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We are surrounded by examples of hubris, from the greed of corporate leaders who loot their companies, to the arrogance of government officials who refuse to share information on their decision-making processes, to the misrepresentations of facts by media more interested in profit than in providing real information. ABET requires that engineering students be taught ethics; but how can ethics be conveyed in a way realistic and memorable enough to train engineers to deal with the heart-wrenching decisions some of them will have to make, particularly when they become managers?
Using space engineering in general and NASA in particular as an example: The recent shuttle Columbia disaster has reopened discussions about engineering ethics-for example potential conflicts of interest for NASA personnel involved in the investigation. NASA has been adrift since Apollo, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program, one of the greatest engineering and management achievements ever, established an unrealizable standard for the agency, which has no real long-term plan.
Since Apollo, NASA administrators have struggled-less to find a sustainable purpose...