Columbia Space Shuttle Simulation
(LINDA HAM) 1. How would you characterize the culture of NASA? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
NASA was created in 1958 to give the United States of America a position in the “space race” after the Soviet Union launched the satellite “Sputnik” into orbit. The goal of NASA was to put a man into orbit before any other country and shortly after that was completed, the new goal was to put a man on the moon. NASA gained recognition from all over the world for it’s success in space exploration but soon, the pressure from the government caused changes would lead to major problems. Culture can be defined as, “a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” During the time of the Columbia Mission I believe NASA’s culture was very static meaning it hadn’t changed in a long time. NASA’s culture focused on major values such as, safety, schedule efficiency, integrity, and communication. But out of these values, schedule efficiency took precedence over the others, which led to disaster. There are many strengths and weaknesses of NASA’s culture but the weaknesses caused the organization to become counterproductive in the long run. The strengths of NASA’s culture are that the organization has a very “can-do” attitude when it comes to task achievement, they have a legacy of excellence and technological advancement, the organization is bureaucratic, and there is a strong sense of pride and teamwork at NASA. There are also many weaknesses in NASA’s culture as well. Over time, NASA has grown to accept too much risk, they did not have an effective safety and inspection plan in place, they had a tight budget from the government, and the organization was driven by a tight schedule. This led the personnel at NASA to make decisions where efficiency was considered before safety. One of the major problems was its