As the space shuttle Atlantis launches on its final mission and the last mission of the entire program, I felt it was important to mark the contribution of a sociologist, Dr. Diane Vaughan, then of Boston College, in changing how NASA addressed risk organizationally.
Vaughan's book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA really didn't get a lot of attention when she first published it. It became a staple in engineering schools but got little attention from NASA.Then in February 2003, the Columbia went down. Suddenly, Vaughan's work got noticed.
We are proud to be one of the first media outlets to draw attention to her work and the possible relevance to the second accident. I knew Vaughan and her work from attending BC for a semester. We called her the morning the Columbia went down and set up the interview for our radio show First Person Plural.
As the world watches the final shuttle mission, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer that interview again.
Enjoy!
(note, depending on your computer and internet connection, this may take a few minutes to load)
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