The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch

Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by hydrogen7800 on Friday June 21, 2024 @09:26AM (#40749391)

Allan McDonald is a new name for me. Thanks for posting this. See also other engineers who objected to the launch, like Bob Ebeling [0], who suffered with overwhelming guilt nearly until his death in 2016, and Roger Boisjoly [1], who never worked again as an engineer after Challenger.

[0] https://archive.ph/kGMYG

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by cushychicken on Friday June 21, 2024 @11:02AM (#40750370)

Boisjoly was Macdonald's peer at Thiokol. Ebeling (I think) was either his direct manager or his division director.

Boisjoly quit Thiokol after the booster incident. Macdonald stayed, and was harassed terribly by management. He took Thiokol to court at least once (possibly twice) on wrongful discrimination / termination / whistleblower clauses, and won.

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by sjm-lbm on Friday June 21, 2024 @10:58AM (#40750325)

I hadn't heard of McDonald either, but there's a recent book (https://www.amazon.com/Challenger-Story-Heroism-Disaster-Spa...) that covers his contribution well.

(TBH I'm reading this book right now - probably 2/3 the way through or so - and it's kind of weird to see something like this randomly pop up on HN today.)

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by aybs on Friday June 21, 2024 @11:28AM (#40750618)

I just listened to the audio book on spotify, free for premium members, and I'm wondering if that's why I'm seeing so much about the Challenger disaster lately. Well worth a listen, and spends a great deal of time on setup for these key individuals who tried so hard to avert this disaster.

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by autoexec on Friday June 21, 2024 @12:29PM (#40751171)

Boeing's Starliner problems? This article was probably brought on by the (then) recent passing of Allan McDonald

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