Countdown To Safety
A live safety program by Astronaut Mike Mullane

In his program, “Countdown To Safety”, Astronaut Mullane delivers a powerful message on the individual’s role in keeping themselves and their teams safe in hazardous environments. Mullane introduces this subject with a recount of his own near-death experience in a fighter jet, when he failed to speak up about an unsafe situation. He assumed another crewmember, with more flying time, “knew best” about the safety of their operations. In other words, at a critical moment in a hazardous operation, Mullane surrendered his responsibility for safety to someone else. He became a “safety passenger”. The result was his (and the pilot’s) narrow escape from death during their ejection from the crashing jet. The destruction of a multi-million dollar plane might have been avoided if Mullane had maintained his “safety presence” and voiced his assessment on the dangers of the pilot’s decision. Instead, he assumed he didn’t “count”, that the pilot knew best.

Mullane continues this thread: that each individual brings to their team a unique perspective on safety. Only when every person’s perspective is available for analysis can a team be truly safe. When it comes to safety, everybody counts. Safety is not management’s responsibility or a supervisor’s responsibility or the safety officer’s responsibility. It is EVERYBODY’S responsibility. Never be a “safety passenger”.

Another significant message within Mullane’s “Countdown To Safety” program is his discussion on “Normalization of Deviance”. Astronaut Mullane uses the space shuttle Challenger disaster to define this term, its safety consequences, and how individuals and teams can defend themselves from the phenomenon.

Challenger was the result of a failure of a booster rocket O-ring seal. Viewers will be shocked to know this failure was predicted: “It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to solve the problem, with the O-ring having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities.” (From a NASA-contractor memo dated six months prior to Challenger).

When a burn-damaged O-ring (a criticality 1 deviance) was first observed following the second shuttle mission, NASA, under enormous schedule pressure, convinced themselves the problem could be fixed with minor modifications to booster assembly procedures and that a grounding the fleet (required for a criticality 1 deviance) was not necessary. When the next several missions flew without O-ring anomalies, the correctness of the decision to continue operations was reinforced. However, over the following several years, more cases of O-ring sealing problems were observed in the returned boosters but with each successful flight the false feedback that it was safe to continue flight operations was strengthened. In other words, the absence of something bad happening was being falsely interpreted as an indication that the team’s actions were safe when, in fact, it was mere random chance that a disaster hadn’t occurred. The team had gotten away with accepting a criticality 1 deviance so many times, the deviance had been normalized into the team’s decision-making process. Challenger was a “predictable surprise”.

After dramatically defining “Normalization of Deviance”, Astronaut Mullane continues with an explanation of how individuals and teams can defeat this dangerous phenomenon through these practices: recognizing one’s vulnerability to it; making it a religion to “plan the work and work the plan”; considering one’s instincts; and, archiving and periodically reviewing near-misses and disasters so the corporate memory never fades. (Mullane explains that the loss of the space shuttle Columbia…17 years after Challenger…was a repeat of “Normalization of Deviance”. NASA’s corporate memory had faded over those 17 years.)

The messages delivered in “Countdown To Safety” are reinforced with rarely seen NASA video and slides. The program is hard-hitting, fast paced and, in places, very humorous. It is certain to open the eyes of every viewer to their individual criticality to team safety.

ASTRONAUT MIKE MULLANE

Colonel Mullane was born September 10, 1945 in Wichita Falls, Texas but spent much of his youth in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he currently resides. Upon his graduation from West Point in 1967, he was commissioned in the United States Air Force. As a Weapon Systems Operator aboard RF-4C Phantom aircraft, he completed 134 combat missions in Vietnam. He holds a Master's of Science Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and is also a graduate of the Air Force Flight Test Engineer School at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Mullane was selected as a Mission Specialist in 1978 in the first group of Space Shuttle Astronauts. He completed three space missions aboard the Shuttles Discovery (STS-41D) and Atlantis (STS-27 & 36) before retiring from NASA and the Air Force in 1990.

Mullane has been inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame and is the recipient of many awards, including the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, Legion of Merit and the NASA Space Flight Medal. Since his retirement from NASA, Colonel Mullane has written an award-winning children's book, Liftoff! An Astronaut's Dream, and a popular space-fact book, Do Your Ears Pop In Space? His memoir, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, has been reviewed in the New York Times and on the Jon Stewart Daily Show. It has also been featured on Barnes and Noble’s 2010 recommended summer reading list.

Mullane has held a lifelong passion for hiking and summited Africa’s highest peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro, on July 23, 2010. Colonel Mullane has established himself as an acclaimed professional speaker on the topics of teamwork, leadership and safety. He has educated, entertained, inspired and thrilled tens of thousands of people from every walk of business and government with his incredibly unique programs.