British Columbia

On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas and Louisiana upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The loss of the shuttle and its crew was from a piece of insulation foam that detached from the shuttle’s external tank. Fuel had nothing to do with the explosion, they burned the remaining fuel before re-entry. Space exploration takes a lot of money, the budget increased 3.1 percent from 2003 to 2004. The Columbia incident was the second of two tragedies of space shuttle…

The recommendations that the CAIB assigned to NASA would help to prevent this disaster from happening again. Since the exposing of the external fuel tank foam caused Columbia to explode the CAIB’s first recommendation was to improve external fuel tank foam. They will improve on this by using bolt catchers which will not allow for the external tank to break free (History.com Staff). In doing this future shuttles will not be able to lose a backup tank for emergencies. There are also important…

Judith Resnik was an Engineer and a NASA Astronaut. She was born April 5, 1949 in Akron, Ohio. She graduated from Firestone High School. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1970, as well as a doctorate’s degree and Master’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland in 1977. In 1984 she received a NASA Space Medal. She was apart of two major NASA Space missions onboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, STS-41-D which took place in…

Astronaut Luca Parmitan’s EMU experienced a near life threatening fluid leak during his space walk in 2013. During his spacewalk, Parmitan reported feeling water in his helmet and behind his head. The spacewalk continued up until the water reached his face, making it difficult for him to see and breathe. A photo of the EMU helmet worn by Astronaut Luca Parmitan filling up with water to recreate the leakage. (NASA, 2013) At first, the leakage was thought to have occurred due to a malfunction in…

She ran down the alley, not bothering to look back for any reason. God, how she hated running for her life every second. It was easier than several months ago. Claire had barely turned seventeen when the outbrake happened. She has been alone since. Groans from the creatures break her from her thoughts. It can't get any worse than this. She looks around to find some sort if weapon. Anything to defend herself. Her eyes lay on a piece of metal on the ground about five feet in front of her…

The Challenger disaster is a tragic example of contradicting proper management and engineering decisions. The management on the The Space Center were informed about Morton Thiokol engineers recommendation againts launching Challenger space shuttle. Unfortunately, The Space Center chose to ignore that option. Vice president of Morton Thiokol, only considering about business profit, even persuaded the supervising engineer at that time to “take off your engineering hat and put on your management…

The STS-51-L was a shuttle by NASA that exploded 73 seconds after lift off and killed 7 American astronauts. It takes NASA 1.5 billion dollars to launch a rocket. Therefore, in 73 seconds NASA wasted 1.5 billion dollars and cost us 7 precious lives. Between the years of 1964 and 1999 there have been twenty launches. Within those twenty launches six were failed missions, which in turn lost the U.S $9 Billion. NASA in the future would like to spend about 500 million dollars on each shuttle they…

On January 28, 1986, Challenger, an American space shuttle exploded momentarily after lift off shocking the nation; including the children viewing from their classrooms. The crew of Challenger included seven members, but most notably was a school teacher Christa McAuliffe who was invited with the intent to teach school children from the shuttle. This incident received massive amounts of media coverage, and on the same day as the incident, President Ronald Reagan conducted his speech. Ronald…

It’s January 28th, 1986, a cold day at Cape Canaveral as we are ready to launch the 25th space shuttle mission. Space Shuttle Challenger sits there on the launch pad, like a huge giant ready to take on its journey to space. The crowd goes silent and the countdown begins: 3, 2, 1 . . . lift off! Challenger begins its ascent to the most unforgiving place: outer space. Carrying aboard the first teacher ever to go into space, the crew soars higher than the heavens. All of a sudden, tragedy unveils…

1. Introduction The Challenger Disaster was a complex case because it involved multiple parties. The goal is not to determine whether the decision to launch the Challenger was right or wrong, but whether if it was ethical of them to decide to launch the shuttle at that point in time based what they knew about the conditions pertaining to the launch. In order to analyze this, I will be using the virtue theory. However, before the analysis can be done, an understanding of the case and virtue…