Bob Ebeling Theory

The Challenger exploding can only be called a disaster. To add more to that, it is the worst kind of disaster, a preventable one. As with any preventable disaster, those parties who could have had an influence will unerringly look back on those actions taken and wonder what could have been done instead. This guilt and self reflection is inevitable and universal, and as such, not interesting. Instead, what is the focus of this and all similar analyses is whether such decisions should have been made regardless of the end result. That is, are these actions the moral ones. One such party that looked back and found themselves at fault are the engineers at Thiokol. A man who worked for Thiokol at the time, Bob Ebeling, even going as far as to say …show more content…
The sphere most apt for this situation is the sphere of fear of important damages. This sphere almost perfectly matches the situation, science and its real world application are always dangerous to some degree and the fear of danger, therefore is also ever present. Progress, however, is made by those who accept that danger and jump the gap for others and then throw a rope over to let whoever next to cross that gap’s life easier. This gap the engineers at Thiokol and NASA were trying to cross was that between earth and its surrounding space and the dangers they faced were equally …show more content…
Virtue Ethics says that raising the alarm without certainty of a problem is immoral on the fact that it is an excess of fear. In other words it lacks courage. While this is agreeable to a degree, an engineering team does not function on the thoughts of one person alone. Whether or not the risk is deemed acceptable, in a team setting, should be decided by the team. Virtue Ethics fails to bring into account the situation as a courageous, and therefore moral, person on the engineering team would look at the data and conclude that it is insufficient and would mean not acting in the mean were they to then act on that data; whereas one would hope that the team as a collective whole with whatever process they make decisions would be allowed to deem the risk worth it or not. As such Virtue Ethics’ position is unfit for the