I've been reading a book by the astronaut John Young and as the top Astronaut rep during Challenger you get the same feelings about the O Ring problem and later the problems with the tiles that doomed Columbia. Both of those were well known issues, and in the case of the tiles, caused a lot of panic very early on in the shuttle program. But you have too many hands in the pot and agendas. Engineering/Safety conflicting with public policy.
I suspect what happens is you have 25 people CC'd on an email and if a question is asked everybody assumes someone else will take care of it.