Groupware requirements evolution patterns
Dulce T. Pumareja · 2010
In 2003, a major disaster in the domain of high technology took place: the space shuttle Columbia broke apart into pieces upon re-entering the earth's atmosphere killing all of the 7 astronauts on board According to the accident report, the immediate physical cause of the shuttle's disintegration was overheating. This was due to a damaged thermal protection system located in the left wing of the orbiter, which was hit when a piece of insulation foam fell from the external tank during take-off. However, days before the landing, engineers at NASA had already known that there was no way the shuttle and its crew can survive if the thermal protection system had at all been breached. Fears of an impending disaster were disclosed through informal emails between NASA engineers. A series of worst-case scenarios and analyses were conducted to assess the possible impacts of the foam that hit the shuttle. The results pointed to an accident waiting to happen. One of the engineers expressed his concerns in an email: