iconoclasm in the Cold War era, the Challenger disaster. Approaching the disaster in the context of Ronald Reagan’s America, where both television and ... More

Chapter four looks at a second American iconoclasm in the Cold War era, the Challenger disaster. Approaching the disaster in the context of Ronald Reagan’s America, where both television and neoliberal policy were reaching crescendos, the chapter argues that Reagan’s “Challenger Address” was a means of negotiating broader crises in political representation in America’s Cold War. Consistent with the iconoclastic tradition and its cultural, political, and indeed civic religious legacies, the “Challenger Address” pits “America” against the image. The nation, Reagan argues, like outer space, is uncontainable. But Reagan’s iconoclastic text is not strictly a matter of nationalist ideology; it concerns crises in representation that have both cultural and economic dimensions, in the form of television and deregulation respectively.Less

From Legacy to Legend

Megan Taylor Shockley

in The Captain's Widow of Sandwich: Self-Invention and the Life of Hannah Rebecca Burgess, 1834-1917

This chapter details how Rebecca's story had reached a wider audience and from there, had encouraged her to shape her own legend for the community. During the 1870s and beyond Rebecca added to her ... More

This chapter details how Rebecca's story had reached a wider audience and from there, had encouraged her to shape her own legend for the community. During the 1870s and beyond Rebecca added to her story significantly, in a way that made her appear even more the exciting, romantic heroine in her own maritime tale. By making a point to recount her version of her maritime experience to the wider community, Rebecca ensured the perpetuation of her persona, not only as William's loving wife but also as a woman who “saved” the Challenger's ship and crew from “certain peril” as William lay dying.Less

Women of the Moon

Daniel R. Altschuler and Fernando J. Ballesteros

in The Women of the Moon: Tales of Science, Love, Sorrow, and Courage

For each of the “Women of the Moon”, a biography and the reason for receiving the honor are described. The women included are Hypatia of Alexandria, Catherine of Alexandria, Nicole-Reine de la Briere ... More

For each of the “Women of the Moon”, a biography and the reason for receiving the honor are described. The women included are Hypatia of Alexandria, Catherine of Alexandria, Nicole-Reine de la Briere Lepaute, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville, Anne Sheepshanks, Catherine Wolfe Bruce, Maria Mitchell, Agnes Mary Clerke, Sofia Vasílyevna Kovalévskaya, Annie Scott Dill Russell Maunder, Williamina Paton Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, Mary Adela Blagg, Mary Proctor, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Lise Meitner, Amalie Emmy Noether, Louise Freeland Jenkins, Priscilla Fairfield Bok, Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori, and the astronauts/cosmonauts Judith Arlene Resnik, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, and Valentina Vladímirovna Nikolayeva Tereshkova.Less

Now, Voyager

Ellen Willis

in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

This chapter considers outer space as a metaphor for liberation and loneliness by focusing on the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. For both proponents and detractors, the military model of ... More

This chapter considers outer space as a metaphor for liberation and loneliness by focusing on the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. For both proponents and detractors, the military model of space flight coats the strangeness and terror of the enterprise with a deceptive familiarity. However the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) may define the conditions and the symbolism of space travel, it is ultimately dealing with the unpredictable and unknown. However space flight may be pressed into the service of nationalism and militarism, the nature of the journey is anything but parochial: it allows, for the first time, the possibility of literally seeing the world from another perspective. The potential effect on human life and culture is equally limitless. One of the seven crew members killed in the Challenger disaster was Christa McAuliffe, whose death humanized NASA.Less

The Ice Returns

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams

in The Goldilocks Planet: The 4 billion year story of Earth's climate

Among the marvellous fossils retrieved from Seymour Island—a thin strip of land near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a giant penguin that lived forty ... More

Among the marvellous fossils retrieved from Seymour Island—a thin strip of land near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a giant penguin that lived forty million years ago. Called simply ‘Nordenskiöld’s giant penguin’, after one of the great early Antarctic explorers, it is not the kind of animal you would like to meet down a dark alley late at night. Standing at nearly the height of an average man and with a long beak to match, it was much taller than the modern Emperor penguin. Nordenskiöld’s giant penguin was a portent of a cooling climate. Its bones—many of which now reside in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London—have been found within the Eocene mudrocks of Seymour Island. This island holds a special affection for palaeoclimatologists. It was here, in the late nineteenth century, that some of the first Antarctic fossils were found. These give a glimpse of what that continent was like before it became an icy wilderness. Seventy million years ago, wide Cretaceous forests, inhabited by dinosaurs, flourished in Antarctica. Even as little as fifty million years ago, the kinds of tree and shrub that thrive today in Patagonia once covered the hills and slopes of the mountainous Antarctic Peninsula. Their fossilized remains are found in the rocks of Seymour Island. In the summer months the island is warmed by the faint Antarctic sun, its surface melting like a chocolate cake at a picnic. The resulting muddy quagmire is worth persevering with. It yields the most wonderful fossils of ancient plants, among them Auracaria, the warmth-loving monkey-puzzle tree. Antarctic scientists have another, ulterior motive for visiting Seymour Island; those in the know are aware that the Argentine Base at Marambio is famous for its steaks. They are the best on the continent, and everyone hopes to get invited in. How then did Antarctica change from a continent of lush forests to a frozen wasteland? After all, this part of ancient Gondwana had already drifted over the southern polar region during the Cretaceous. Thus, Antarctica is not simply a frozen wasteland because it lies at the Pole. Less

Radiolaria: validating the Turing theory

Bernard Richards

in The Turing Guide

In his 1952 paper ‘The chemical basis of morphogenesis’ Turing postulated his now famous Morphogenesis Equation. He claimed that his theory would explain ... More

In his 1952 paper ‘The chemical basis of morphogenesis’ Turing postulated his now famous Morphogenesis Equation. He claimed that his theory would explain why plants and animals took the shapes they did. When I joined him, Turing suggested that I might solve his equation in three dimensions, a new problem. After many manipulations using rather sophisticated mathematics and one of the first factory-produced computers in the UK, I derived a series of solutions to Turing’s equation. I showed that these solutions explained the shapes of specimens of the marine creatures known as Radiolaria, and that they corresponded very closely to the actual spiny shapes of real radiolarians. My work provided further evidence for Turing’s theory of morphogenesis, and in particular for his belief that the external shapes exhibited by Radiolaria can be explained by his reaction–diffusion mechanism. While working in the Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester in the early 1950s, Alan Turing reignited the interests he had had in both botany and biology from his early youth. During his school-days he was more interested in the structure of the flowers on the school sports field than in the games played there (see Fig. 1.3). It is known that during the Second World War he discussed the problem of phyllotaxis (the arrangement of leaves and florets in plants), and then at Manchester he had some conversations with Claude Wardlaw, the Professor of Botany in the University. Turing was keen to take forward the work that D’Arcy Thompson had published in On Growth and Form in 1917. In his now-famous paper of 1952 Turing solved his own ‘Equation of Morphogenesis’ in two dimensions, and demonstrated a solution that could explain the ‘dappling’—the black-and-white patterns—on cows. The next step was for me to solve Turing’s equation in three dimensions. The two-dimensional case concerns only surface features of organisms, such as dappling, spots, and stripes, whereas the three-dimensional version concerns the overall shape of an organism. In 1953 I joined Turing as a research student in the University of Manchester, and he set me the task of solving his equation in three dimensions. A remarkable journey of collaboration began. Turing chatted to me in a very friendly fashion. Less

Discovering the Ocean: Of Fish and Ships and People

Wolf H. Berger

in Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration

This chapter discusses the impact of human activities on the ocean and provides a brief history of the expansion of ocean research. It begins by discussing the major causes of fishery decline in the ... More

This chapter discusses the impact of human activities on the ocean and provides a brief history of the expansion of ocean research. It begins by discussing the major causes of fishery decline in the North Atlantic. This is followed by a discussion on the history of early oceanography and the contributions of the Challenger Expedition and other expeditions that led to the progress of oceanographic science. The chapter then describes the history of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a research center concerned with the study of nearshore and deep-sea organisms, as well as the geophysics of the seafloor and life-support systems of the planet.Less

Microbes and Minerals

David Rickard

in Pyrite: A Natural History of Fool's Gold

Pyrite consists of two elements—iron and sulfur—but considerations of pyrite formation have mainly concerned sulfur. Iron is extremely abundant in the Earth; in fact, ... More

Pyrite consists of two elements—iron and sulfur—but considerations of pyrite formation have mainly concerned sulfur. Iron is extremely abundant in the Earth; in fact, it is the fourth most abundant element on Earth and is less localized in its distribution. By contrast, sulfur is the 17th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and there are about 100 times more iron than sulfur. The interest in the primary role of sulfur in pyrite formation continues to the present day. In the Old Latin of early Republican Rome (i.e., before c. 200 BCE), sulfur was called sulpur or burning stone (i.e., brimstone). The p was pronounced with a puff of air. This puff was transliterated with an h following the p. When the f sound was introduced into classical Latin, p was often changed to ph in Latin words of Greek origin. Sulpur, however, had no Greek roots. The Greeks called it θείον (thion), which gave rise to our prefix, thio-. Sulfur had been written as sulphur in Old Latin, with the h indi­cating the puff of air after the p, but when the f sound was introduced this gave the mistaken impression that sulphur was originally a Greek word. At the end of classical times (around 27 BCE) the spelling was altered to sulfur, which is the spelling that usually appears in Latin dictionaries. In the last millennium, the element has traditionally been spelled sulphur in the United Kingdom and countries where UK rule held sway. By contrast, US English has continually used the correct sulfur spelling. The fountainhead of all chemical definitions worldwide, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, adopted the spelling sulfur in 1990. Finally, the UK authorities admitted their error and the UK Royal Society of Chemistry Nomenclature Committee recommended the correct spelling in 1992. In 2000 the authority determining quality and standards in UK schools decreed UK children should be taught the sulfur spelling. The sulphur spelling still occurs, but at best this is a literary affectation. Less

Pyrite and the Global Environment

David Rickard

in Pyrite: A Natural History of Fool's Gold

The two basic processes concerning pyrite in the environment are the formation of pyrite, which usually involves reduction of sulfate to sulfide, and the destruction ... More

The two basic processes concerning pyrite in the environment are the formation of pyrite, which usually involves reduction of sulfate to sulfide, and the destruction of pyrite, which usually involves oxidation of sulfide to sulfate. On an ideal planet these two processes might be exactly balanced. But pyrite is buried in sediments sometimes for hundreds of millions of years, and the sulfur in this buried pyrite is removed from the system, so the balance is disturbed. The lack of balance between sulfide oxidation and sulfate reduction powers a global dynamic cycle for sulfur. This would be complex enough if this were the whole story. However, as we have seen, both the reduction and oxidation arms of the global cycle are essentially biological—specifically microbiological—processes. This means that there is an intrinsic link between the sulfur cycle and life on Earth. In this chapter, we examine the central role that pyrite plays, and has played, in determining the surface environment of the planet. In doing so we reveal how pyrite, the humble iron sulfide mineral, is a key component of maintaining and developing life on Earth. In Chapter 4 we concluded that Mother Nature must be particularly fond of pyrite framboids: a thousand billion of these microscopic raspberry-like spheres are formed in sediments every second. If we translate this into sulfur production, some 60 million tons of sulfur is buried as pyrite in sediments each year. But this is only a fraction of the total amount of sulfide produced every year by sulfate-reducing bacteria. In 1982 the Danish geomicrobiologist Bo Barker Jørgensen discovered that as much as 90% of the sulfide produced by sulfate-reducing bacteria was rapidly reoxidized by sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms. Sulfate-reducing microorganisms actually produce about 300 million tons of sulfur each year, but about 240 million tons is reoxidized. The magnitude of the sulfide production by sulfate-reducing bacte­ria can be appreciated by comparison with the sulfur produced by volcanoes. As discussed in Chapter 5, it was previously supposed that all sulfur, and thus pyrite, had a volcanic origin. In fact volcanoes produce just 10 million tons of sulfur each year. Less

Emancipating Structures and Cognitive Styles

Karen A. Cerulo

in Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst

This chapter investigates the role of emancipating structures in the development of negative asymmetry. It compares high-profile cases involving worst-case scenarios including the SARS outbreak of ... More

This chapter investigates the role of emancipating structures in the development of negative asymmetry. It compares high-profile cases involving worst-case scenarios including the SARS outbreak of 2003, the Y2K threat of 2000, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's handling of the “Phoenix memo” in 2001, and the Challenger disaster of 1986. The analysis reveals that certain structures play a pivotal role in nurturing the cognitive deviance needed to anticipate and avoid disaster. This chapter shows how emancipating structures can loosen the hold of dominant cultural practices and free groups and communities to pursue both unanticipated problems and creative solutions.Less

Voyager Redux, Galileo, and Magellan

Peter J. Westwick

in Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004

This chapter shows that despite the failure of the SSEC plan—the bloated Mars Observer, the deferral of Mariner Mark II—the decade of the 1980s closed on a generally upbeat note. The optimism of ... More

This chapter shows that despite the failure of the SSEC plan—the bloated Mars Observer, the deferral of Mariner Mark II—the decade of the 1980s closed on a generally upbeat note. The optimism of 1985, dashed by Challenger, returned. Mars Observer and CRAF/Cassini, although expanding beyond austerity, were still under way. Voyager meanwhile continued to sustain the lab with encounters with Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, and together with Galileo and Magellan it combined to restore confidence at JPL. Amid the drought in planetary launches, the main sustenance for planetary scientists in this period came from Voyager 2's encounters at Uranus and Neptune, which extended Voyager's triumphal tour of the outer solar system. The encounters, however, did not simply entail sitting back and waiting for the spacecraft to get there but required much new work.Less

The Information Sharing Crisis that Does Not Go Away

Alon Peled

in Traversing Digital Babel: Information, E-Government, and Exchange

The chapter illustrates the severity of public sector information sharing failures with five tragic events where information sharing failure was decisive: the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion; the ... More

The chapter illustrates the severity of public sector information sharing failures with five tragic events where information sharing failure was decisive: the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion; the 9/11 terror attacks; Hurricane Katrina; the 2010 Haiti earthquake; and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. The chapter defines public agencies as big data owners and shows that the volume of big data processed and stored in the public sector far surpasses that of the private sector. The chapter then describes the massive cost of public sector information sharing failures in terms of wasted funds, lives lost, fraud, low data quality, and ineffective governance.Less

Astronauts: Reinventing the Right Stuff

Valerie Neal

in Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era and Beyond: Redefining Humanity's Purpose in Space

The third chapter, “Astronauts: Reinventing the Right Stuff,” examines how the astronaut as icon embodied new meanings of spaceflight. A salient distinction of the shuttle era was the broadening, ... More

The third chapter, “Astronauts: Reinventing the Right Stuff,” examines how the astronaut as icon embodied new meanings of spaceflight. A salient distinction of the shuttle era was the broadening, diversity, and democratization of the astronaut corps through new roles and new selection criteria. The nature of the job (engineering and scientific research) contrasted with the public’s ingrained perception of astronauts as pilots, especially in the wake of the two shuttle tragedies. Two memes coexisted in a shifting balance: the astronaut as exceptional and heroic, and the astronaut as an extraordinarily capable “ordinary” person.Less

Twentieth-Century Space

Claude A. Piantadosi

in Mankind Beyond Earth: The History, Science, and Future of Human Space Exploration

This chapter explains the evolution of our knowledge of the problems of putting people into space and how the remaining issues can be resolved through perseverance, continuity, and international ... More

This chapter explains the evolution of our knowledge of the problems of putting people into space and how the remaining issues can be resolved through perseverance, continuity, and international cooperation. It begins with a short synopsis of the development of the key twentieth-century concepts that built on the requirement for hard-shell engineering covered in Chapter 3. It discusses Project Apollo which culminated on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 carrying Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. It describes two major shuttle disasters: the Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986 and the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003. The final section focuses on the decision to build the International Space Station (ISS) in 1993.Less

The National Security Agencies Abandon the Shuttle

James E. David

in Spies and Shuttles: NASA's Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA

It soon became evident after the Shuttle's long-delayed first flight in 1981 that it could neither meet the estimated flight schedule nor achieve the original performance specifications needed for ... More

It soon became evident after the Shuttle's long-delayed first flight in 1981 that it could neither meet the estimated flight schedule nor achieve the original performance specifications needed for the heaviest national security payloads. Other problems plagued the program as well. The DoD abandoned its policy during the first two years of Shuttle operations of having backup expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) for all payloads and assigned the few remaining ones to launch specific satellites. Over the strenuous objections of NASA, it obtained permission in 1984 to build ten new launch vehicles for the heaviest payloads that the Shuttle could not carry. After the secure command and control system and the upper stage became operational, the DoD flew unclassified and classified payloads until the Challenger accident in 1986. The Challenger accident seriously disrupted the DoD's launch schedule, and it quickly began acquisition of several new classes of ELVs. Because performance-enhancing measures for the Shuttle were soon cancelled, the unused West Coast launch complex was mothballed. The DoD flew its last Shuttle missions from 1988 to 1992, presumably with payloads that could not fly on ELVs or that were too expensive to reconfigure to permit this. Its participation in the Shuttle program came to a premature end at an immense cost and with few benefits to show for it.Less

The saxophone as symbol and icon

Stephen Cottrell

in The Saxophone

This chapter examines the saxophone's status as a symbol and an icon within culture. From its inception, the instrument has been identified with modernity, innovation, and a sense of exploration and ... More

This chapter examines the saxophone's status as a symbol and an icon within culture. From its inception, the instrument has been identified with modernity, innovation, and a sense of exploration and enquiry. Its unusual shape and timbre were harnessed to great effect and have thus garnered it an audience whose minds were to view it as something new and exotic. The saxophone slowly and eventually penetrated art music genres later on, its supporters pushing the serious qualities of the instrument and its great contribution to music. Clay Smith was one who promoted this in the early 1900s, noting the saxophone as quintessentially American especially since it was perfected and improved in America. Its symbolic role began with astronaut Ron McNair, making it the first musical instrument to be taken into orbit on the space shuttle Challenger in February 1984. The chapter thus illustrates other examples of the saxophone's status and symbol in culture.Less

Judith Arlene Resnik (1949–1986)

Daniel R. Altschuler and Fernando J. Ballesteros

in The Women of the Moon: Tales of Science, Love, Sorrow, and Courage

This chapter focuses on the life of the American astronaut Judith Resnik, who died in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.