Posted on 03/09/2021 6:04:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
A Engineer for the maker of the shuttle’s booster rockets, he opposed letting it take off, worried that cold weather might affect them. He was right.
Allan J. McDonald, an engineer who on a chilly January morning in 1986 tried to stop the launch of the Challenger space shuttle, citing the possible effect of the cold on its booster rockets, and who, after it broke apart on liftoff, blew the whistle when government officials tried to cover up his dissent, died on Saturday in Ogden, Utah. He was 83.
The cause was complications of a recent fall, his daughter Meghan McDonald Goggin said.
Mr. McDonald was a 26-year veteran at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the shuttle’s booster rockets, when he arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida a few days before Jan. 28, when the Challenger was to take off.
The mission was to be the first to carry a civilian into space, a teacher named Christa McAuliffe. President Ronald Reagan was planning to mark that milestone in his State of the Union address, coincidentally scheduled for the same day as the launch.
But Mr. McDonald, who ran the company’s booster-rocket program, had strong reservations about moving ahead with the launch. The shuttle’s rockets contained a series of rubber O-ring gaskets, and he worried that low temperatures could cause them to stiffen, allowing fuel to escape and potentially causing the rocket to explode.
It wasn’t a new concern: Another Morton Thiokol engineer, Roger Boisjoly, had outlined the problem in a July 1985 memo, drawing on evidence of O-ring stiffening from a previous launch, when the temperature was 53 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature on the night before the Challenger launch was expected to drop to 18 degrees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’ll bet he hated being right when no one would listen.
He should be a named example to everyone, why intellectual opposition should be listened to and not obscured.
Cassandra Complex
If something similar happened today, do you think we would hear about it?
I recently watched a great really long documentary about this launch—it must be hard to be the naysayer but he was right. Like the guy in “The Big Short” (great movie).
And weren’t these O rings/new kind of foam a consequence of a new “green” policy as well?
RIP. And to the crew on the flight as well.
Not if a democrat were in charge.....
Sad, but true.
Many disasters throughout history have been avoided because one person spoke up, but few of them involve bureaucracies where there is pressure to “go ahead” because not doing so would cost money or lose face for the bureaucrats.
The program had burned through on the two inner o’rings out of the three on previous flights. He wrote a memo telling the top azzholes it was a matter of time till a full failure. Three level risk was the standard, break 2 barriers of the three? You stop and evaluate. NASA gets government money. Kids in Idaho watching Christa McAuillif and the astronauts blow up don’t mean shitz.
Or Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.
Not so much green as pork. Boosters were disassembled and shipped by rail to Utah IIRC for maintenance by manufacturer. Then back to Florida.
One piece boosters would have been too big to travel.
He was held up as an example in my engineering classes back in the day.
And he was. If I remember right, the professional consequences for him were rather harsh for a bit.
Stand for what is right, even if it costs you
He was going against the elite narrative. Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube would cancel him if he tried this in 2021.
I guess like TWA flight 800.
The mission was to be the first to carry a civilian into space, a teacher named Christa McAuliffe. President Ronald Reagan was planning to mark that milestone in his State of the Union address, coincidentally scheduled for the same day as the launch.
Only if Trump caused it
That’s why people don;t stand for what;s right..Because of the cost..Remember the guys at Benghazi..The one that saved everyone else..No one stood up for him later,because the cost was too high..Losing their jobs and health bennies...
Walk in at 9:30 am off of a graveyard shift from the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory. Turn on the news because your kids are at school watching a teacher become an astronaut. Then find out an engineer told the brass that it would happen. They were spread all over the Everglades and I got to sit down and explain to my kids politicians suck.
well done Mr. McDonald. RIP.
too bad the gov’t “experts” (again) wouldn’t listen.
And had he NOT taken that stand, Morton-Thiokol and NASA would have all pointed the finger at him and agreed, “He was the leader of the booster team and he approved it”.
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