ABSTRACT
NASA's lunar exploration Apollo programme had an inauspicious start with a disastrous blaze that destroyed the spacecraft Apollo 1 on its launch pad during a test and training exercise on 27 January 1967. The Challenger disaster is a sad tale not simply of flaws in design and the failure of safety critical components, but of a deceptively inadequate safety culture in a high risk operation, allowing people to make wrong decisions by succumbing to pressure. NASA's space programme was set back several years by the Challenger disaster. There were to be no more manned lunar landings. The Columbia's crew of seven was killed on 1 February 2003 when the orbiter broke up on re-entry before landing. The CAIB also believed that 'the causes of the institutional failure responsible for Challenger have not been fixed', saying that the same 'flawed decision-making process' identified by Rogers in 1986 was responsible for the destruction of the Columbia in 2003.
