Engineering Ethics: Balancing Cost, Schedule, and Risk--Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle (review)

This book approaches engineering ethics from the perspective of practicing engineers. It does so by documenting the historical development of the main engines of the space shuttle from 1969 to the fateful Challenger explosion of 1986. Although the book might be viewed as presenting historical documentation of the various factors that ultimately resulted in the Challenger disaster, it would be a mistake to see this as its basic aim. Rather, the goal is to demonstrate a methodological approach to the more general subject of engineering ethics. The book advocates an interdisciplinary approach that pays very careful attention to the historical, political, organizational, and technical dimensions of particular engineering contexts that call for ethical reflection and decision making.

In arguing for this approach the authors take full advantage of the material available on the development of NASA’s space shuttle program. This enables them to present a detailed account of the role of engineers in a very large, complicated project over a long period of time. In addition to its wealth of historical and technical information, the book presents a series of five case studies based on this information. Only the last of these cases discusses the Challenger disaster.

Written as a practical book, Engineering Ethics is intended for engineers, managers, professional ethicists, and students. It focuses on the everyday decisions engineers and managers make as they design, test, and put technologies into operation. The authors characterize engineering as a heuristic skill practiced before “all the facts are in”—estimating risks, balancing budgets and deadlines—rather than an applied science.

Just as the authors do not regard engineering simply as the practical application of scientific theory, they do not regard engineering ethics simply as the practical application of philosophical ethics. Here the authors take a lesson from the casuistic approach to medical ethics that begins with cases and brings in abstract moral principles and theories only if careful analysis of the details of a given case seem to call for this. Thus, taking their cue from Abert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin’s Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), they embrace the bottom-up rather than top-down approach.

This does not mean that they eschew ethical principles. The authors offer three framing principles, each of which they claim is grounded in engineering practice rather than abstract ethical theory. The first is a principle of competence, requiring the application of engineering expertise to the problems at hand. The second is a principle of responsibility, emphasizing the responsibility to communicate knowledge effectively, making best use of information acquired through engineering expertise. The third is what the authors call “Cicero’s Creed II,” which expresses a commitment to reduce risk and failure and to promote public safety.

Each of these principles can be applied at both individual and organizational levels. The authors adapt Herbert A. Simon’s theory of organizational behavior to their historical account of the development of the space shuttle main engine. For Simon, organizations have a kind of collective rationality based on their hierarchical structure, with each level being an end relative to those below it and a means relative to levels above it. In evaluating organizational operations, Simon’s key notion is “satisficing” rather than “maximizing” values; feasibility, not optimization, is the appropriate goal in complex organizational hierarchies. This notion is then used to assess how well cost, schedule, and risk trade-offs fared in the development of the space shuttle main engine.

The first several chapters develop the authors’ methodological assumptions in great detail. Part 2 of the book (chapters 5–13) presents technical and political background as well as the five case studies. These cases discuss “all up” vs. component testing; cost, risk, and schedule trade-offs; the dissenting voice of engineer A. O. Tischler, who was critical of many of...