November 30, 2003
Take Some Time...
...And read William Langeweische's dissection of "Columbia's Last Flight," wherein he delineates the (mostly organizational) pressures that lead to the failing of the space shuttle Columbia. You probably won't learn anything new, but Langeweische's clear presentation lays out the sequence of events making crystal clear how and where the communication breakdown occurred. Particularly valuable for folks interested in organizational psychology -- the NASA bureaucracy did all it could to protect itself, though such actions ironically lead to its ultimate failure and exposure.
