Those were _great_ links. "A Management Decision Overrides a Recommendation Not to Launch" was just infuriating, especially when all of the presented options lead to "there's basically nothing you can do". I can't even begin to imagine what the engineers felt when Challenger exploded. It's bad enough when there's some accident, but it's a whole new level of tragedy when the accident's preventable... if only people would listen to their advisers.

> challenger

Well, as mgmt said, there was no evidence the O-rings were unsafe outside their operating limitations - because they'd never been tested at those temperatures before. I know, it's Twilight Zone material, but they found a hole in the launch rules (process) and ran with it. Previous O-ring failures had been within specs, so as far as they were concerned, it wasn't a temp issue, it was a known design flaw to be lived with.

> columbia

As for that article, pictures really didn't matter at that point so it wasn't "one decision." Rescue would have been a foolhardy venture more likely to kill both crews.

Columbia wasn't about mgmt, it was about engineering folks being placated by decades of success and making wrong assumptions about debris. There wasn't any workable solution anyway, it was a design flaw of the launch stack. The only solution was to never fly, and engineers weren't lined up to kill their own program.

You're right, everything should be done by engineering ninja rockstars, and process is just what unawesome people use to keep their jobs.