When they had the inquiry, they included Richard Feynman (Nobel prize winning physicist) on the panel. I've read quite a few of his books (he's very entertaining) including the one where he refers to his time on the Challenger commission.
Basically, he was appalled at how a lot of the risk-factors were calculated. His argument was that as engineers, NASA was fine, but when dealing with Space Travel, they needed more research-based scientific methodolgy, because they were dealing with so many unknowns. He said they could not possibly understand probablities of failures, because the sample size was too small - there were parts that were described as having failure rates of '1 in 10,000', that had only actually been in space 3 or 4 times.
But his classic was his investigation of the O-ring failure. Well, just watch this:
Basically, he was appalled at how a lot of the risk-factors were calculated. His argument was that as engineers, NASA was fine, but when dealing with Space Travel, they needed more research-based scientific methodolgy, because they were dealing with so many unknowns. He said they could not possibly understand probablities of failures, because the sample size was too small - there were parts that were described as having failure rates of '1 in 10,000', that had only actually been in space 3 or 4 times.
But his classic was his investigation of the O-ring failure. Well, just watch this:
