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Bob Ebeling, Challenger Engineer Who Forewarned of Shuttle Disaster, Dead At 89 (huffingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from HuffingtonPost: For three decades, retired NASA engineer Bob Ebeling blamed himself for being unable to stop the 1986 launch of space shuttle Challenger. He had warned that the shuttle might explode, and it did shortly after liftoff, killing seven crew members. Ebeling was one of five engineers at a NASA contractor then called Morton Thiokol who warned the space agency that cold temperatures predicated at the time of the launch could prove disastrous. The warning was ignored. The night before the launch, Ebeling reportedly told his wife, Darlene, "It's going to blow up." He told another daughter, Kathy Ebeling, that he had toyed with the idea of bringing his hunting rifle to work to threaten NASA not to launch, according to an article last month in The Washington Post. In the final weeks of his life, however, thanks to an outpouring of support following a National Public Radio story in January on the 30th anniversary of the disaster, Ebeling, 89, finally found peace. Ebeling died Monday in his home in Brigham City, Utah, after a prolonged illness with prostate cancer, NPR reported.
RIP Mr. Ebeling.
A tragedy that did not have to happen because "sales and marketing" ignored the engineer with the technical knowhow.
This guy spoke out. Now he's dead.
The worst part is reading about how the incident scarred him for life, as he felt directly responsible for the disaster. The guy spoke up and no one wanted to listen.
I was 6 years old, and interested in space tech. I became very aware of what had happened, and it shaped my life. I learned a valuable lesson from Bob.
The lesson I learned wasn't to listen to warnings, or to double-check things. The lesson I learned was to stand my ground through escalation.
Bob did his job. And had he been a psychopath, he could have been happy with what he did. But that's not me -- because of these events.
In my case, yes I'd have grabbed my hunting rifle. But I wouldn't have walked into NASA offices with it. You don't believe me that it's going to blow up from the cold, fine. Bang. Now it's going to blow up from that hole that I just shot into it.
I've followed this lesson quite a few times in my career, and in my life. Being willing to sabotage my own interests (clients, projects, money, property, relationships) in order to do what I strongly believed was the right thing has ensured that I sleep really damned well, each and every night.
Thank you Bob, for giving me the lesson that would shape much of my life.
There should have been, at NASA, a launch validation team composed entirely of top-notch mid-to-senior level engineers and scientists.
They should carefully consider each known risk prior to each launch.
They should debate it only in terms of risk level = probability of occurrence x probability distribution of consequence severity.
That team should make the go/no-go call, fully documenting their reasons.
Any divergence from this sort of technical review with final authority is a gross violation of responsible process for something as complex as this.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Fortunately, most people won't have the weight of something like this when faced with the decision to keep pushing your position or keep your mouth shut. I've had a number of times where I've suggested something isn't going to work the way people think it will, or that a course of action isn't the right one. Sometimes I've been listened to, and others I've been told I'm "too negative" or "overly cautious" or similar. It happens a lot in IT -- most of us don't work on safety-sensitive systems and don't design things that may fall down and/or kill people. Because of this, lots of projects fail and billions of dollars are just flushed down the toilet. Look at any ERP implementation in a large company; almost none are completely successful and yet those same consulting firms keep raking in money year after year.
I heard this guy's story on NPR a couple months ago, and it really is a sad end; he was tortured for the rest of his life by the fact that he felt there was something more that he could do. It's similar to a development project getting taken over by the salesweasels and marketing people -- the actual engineers who know what's really possible are just ignored and an unrealistic date is promised, a vaporware feature that can't be built is sold, etc.
Before I retire, I would like to see IT including software development start acting more like professional engineers (real PEs) and less like a bunch of cowboys with no guidance or standards. Things that work should be standardized to some extent so they're easily repeatable. Civil engineers, for example, don't go back to first principles designing a run of the mill highway interchange. They use reference designs and only get inventive/creative when the situation warrants it. Contrast that with IT, where Web Framework Of the Month changes every month and there's no standard anything.
The world is full of people that are sure in their minds they are right and will do whatever it takes to stand up for their beliefs.
The suicide bomber in Brussels I'm sure was convinced he had rightful justification for his actions.
Escalate, yes,
Fight the system, yes.
Commit dangerous, illegal, criminal acts in defence of your beliefs, NO.
Not everyone can be IN CHARGE. While there are many bad outcomes from following the chain of command, on average it is probably better than the anarchy that would reign without it.
Perhaps you are engaging in hyperbole with your rifle example, but do you really want every halfwit in our country destroying things to back up their beliefs, because they "KNOW" they are right?
Letter To Iran
Rudolph Krueger, PE, was asked to bid on designing the details for the booster tank seals, as he had done seals many military projects including for fighters and satellites.
Rudolph replied back that he didn't think the proposed design was viable and declined to bid.
Rather than someone questioning a certified professional engineer as to "What is wrong with the concept.", no one ever asked
That is where the first failure occurred.
Sometimes I think the reason that we blame ourselves for bad things happening, even when we have no power to foresee or stop them, even we've done everything that was good and right to keep those things from happening, even when we had nothing to do with the cause of those events... is because it's easier to believe that we could have done something and didn't, than to accept that we couldn't do anything.
Mr. Ebeling clearly believed that there was something that he could have or should have done, and that his inaction resulted in catastrophe. Not only was he innocent, and not only did he do everything within his power to make certain that the launch did not proceed, but the forces which pushed the launch forward rested entirely outside of his control. Maybe his hunting rifle plot would have made a difference - we'll never know. What's important to note, though, is that threatening his friends and colleagues with deadly force to delay the launch is a plan that probably appealed much more in the clarity of hindsight.
Sometimes we entertain power fantasies for unselfish reasons. We envision ourselves being able to use power that we oftentimes lack in order to correct some grave wrong in our lives, or to prevent tragedies both foreseen and unforeseen. Sometimes these lines of thinking are helpful in preparing us to take useful action later in our lives, so we can prevent the same thing from happening again. Other times... well, just look at Mr. Ebeling. This kind of thinking can eat you up inside, and suffering this way is no form of redemption, if redemption is even called for at all.
When any sober assessment of one's actions shows that a negative event which they've experienced truly was not their fault, why is it that some people continue to imagine that they could have done something about it, believing against all reason that they're to blame? It is because acknowledging that they were powerless to stop it, and accepting that powerlessness, hurts at least as much as the event itself. Blaming oneself numbs the pain that comes with acceptance, and to many it is treated as the lesser of two evils whether they're aware of it or not. It isn't, and persistently avoiding the pain of acceptance creates even greater suffering in the end.
Rest in peace, Mr. Ebeling. You've taught us many difficult lessons - lessons which will hopefully save (and have already saved) lives. The final lesson you gave us, however, is a lesson in guilt and the importance of acceptance. Perhaps that lesson will save lives as well.
Yes. He suddenly died at 89 because he was going to reveal a secret he just remembered about.
You think murderers should just go free and just have to live with their consciences? Great, let's just let everyone out of prison now!
Tire blowouts (in terms of individual tires) are rare - the Shuttle primary o-rings suffered damage caused by leakage on nearly every flight. They suffered significant damage on (IIRC) twelve flights prior to Challenger. They suffered damage nearly to Challenger levels on two of those - with launch temperatures in the eighties. Let's break that down - on nearly 50% of the launches pre Challenger, the primary o-rings experienced some significant degree of failure. On 8% of the launches pre Challenger the primary o-ring suffered severe failure that resulted in severe damage. And Ebeling and Boisjoly stood silent.
The primary o-ring wasn't supposed to fail at all (the specification was no leakage) - but it leaked significantly on almost half the launches prior to Challenger. Any responsible engineer would raise the roof when a component that wasn't supposed to fail did so routinely. (Fifty percent of all launches prior to Challenger!) Ebeling and Boisjoly stood silent.
In fact, that the primary o-ring failed routinely was known during ground development and qualification tests of the SRB's. Ebeling and Boisjoly stood silent.
In essence, there was no backup - one o-ring, which was supposedly the second line of defense, routinely served as the only line of defense because of a design flaw in the joint. This is completely and utterly inexcusable.
The SRB field joints were a deeply flawed design and a ticking time bomb in the Shuttle that could have gone off on STS-1 as easily as they did on STS-51L. Ebeling and Boisjoly had to have known that - but they said nothing or went with the party line that since the joints hadn't actually failed there wasn't a problem. Managers can't make proper decisions if their engineers fail to properly inform them or actively mislead them.