When the accident occurred, cultural norms at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tended to be fairly resilient, having bounced back into shape after being altered a bit. The agency’s powerful human space flight culture and institutional practices remained intact despite the appointment of new directors at the Marshall, Johnson, and Kennedy centers.
Common beliefs throughout the organization repelled alteration and were the force behind the resistance to change by external forces. Researchers note that “by the eve of the Columbia accident, inadequate concern over deviation from expected performance, schedule pressure, a silent safety program, and other institutional practices that had been in effect at the time of the Challenger accident had returned to NASA.” Notably, the organization’s human space flight culture emerged from the Cold War environment. Indeed, the creation of NASA in 1958 was a direct response to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union.
The Apollo-era led to the emergence – in NASA – of an exceptional “can-do” culture characterized by tenacity despite seemingly impossible-to-beat challenges. It was the result of a competition for global dominance between the United States and Russia. Thus, the emergent culture treasured the live interaction between research and development (R&D) and testing. It also emphasized and valued the existing workforce, the supposed exceptional quality of its leadership, and hands-on engineering experience. Most importantly, the company’s new norm – which will continue for many years to come – accepted risk and failure as part and parcel of space operations. Therefore, although the people at NASA did everything in their power to reduce the likelihood of failure, they knew that such outcomes were inevitable, which is why they were never surprised if and when they happened. Indeed, NASA’s human space flight culture never fully adapted to its space programs.