Challenger Explosion

For our ethical research Amber Misenheimer and I chose to do the Challenger Explosion in 1986. I hadn't ever really learned much about the explosion other than what my parents had told me. I knew it was a big deal though, and it really hit home with my mother since she was a school teacher as well. Through researching and looking further into the explosion I learned more about what had actually happened. There was an issue with the O-rings that seal main joints of the rocket booster together. Right when the rocket was beginning to launch black puffs of smoke were seen showing that something was obviously wrong. The ethical lapse comes into play when before the flight a few of the engineers were saying that something was wrong with the O-rings and that the launch should go on. With the flight having been delayed multiple times already the managers weren't having this argument. It was also showed that some of the engineers reported the problem with the O-rings but that they didn't report it in a way that others could take as being as serious as it really was. One paper stated that normally the managers say that the flight will not go on unless they can prove that everything is alright but that in this case the managers said that the flight was going unless they could prove ultimately that something was completely wrong.

This is the basis of what we have found and we will report on the rest of it to our class tomorrow.