What exactly is engineering? When you are thinking about engineering and science, you will consider the pride of it being a “profession” rather than just a job. There are different disciplines and fields of practice, but they are all unified by common goals and desires to improve life. In the attached document, very interesting guidance is given about who engineers are, how they think, how they make things, and what goes wrong. When engineering mistakes happen, they are generally centered on either a design risk or an inadequate design process. Risk is always managed, but you will see how the article covers what is meant by “safe” and “risk”. There are basic risk assumptions, but also “acceptable risks”. When discussing the design process, there are epic failures in terms of post-market problems, initial design concepts, foreseeable safety hazards, failures to validate the design, and sometimes operations that are outside of the design intent and specifications. The last was the fundamental issue concerning the tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger. The failure was seemingly foreseeable, but not appreciated. It is this event that will be the subject of your first paper.

You are to apply the process of ethical analysis and apply theoretical ethical principles to the Challenger Disaster. Outside research will be necessary. You are to answer the following questions:

1. What were the technical problems in the case?
2. Who were the stakeholders in the case?
3. What were the ethical problems in the case?
4. What were the engineers’ responses to the ethical problems?
5. What were the corporate responses to the ethical problems?
6. What professional codes or standards were implicated?
7. What was the role of government oversight or regulation?
8. What are your recommendations about the Challenger disaster?
9. How could it have been prevented?