Richard Feynman | Titanic News Channel

I was at work when news trickled through the office that something had occurred to the space shuttle Challenger. By noon (Pacific time), more details had become known. Challenger had exploded after liftoff killing everyone aboard. Lunch was quiet as this news was digested. At dinner I remember watching Tom Brokaw on NBC describe the awful events of that day.

For those who boarded the shuttle on 28 Jan 1986, it was lifetime ambition coming true. Each of them had been selected to be part of this mission. The most well known was Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire. She had won a competition to be the first teacher in space. The space shuttle program, launched in 1976, had been a success. It was the first time a space vehicle would use reusable vehicle. And had been used bring satellite equipment into space and perform scientific experiments.

Hundreds had assembled to watch the launch; many of them family members of the astronauts aboard. A live feed of the launch was being watched by school kids all over the country. The news networks were there as well to cover the launch. The launch had been delayed since 23 January due to poor weather and technical issues. The morning of the launch had been cold at Cape Canaveral, Florida. An unusual cold wave had hit Florida and temperatures had dropped to below freezing during the night.

At 11:38 am EST, Challenger lifted off and began her ascent. The assembled crowd watched as the shuttle moved upwards. A minute after the launch, they were told to go for full throttle. And then, 73 seconds into the flight, there was an explosion. Spectators on the ground stood in disbelief at the forking plume and smoke. Millions, including school children, saw it as well on television. At first no one was quite sure what happened. Then confirmation was made that the shuttle had been destroyed.

That night President Ronald Reagan made a public address to the nation. It was a simple but powerful address. But his closing remarks have always remained with me:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” (President Reagan’s Address to the Nation, 28 Jan 1986)

President Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong, and to develop ways to prevent it from happening again. Former secretary of state William Rodgers led the commission which had former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager on it. Also on the panel was noted physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman clashed with Rodgers and was unafraid to call out NASA for its failures. He also graphically demonstrated during a live hearing how the O-rings were less resilient in cold weather. He did this by lowering a sample of it in ice-cold water and showing when he took it out how inflexible it was. Ultimately it was the O-rings that were at fault. The hard cold during the night had caused it to contract and thus no longer provide proper sealing. When it was subjected to high heat, it lost coherence which led to the chain of events where the shuttle exploded. It would be two years before another space shuttle would be launched. Both Morton Thiokol and the U.S. government contributed to a settlement fund of $7.7 million dollars to the families of the Challenger astronauts.

The crew of Space Shuttle mission STS-51-L pose for their official portrait on November 15, 1985. In the back row from left to right: Ellison S. Onizuka, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, Greg Jarvis, and Judy Resnik. In the front row from left to right: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ron McNair.
Source: NASA
Public Domain

Sources:

This Day in History: January 28, 1986
Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
Explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger: Address to the Nation, January 28, 1986

As we approach the 101st anniversary of Titanic sinking, a new book argues bad decisions were ultimately to blame for Titanic’s demise. Joseph Mortati, according to the press release, examines the whole Titanic story in a new way–from a business perspective.

Starting with the hours before the crash and working back through time, the author takes the reader into the planning and implementation stages of a decade of decisions that ultimately and unknowingly rendered Titanic vulnerable. These sound but fatal business choices were made by stakeholders from the international holding company that owned Titanic down to the engineers, marketers, and ship’s officers.

I have no idea whether his arguments are good or not, that will have to be determined later. I suspect other books have taken a look at the business practices but from a historical rather than a business perspective. So why the book? From the book website, titaniccollisioncourse.com, he states the following:

However, these views largely miss the fact Titanic is fundamentally a business venture. By looking at the ship through this lens, it will become abundantly clear that far from being the classic case study of reckless decision-making, the people involved actually make smart business choices. After presenting this view to thousands of businesspeople and business students over the past few years in the Washington, DC area, every audience collectively says, “We would have made the same decisions they did.” If so many people today would have done the same things, that tells us Titanic is actually a story of good decisions that result in bad outcomes.

Mortati raises a valid point here. We think of Titanic in a particular way but forget easily forget it was a business. Sure we know of J.P. Morgan, Bruce Ismay, Harland & Wolff. And we know that Titanic and other steamships of that era made money moving passengers and cargo. That was how they paid for the officers, ship crews, all the administrative and support staff, and of course the salaries for those running the shipping line. Mortati is focusing on how good decisions led to a bad outcome and there is a lesson to be learned.

So his book is not a history book in the traditional sense, but an examination of the Titanic business. Presumably that means looking into the thinking behind ships like Titanic, how they were marketed, and how successful they were and whether the really understood the risks involved. We know the final outcome: Titanic sank. It’s sister ship Britannic also sank (due to a mine most likely), and only Olympic survived until old age and was eventually sold off for scrap. White Star Line was eventually folded into Cunard during the Great Depression and the age of steamships has since faded into history. Perhaps there really is a business lesson to be learned here. Unfortunately the problem of assessing risk is still a big one. No one considered a small O-ring a major risk until after Richard Feynman demonstrated it but putting one in ice water during the Rogers Commission hearings on the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

Collision Course: How Good Business Decisions Sank the Titanic
Joseph Martati
ISBN 978-0-9854291-1-9, 141 pages
Available as eBook at Amazon (exclusive)

Sources:

1. New Book Describes How Good Business Decisions Sank the Titanic(27 Mar 2013, Reuters via PRNewswire)

2. Wikipedia:Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

2. Richard Feynman site (Feynman Online)

Collision Course – How Good Business Decisions Sank the Titanic and Why

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Infinity