https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_J._McDonald
After his testimony, McDonald was demoted from his position at Thiokol.[2] Neufeld says he “was treated as a traitor and pariah by NASA and his own company, but, thanks in part to congressional pressure, was allowed to redesign the boosters ...”[11] Members of Congress threatened to prevent Thiokol from gaining future NASA work, leading the company to back down. McDonald was promoted to vice president and put in charge of the redesign and requalification of the solid rocket motors.[1][2]
At the time of the Challenger Disaster I was working on the West Coast Shuttle Project, and the week before the disaster, the Safety Director there resigned saying that he would not be part of an endeavor that would inevitably get people killed. Sadly, he was too prophetic. The whole Shuttle program was riddled with problems caused mostly by schedules and egos.
"Regret for things we did is tempered by time," McDonald said, his expression firm. "But regret for things we did not do is inconsolable." McDonald then paused and added, "That's absolutely true."
He's right on both statements and I wish I'd known that when I was a dumb teenager.
Thank you for posting.
Manned space flight is such folly. We need to divide the money we spend on it and use half to bolster the unmanned probes that have brought us so much knowledge, and spend the other half on basic physics. If we are ever going to do space travel the way most people imagine it, we are going to need warp drive, artificial gravity, “shields” to ward off radiation and matter traveling to relativistic speeds, and all the rest of the sci-fi stuff. We have no idea how to do any of that, so we better start now to figure that out.
We have been fortunate up to this point because space tragedies happened and were over with immediately. Wait until we have someone orbiting Mars with no way to leave and we sit here for months watching the CNN Mars Death Clock while their oxygen and other supplies slowly run out. I think we really need to avoid that.
Ping.
Save
The previously used asbestos sealant grease would have sealed the Challenger’s engine O-rings in spite of the cold launch temperature. However, NASA’s chiefs outlawed the grease because of asbestos. This embarrassment and the loss of human life is directly attributable to those people.
On the morning of the explosion there were reports the frame attaching the shuttle to the fuel tank was cracked. Watch video of the explosion and you will see the fire start at that joint, not the booster. It can clearly be seen in the Ronald Reagan video on the disaster.
AND watch multiple videos of the explosion aftermath, there is NO evidence of an O-ring burn through, both boosters are flying approximately the same. There are videos online which show the erratic flight of a rocket with a leak. Morton-Thiokal took one for the team so NASA didn’t shoulder the blame.
I can't help but wonder how differently history might have unfolded had McDonald's warnings been heeded and that mission had been cancelled or delayed.
Richard Feynman provided the killing blow to NASA over this.
He put one of the gaskets in his ice water glass, pulled it out, and then showed how brittle it was by breaking it apart.