NASA: A Journey to Safety
If you’re a fan of space travel, you’re probably having a pretty good year right now. NASA has been executing lots of interesting projects, and the Artemis II’s lunar trip in April captured the attention of the nation. But how did NASA get to the point of being a beloved and trusted institution in America, when it started as a frantic experiment?
In honor of National Astronaut Day, we’re examining the process by which good safety practices developed at NASA.
NASA’s Invention
Established in 1958, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created by President Eisenhower in order to usher America into the Space Race. The problem they faced was that space travel was brand new: the imminent dangers were only guesses, rather than expectations. NASA started out with risk-based safety analysis, having to ask hard questions about what a life was worth, and whether the benefits of space travel were worth the risks they had to take to get there.
In the early days, it was generally understood that to work at NASA was to have the impossible asked of you, and accompanied by a strict deadline. Safety was a goal, but there were no concrete systems prepared to cater to the experiments NASA wanted to execute.
It was through failure that safety systems began to fall into place.
Learning Through Disaster
After the Apollo 1 incident in 1967, during which three astronauts died, Congress directed the program to form ASAP, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, to advice NASA on possible dangers in their space programs. This was the first big leap in NASA’s journey to safety, but certainly not the last.
The infamous Challenger disaster, during which seven astronauts were lost, raised another set of questions. This incident drew attention to the human factors struggles that lurked behind the scenes, where leadership asked scientists to work long hours and rush to meet deadlines. Such practices led to the normalization of deviance in NASA’s system, which you can read more about here. These findings caused them to begin enacting human factors solutions to help them catch problems before they led to serious danger.
In 2003, the Columbia shuttle was torn apart upon re-entry, leading to the tragic loss of seven more astronauts’ lives. The ensuing investigation decided that NASA needed to improve its safety culture in order to protect those who were risking their lives for the sake of scientific achievement. NASA vowed to do just that, and in 2019 NASA’s Safety Culture Program celebrated its 10-year anniversary.
Your Journey to Safety
NASA’s journey to safety was a road paved with difficulty and danger, and taught some of the very lessons we teach in our TapRooT® Courses. We aim to help you and your company create safe and working systems without having to face disaster to reach them. If you’re interested in learning how to improve the system at your workplace, you can contact us for a free briefing here.
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