The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch

Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by ApolloFortyNine on Friday June 21, 2024 @12:11PM (#40750978)

I've always thought the same, that something like space travel is inherently incredibly dangerous. I mean surely someone during the Apollo program spoke out about something. Like landing on the moon with an untested engine being the only way back for instance.

Nixon even had a 'if they died' speech prepared, so someone had to put the odds of success not at 100.

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by WalterBright on Friday June 21, 2024 @01:35PM (#40751834)

Neil Armstrong figured that he only had a 50% chance of making it back from the moon alive.

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Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch by chasd00 on Friday June 21, 2024 @05:20PM (#40753939)

I think the deal was there was already a pretty high threshold for risk. I don't know the percentage exactly but the problem was the o-ring thing put it over the threshold which should triggered a a no-go.

For example, you could say "we'll tolerate a 30% chance of loss of life on this launch" but then an engineer comes up and says "an issue we found puts the risk of loss of life at 65%". That crosses the limit and procedure means no launch. What should not happen is "well, we're going anyway" which is what happened with Challenger.

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