Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

Tragically, for the Challenger and Columbia, these dissenting voices were ignored.71 The burden shifted to the engineers to prove their safety concerns with hard, quantifiable data. Instead of requiring proof that the spacecraft was safe to launch (Challenger) or safe to land (Columbia), engineers were required to prove that it wasn’t safe. Roger Tetrault, a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, explained the management’s attitude toward the engineers in the following way: “Prove to me that it’s wrong, and if you prove to me that there is something wrong, I’ll go look at it.”72 But it didn’t end there. The engineers were then denied the opportunity to make their case and prove their hypothesis. In the Columbia mission, for example, the managers rebuffed their requests for additional satellite imagery to survey the damage.