Every June, my mom’s side of the family would go to a river in West Texas for a family reunion. One particular year when I was about 11 years old, My uncle Eddy and I were sitting in his room when he caught me staring at his prosthetic leg. Out of nowhere he popped off his prosthetic leg and handed it to me. I was very caught off guard and kind of scared but I held his leg anyway and was actually fascinated by it.

I grew up in Austin, Texas. I have two older brothers, so I am the baby in my family. We have a family ranch in Fredonia, Texas that we would spend the vast majority of our time at when I was a little kid. As a result, I grew up learning how to fill deer feeders, fix fences, and use work equipment. My brothers taught me everything I know about ranching and are responsible for my ability to use tools and know how to handle myself around equipment. 

The first dream job I ever told people wanted was to be a baseball player. I played soccer and baseball as a little kid. I always liked baseball better because I found it easier to participate in than soccer. The older I got the more I realized that having a backup profession would be a good idea. Around this same time, I joined Cub Scouts and then “graduated onto” Boy Scouts. At one of the very first winter campouts I attended as a Boy Scout, I took the first aid merit badge. In the first aid merit badge, I learned basic first aid and medical response skills. Although some kids were bored with the information, I absolutely fell in love with medicine.

My junior year of high school, I joined the robotics club. My two best friends were the co-captains of the club, so I basically had the ability to choose any position in the club that I wanted. Being the only Eagle Scout in the club and the only one with any experiences with power tools, I was named the head safety officer. I more or less just made sure some of the younger kids did not accidentally cut themselves or drop tools on their feet, but it was a job I was suited for. It was actually upon joining this club and working with mechanical and robotic arms and different kinds of motors that I had a realization that I could join my love of medicine and my love for math together as I was already interested in prosthetics and had a medical background. 

When Senior year came around, I decided to apply to colleges as a biomedical engineer. For awhile, I thought I would be playing college baseball, so a large quantity of the schools I applied to were gauged toward the possibility of me playing collegiate baseball. Towards the end of the spring of my senior year, I was denied from every single one of my baseball schools. Out of almost sheer luck, I had applied to the University of Miami on a whim. I visited the school about 2 weeks before the deadline to decide on a college and loved the campus. More importantly than loving the campus, when I attended the information session on Biomedical Engineering I loved just how much flexibility there was within the major, especially pertaining to medical school and the different opportunities there were for my interest in prosthetics. Ultimately, my decision for school came down to UM and SMU. SMU did not offer Biomedical Engineering as an official major and I wanted to leave Texas for college, so I decided to attend UM for college.

Space Shuttle Challenger Response

The article outlines the failure of the space shuttle Challenger from the 1980’s and how that failure came to be. The article focuses on the communication errors of the managers and engineers working for NASA, Morton Thiokol International, and the Marshal Space Center. There are two big factors to consider in this failure, the actual physical reason that caused the space shuttle to explode 73 seconds into its launch and the communication failures between the workers on the project that overlooked data suggesting a failure was likely to happen and how they failed to communicate its likelihood of exploding. 

O-Rings located between the shuttle’s two rocket boosters failed to properly seal and protect the rocket boosters at their joints from the heat and gas fumes that would be coming out during take off. Because the O-Rings failed, hot gas burned through the joints where the O-Rings were located and made their way up to the fuel tanks, burning a hole into the fuel tanks and ultimately causing the space shuttle to explode. 

Although some may view this as a tragedy, there were numerous people who tried to warn NASA that the project would likely malfunction. Engineers working on the project discovered that the O-Rings were not properly sealing during testing. The O-Rings had more erosion around them than there should have been to work safely during an actual flight. Additionally, due to the cold temperatures of the launch site, the O-Rings would take a longer time to expand and seal the joints properly, thus likely resulting in a failure at some point in the launch which is exactly what happened. 

Although everyone involved in the project had an engineering background, many of the engineers working hands-on with the project had a difficult time trying to convince their managers of the problem. This failure of the engineers to properly communicate the severity of the situation and the manager’s inability to accept bad news and report the data to their supervisors is ultimately what caused the space shuttle to blow up even though it was a preventable problem. 

The article points out nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news especially when it comes to telling a superior about it or the effects bad news could have on the public perception of the company. The problems surrounding the O-Rings seemed to be neglected at the time by managers for two reasons. The first, because of the news that they were receiving about the O-Rings was negative and that it contradicted their own thoughts about the safety of the O-Rings. Though managers were presented with evidence that the O-Rings were unsafe to use at the scheduled time of the launch, the previously successful launches seemed to prove otherwise. Secondly, the evidence that was presented to the managers was poorly explained. Even though managers were trained as engineers they were not working engineers, so they did not view the data in the same way working engineers might. In the internal memos that talked about the O-Rings, working engineers did not explain how the data showed the inevitable failure of the O-Rings. Had they better explained their evidence and displayed the data more clearly and not expected it to be extrapolated by the managers, the disaster might have been prevented. Managers are less likely to prevent projects from happening due to concerns of their own job and status as well as possibly jeopardizing their company from receiving more contracts in the future from other companies. With that in mind, because the hands on engineers were not clear in explaining their data that proved the O-Rings were going to fail, it is understandable that they would want to be optimistic and disregard seemingly incoherent possibilities of failure. 

Another factor that contributed to the failure of the O-Rings was the lack of communication between MTI and Marshall. When working on a project teamwork is key to making sure that things are done smoothly and that problems do not go unnoticed. In the case of MTI and Marshall working on the Challenger shuttle, this did not happen. They treated each other as competitors and not team members which led to a breakdown in communication. 

As engineers, it is important to know the audience that you are speaking to. Engineers need to be able to present complex ideas to many different people with different backgrounds and appeal to their interests. Whether it be managers and telling them the dangers of a potentially defective O-rings or as a biomedical engineer telling a patient how a newly designed prosthetic hand will be beneficial.

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