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Robert Boisjoly Dies At 73, the Engineer Who Tried To Stop the Challenger Launch
demachina writes "Robert Boisjoly has died at the age of 73. Boisjoly, Allan J. McDonald and three others argued through the night of 27 January, 1986 to stop the following day's Challenger launch, but Joseph Kilminster, their boss at Morton Thiokol, overruled them. NASA managers didn't listen to the engineers. Both Boisjoly and McDonald were blackballed for speaking out. NASA's mismanagement 'is not going to stop until somebody gets sent to hard rock hotel,' Boisjoly said after the 2003 Columbia disaster. 'I don't care how many commissions you have. These guys have a way of numbing their brains. They have destroyed $5 billion worth of hardware and 14 lives because of their nonsense.'"
They have destroyed $5 billion worth of hardware and 14 lives because of their nonsense.
(This is going to be incredibly insensitive torwards those lives that were lost, but it has to be said.) 17 lives lost in the last 50 years of U.S. space exploration really is not too bad considering how many lives where lost during other times of exploration, pioneering eras and the building of industry. I think NASA tries to be perfect and after all they are rocket scientists, but to assume that NASA is the only place that has mismanagement is incredibly naive. Look at the rest of government. Look at the military. Look at the FDA for crying out loud. Am I saying that you should have deaths? No, what I'm saying is that you need to have a little perspective. Only 17 lives lost in 50 years means that you're at least doing something right to safeguard all the other lives that you saved through careful proceedure and cool heads.
When an engineer says don't go with the launch. Sorry but just stfu and listen to him. FFS, he's not the idiot citizen who doesn't know squat. He's an engineer and 3 of them argued...wow. And the management still didn't listen. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth. On top of that, I'm not an american and I'm very touched by this story, news and especially those lost lives. All of that could of been avoided and they would still learned from their mistake, corrected the problem and go forward with the launch later. My question is: what happened to the guy who still said let's go with the launch ? Did he get accused of murder ?
Look kid, it's not a case of always doing things right. It was a case of people coming in that were not doing things right and as a consequence getting others killed. The Russians had that problem as well, for instance an idiot in charge of a project forcing people to take stupid shortcuts at gunpoint and getting hundreds killed in an explosion. Yes, bad management happens a lot but that's no excuse not to put projects with severe consequences of failure under adult supervision instead of some horse judge that has powerful friends.
From the 1987 LA Times article:
And for that, there was an additional private cost: resentment on the part of those who had been hoping to avoid, at least in part, official blame. It came from corporate executives, and from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Morton Thiokol's biggest customer. And it came from colleagues fearful that too much exposure of truth might hurt business and cost them their jobs.
"If you wreck this company, I'm gonna put my kids on your doorstep," grumbled one. Someone finally dubbed the engineers "the five lepers."
This is the sad reality: Whistle-blowers are often the target of ostracism from their contemporaries, while usually unanimously admired later in historical context. It's still not easy to be a whistle-blower, if anything, it's harder than ever.
Here is some perspective. The question is how many of these types of warnings are issued every flight? It's very similar to when environmental groups oppose every development project. If you go out every time warning of disaster eventually a disaster happens and you are proven right. But what is the alternative? To never build? To never fly?
Anyone who has ever designed anything critical always has a feeling they may have missed something. There is a phase called analysis paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis) . It is when you never do something because you are always checking another scenario in which it may fail.
Whenever any complex system fails there will always be a record of someone warning about it because that is what engineers do. In fact it is obvious after the fact. We always think of ways something can fail. But with limited time and limited budget we can't follow all of those lines of thought to their conclusion. You have to prioritize the risks and accept them to get things done.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
has been effectively immortalized in engineering ethics classes
Herein lies the problem. The lesson needs to be taught in Management 101 classes.
All of the Morton Thiokol engineers responsible for the O rings were telling them to stop, they new the O rings had issues with cold temperatures. It was an anomolously cold day in Florida. It almost never freezes at Kennedy but that morning there was ice all over the launch pad. Even setting the O rings aside it was enormously foolish to launch that morning and it was pretty obvious they should postpone a day until temperatures weren't aberrant.
As I recall Reagan was giving a speech about the space program and timing it to coincide with the launch and the teacher-in-space and the bureaucrats were unwisely feeling political pressure to launch with all engineering and safety factors screamed for them to stop.
@de_machina
Probably because he would have been instantly fired. Keeping your kids fed and housed is probably more important than seven strangers. Cold, yes, but also true.
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