Challenger Disaster Essays - Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

Challenger Disaster Essays - Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Challenger Disaster The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster was a preventable disaster that NASA tried to cover up by calling it a mysterious accident. However, two men had the courage to bring the real true story to the eyes of the public and it is to Richard Cook and Roger Boisjoly to whom we are thankful. Many lessons can be learned from this disaster to help prevent further disasters and to improve on organizations ethics. One of the many key topics behind the Challenger disaster is the organizational culture. One of the aspects of an organizational culture is the observable culture of an organization that is what one sees and hears when walking around an organization. There are four parts to the observable culture, stories, heroes, rites and rituals and symbols. The first one is stories, which is tales told among an organizations members. In the Challenger Space Shuttle incident there were mainly four organizations thrown together to form one, Morton Thiokol, Marshall Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Center and NASA Headquarters. All of these organizations had the same type of stories to be told. At Morton Thiokol, they talked about their product and their big deal, which they received from NASA. At NASA, its members retold stories of the previous space missions and being the first people to have landed on the moon. Second are their heroes. At Morton Thiokol, their heroes might have been the founders of the organization or its top executives like Charles Locke or Jerry Mason. At NASA, their heroes might have been Neil Armstrong, staff or any members of the organization. All of these people that were chosen to be heroes set the standards for that organization and conducted themselves for others to follow. Third are the rites and rituals those members of an organization conduct. Since both of these organizations work together to attain the same goal, a ritual for the organization is the celebration after each successful launch and landing of a space shuttle. A rite or ritual shows a since of group unity and friendship among the organizations members. Finally there are symbols that the organization uses, which has may carry a special meaning through its communication. Symbols in these organizations are very important because with these organizations line of work, symbols could mean the difference between life and death. For example, in the space shuttle there are different symbols on their controls. If an emergency light goes on they must know these symbols in order to fix the problem or abort the shuttle. All of these four aspects are centered on the organizations core culture. An organizations core culture is the beliefs about the right ways to behave. When Thiokol and NASA first started to plan for Challengers mission, it was part of their core culture, which ultimately caused the Challenger disaster. To an observer at both of these organizations dealing with the Challenger mission was that everything was perfect and right on schedule. The top executives in these organizations told their employees to be quite and act as if everything was fine. They did this so that the media and the people of the United States would believe and have great admiration for NASA. The Challenger was different then the previous missions because it was the first time a citizen would be going into outer space. At this time in these organizations time, it was essential to their futures to boost Americans opinion of the space program. The executives of these organizations knew how important this mission was t o their success and pushed for the mission to happen and for its employees to convince the people of the programs growth and success. In the direction in organizational culture, worker empowerment was highly stressed although top management did not listen. This was also very important in trying to prevent the Challenger disaster. Both Thiokol and NASA asked for employees opinion on whether the launch should be a go or were their problems that may arise. When the engineers gave their opinion that I was to dangerous for launch, the top executives refused to listen to them and voted to launch asking only for the top executives to vote. In Challengers case, the engineers were the people who knew whether

Overview of Viking Trading and Exchange Networks

Overview of Viking Trading and Exchange Networks The Viking trade network included trading relationships into Europe, Charlemagnes Holy Roman Empire, into Asia, and the Islamic Abbasid empire. This is evidenced by the identification of items such as coins from North Africa recovered from a site in central Sweden and Scandinavian brooches from sites east of the Ural Mountains. Trade was a vital feature of the Norse Atlantic communities throughout their history and a way for the colonies to support their use of landnam, a sometime unreliable farming technique for environments the Norse didnt quite understand. Documentary evidence indicates that there were several groups of specific people who traveled between the Viking trading centers and other centers throughout Europe, as envoys, merchants or missionaries. Some travelers, such as the Carolingian missionary bishop Anskar (801-865) left extensive reports of their travels, giving us great insight to traders and their clients. Viking Trade Commodities The Norse traded commodities included slaves, but also coins, ceramics, and materials from specialized crafts such as copper-alloy casting and glass-working (beads and vessels both). The access to some commodities could make or break a colony: Greenlands Norse relied on trade in walrus and narwhal ivory and polar bear skins to support their ultimately failing farming strategies. Metallurgical analysis at Hrisbru in Iceland indicates that the elite Norse traded in bronze objects and raw material from the tin-rich regions in Britain. Significant trade in dried fish emerged near the end of the 10th century AD in Norway. There, cod played a significant role in Viking trade, when commercial fishing and sophisticated drying techniques allowed them to expand the market throughout Europe. Trade Centers In the Viking homeland, major trading centers included Ribe, Kaupang, Birka, Ahus, Truso, Grop Stromkendorf, and Hedeby. Goods were brought to these centers and then dispersed into the Viking society. Many of these site assemblages include an abundance of a soft yellow earthenware called Badorf-ware, produced in the Rhineland; Sindbà ¦k has argued that these items, rarely found on non-trading communities, were used as containers to bring goods to places, rather than as trade items. In 2013, Grupe et al. conducted stable isotope analysis of skeletal material at the Viking trade center of Haithabu (later Schleswig) in Denmark. They found that the diet of the individuals expressed in the human bones reflected the relative significance of trade over time. Members of the earlier community showed a predominance of freshwater fish (cod imported from the North Atlantic) in their diet, while later residents shifted to a diet of terrestrial domestic animals (local farming). Norse-Inuit Trade Theres some evidence in the Viking Sagas that trade played a role in the North American contact between the Norse and the Inuit occupants. Also, Norse symbolic and utilitarian objects are found at Inuit sites and similar Inuit objects in Norse sites. There are fewer Inuit objects in Norse sites, a fact which may be because the trade goods were organic, or that the Norse exported some Inuit prestige items into the wider European trade network. Evidence at the site of Sandhavn in Greenland seems to suggest that the quite rare co-existence of Inuit and Norse there was a result of the opportunity to trade with one another. Ancient DNA evidence from the Farm Beneath the Sand (GUS) site, also in Greenland, however, finds no support for the trade of bison robes, posited earlier from morphological examination. Viking and Islamic Trade Connections In a 1989 study of formal weights discovered at the Viking site of Paviken in Gotland near Vastergarn, Sweden, Erik Sperber reported three main types of trading weights in use: Ball-shaped weights of ironclad with a layer of bronze or solid bronze; these vary between 4 and 200 gmCubo-octaedric weights of lead bronze, tin bronze or brass; up to 4.2 gramsLeaden weights of different shapes and sizes Sperber believes at least some of these weights conform to the Islamic system of the Ummayyad dynasty leader Abd al Malik. The system, established in 696/697, is based on the dirhem of 2.83 grams and the mitqa of 2.245 grams. Given the breadth of Viking trade, it is likely that the Vikings and their partners may have utilized several trade systems. Sources: This glossary entry is a part of the About.com Guide to the Viking Age and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.Barrett J, Johnstone C, Harland J, Van Neer W, Ervynck A, Makowiecki D, Heinrich D, Hufthammer AK, Bà ¸dker Enghoff I, Amundsen C et al. 2008. Detecting the medieval cod trade: a new method and first results. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(4):850-861.Dugmore AJ, McGovern TH, Và ©steinsson O, Arneborg J, Streeter R, and Keller C. 2012. Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(10):3658-3663Golding KA, Simpson IA, Schofield JE, and Edwards KJ. 2011. Norse-Inuit interaction and landscape change in southern Greenland? A geochronological, Pedological, and Palynological investigation. Geoarchaeology 26(3):315-345.Grupe G, von Carnap-Bornheim C, and Becker C. 2013. Rise and Fall of a Medieval Trade Centre: Economic Change from Viking Haithabu to Medieval Schleswig Revealed by S table Isotope Analysis. European Journal of Archaeology 16(1):137-166. Sindbà ¦k SM. 2007. Networks and nodal points: the emergence of towns in early Viking Age Scandinavia. Antiquity 81:119-132.Sindbà ¦k SM. 2007. The Small World of the Vikings: Networks in Early Medieval Communication and Exchange. Norwegian Archaeological Review 40(1):59-74.Sinding M-HS, Arneborg J, Nyegaard G, and Gilbert MTP. 2015. Ancient DNA unravels the truth behind the controversial GUS Greenlandic Norse fur samples: the bison was a horse, and the muskox and bears were goats. Journal of Archaeological Science 53:297-303.Sperber E. 1989. The weights found at the Viking Age site of Paviken, a metrological study. Fornvannem 84:129-134.Wrmlnder SKTS, Zori D, Byock J, and Scott DA. 2010. Metallurgical findings from a Viking Age chieftain’s farm in Iceland. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(9):2284-2290.