Exhibit 1202 ยท Investigation report
Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, vol. 1, ch. 7: The Accident's Organizational Causes
In the Board's view, NASA's organizational culture and structure had as much to do with this accident as the External Tank foam.
Chapter 7 states the organizational cause: history and culture, including resource constraints, schedule pressure, and reliance on past success as a substitute for engineering. Lists organizational barriers that prevented communication of safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion.
- Source
- Columbia Accident Investigation Board
- Date
- August 2003
- Quoted from
- Chapter 7, "Understanding Causes", p. 177 (printed report page)
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20030093634
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- The Organizational Cause Statement is on the same page. Chapter 6, p. 130: "The acceptance of events that are not supposed to happen has been described by sociologist Diane Vaughan as the 'normalization of deviance.'"