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NASA Space

Remembering Allan McDonald the Engineer Who Said 'No' To the Challenger Launch (npr.org) 79

Long-time Slashdot reader Nkwe shares an article from NPR: His job was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career, and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children.

"And I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime," McDonald told me. "I refused to sign it. I just thought we were taking risks we shouldn't be taking...."

Now, 35 years after Challenger, McDonald's family reports that he died Saturday in Ogden, Utah, after suffering a fall and brain damage. He was 83 years old.

"There are two ways in which [McDonald's] actions were heroic," recalls Mark Maier, who directs a leadership program at Chapman University and produced a documentary about the Challenger launch decision. One was on the night before the launch, refusing to sign off on the launch authorization and continuing to argue against it," Maier says. "And then afterwards in the aftermath, exposing the cover-up that NASA was engaged in...."

He later co-authored one of the most definitive accounts of the Challenger disaster: Truth, Lies, and O-Rings — Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. In retirement, McDonald became a fierce advocate of ethical decision-making and spoke to hundreds of engineering students, engineers and managers.

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Remembering Allan McDonald the Engineer Who Said 'No' To the Challenger Launch

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  • what Boeing needs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @08:59PM (#61134340)

    is someone with this sense of ethics to be put in charge of revamping the company's safety program.

    FAA and Boeing officials who signed off on the 737 MAX hazard analysis with MCAS depending on a single sensor need to be held -legally accountable and liable-. ( https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] )

    • Beat me to it. I was going to say it is obvious no one at Boeing ever attended or listened to any of his presentations.

      • Re:what Boeing needs (Score:5, Informative)

        by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:23PM (#61134396)

        I worked with some ("old time") Boeing safety engineers, and much of what I know about software and systems safety comes from them. It's clear to me the corporate culture changed, Boeing went from being an engineering company to being a "business". That seems to be coincident with the takeover of McDonell-Douglas and the infiltration of McD management.

        • by bferrell ( 253291 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:43PM (#61134454) Homepage Journal

          Were it only that management...
          Remind me again; What happened at Solarwinds?
          Not the intern (And how DID an intern end up in a position where that could happen, and that's not a separate issue.)

          It's an attitude that has taken root in the ranks of management as a whole that needs to be addressed.

          We need to keep in mind the reason for this is that management is only accountable to the shareholders. And as long as the stock stays up...

        • Stop fetishizing magical Boeing fairy engineers. Any "corporate culture change" was calcified in back during the last millennium.

          From David Dayen's "Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power":

          As Max planes were grounded worldwide, people started wondering how they were ever approved for commercial use. It turned out that Boeing approved them.
          FAA managers delegated most of the safety assessments directly to the manufacturer, to help meet tight production schedules.

          This has been the norm for decades: a 1993 government report shows that the FAA delegated 95 percent of the safety certification to Boeing for its 747 jumbo jet.
          In the case of the Max, the assessments came back flawed, particularly for the flight automation system, the catalyst of the crashes.
          The FAA waved them through anyway; the office "defaulted" to Boeing, according to former officials.
          Lower-level employees lived in fear of calling out Boeing for errors and being dressed down by superiors; several of them called an FAA hotline to confidentially report issues with the 737 Max. Still nothing happened.

          Pressed for answers, acting FAA administrator Daniel Elwell told the Senate that it would take $1.8 billion in federal funds and ten thousand new employees for the government to certify aircraft.
          In other words, outsourcing safety determinations to monopoly corporations - Boeing is the only major manufacturer of commercial aircraft in the United States, making it in many respects too big to fail for America - is a budget-saving feature, not a courting-disaster bug.

          And then Donald Edwin Young decided to give the aviation industry even more power through "Organization Designation Authorization". [wikipedia.org]
          So now, for all intents and purposes of Boeing, Boeing IS the FAA. [usatoday.com]
          Perhaps it's Young Donald's way of thanking the aviation industry for helping him to steal that election 25 fuckin te [wikipedia.org]

          • Well, I had direct personal contact with multiple Boeing safety engineers in the '00.s It looks like you read a book. YMMV.

            I'm not defending either FAA or Boeing management, 737 MAX process perversion was an abomination. But I will defend those people I worked with who showed a commitment to principles, even if their management didn't share that same commitment.

            • So basically... your "argument" is "I talked to some guys complaining how everything was someone else's fault, not theirs." and having established an emotional connection to them, you will disregard cold hard facts - like passage of time being linear.
              Good job there.

              Are you also a "Ford man" cause the dealer once acted friendly as he sold you a car?

              Do note that, reports from BEFORE THE MERGER showing those very "personal contacts of yours" were LITERALLY writing their own report cards on safety - they omitte

      • Brave , in many places hard to speak out. The Wuhan Dr. recent highly visible example but not to pick on China solely , it happens every where, Fukushima coming up on 10 years.
    • That person probably existed and Boeing had them murdered as part of the coverup.
    • by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:24PM (#61134398) Journal

      Can we stop saying Boeing and just start calling them McDonnell Douglas now? Those are the schmucks that have destroyed all credibility and engineering.

      It's beyond clear that The Boeing Company died in 1997.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      is someone with this sense of ethics to be put in charge of revamping the company's safety program.

      That person would probably just shut Boeing down as unsalvageable. And that would be the right decision.

    • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:28PM (#61134532) Journal
      Boeing engineers and the McDonnel Douglas managers. Thats the deadly combination thats killing Boeing.

      Boeing is the successful company, expanding business and its managers and engineers were not under severe pressure to engage in office politics, C-Suite intrigue, CYA methodologies etc.

      It merged with Douglas. Failing products, making losses, falling behind. The managers who survived and stuck to the company were all veterans of intrigue, cabal formation, office politics, cronyism, mutual back scraching societies etc. When these guys showed up in Boeing C-Suites, before they took on the outside competition they eliminated internal rivals. Boeing engineers never knew what hit them.

      Its not unique to Boeing. Lets say a CFD analysis company that has peaked gets acquired by a growing structural mechanics analysis company. One would think the management would stick with the people who made a growing company and streamline the company past its peak. Five years after the merger, all the old hands who build the growing company are side lined, and the past-peak company honchos are occupying all the powerful positions.

      Standard technique: Synergy! lets combine common technologies like meshing, user interface, source code management, QA into a new core division, fluids and structures will use their services. After re-org, clever managers who have fought to keep their turf in shrinking company do not give up any of the resources. The naive structures people see all their basic infrastructure sitting under a new div head coming from the other side and to get a check-mark in one dialog you need go up two levels in your division, and then two levels in the core division before you get to talk to someone.

      In every encounter, the battle hardened veterans from losing divisions make mincemeat of growing divisions with managers with naive ideas of accountability, merit, recognition, unit cohesion.

      • Re:what Boeing needs (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:57AM (#61135274)

        Boeing is but in name only. McDonnel Douglas bought Boeing, using Boeing's own money. That's the problem. MD executives took over the executive offices, displacing the existing Boeing management, then quickly moved Boeing HQ to Chicago, far away from the icky business of building planes and actually dealing with problems.

        Meanwhile, engineers actually building the thing have no way of reaching the executives and getting them to fix stuff, being so far away.

        It's not Boeing. It's McDonnel Doublas. They just put a Boeing sign in front of the name to cover it up. And management is running it into the ground unless someone gets some balls and starts arresting those executives over the 737-MAX problems.

        As for Allan McDonald - he's probably the only person who could sleep soundly over the Challenger disaster - knowing that he had absolutely no part in sentencing 6 astronauts and a teacher to death. Not signing that form may have put his career and family at risk, but signing it would've weighed heavily on his conscience

        • Give it a rest. The merger happened decades ago, everyone involved is long gone yet Boeing is still shitty. And before the merger Boeing wasn't exactly great either. Their heyday has been in the 1960s.

          • I disagree. Having observed A LOT of mergers across the defense industry in almost 40 years, it was clear to me that 'corporate culture persists' for quite a long time, well after the managers in place right after the mergers moved on. Eventually, entropy rules and companies devolve to their lowest common denominator. In the late '90s/early '00s, I'd ask not "who do you work for?" but "where do you work?" because the location indicated the parent company and the associated culture.

        • As for Allan McDonald - he's probably the only person who could sleep soundly over the Challenger disaster - knowing that he had absolutely no part in sentencing 6 astronauts and a teacher to death. Not signing that form may have put his career and family at risk, but signing it would've weighed heavily on his conscience

          McDonald spoke at my university when I was there. If I recall, he still had restless nights. He regretted that he didn't do more to stop the launch. He eventually accepted that he did all that he could do, but he certainly didn't sleep soundly.

          • I'm likely confusing McDonald for Roger Boisjoly, or Bob Ebeling. There were multiple engineers raising concerns about that launch.
    • The young and beautiful girl looks for the () good man! Follow the link my contacts ==>> https://v.ht/bnXi [v.ht]
    • by kbg ( 241421 )

      Yes that is the only way this will ever change, and that is for officials to be held criminally liable for deaths that where the result of ignoring an obvious problem. If it's only about money then there will always be risk takers taking calculated risks for profit margins, but as soon as someone can be sent to actual jail then these risks will not be taken.

  • respect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by opencity ( 582224 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:02PM (#61134350) Homepage

    Regardless of where any poster is on the spectrum of current or past slashdot flame wars this guy was a bad ass.

    • Re: respect (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PseudoThink ( 576121 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @11:24PM (#61134652)
      I have sincere respect and admiration for anyone risking such significant consequences to do the right thing, especially when it'd be so easy to do otherwise and probably face none. I found it very compelling to learn about Mr. McDonald, Morton Thiokol, and this case in my Ethics in Engineering class 25 years ago. Thanks to Allan's courage.
    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      Ultimately it was one of many cases where politics trumped any reality on the ground. Reagan needed a blast and boom for his speech. Unlike the second disaster which was a statistical inevitability of design flaws in heat shield, this was caused by operation outside of design specifications.
      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        It came in earlier than that, when Nixon and then Ford handed the Space Shuttle program to the Pentagon and Congress to essentially redesign the Shuttle to their own criteria (since obviously generals and lawyers know so much better how to run an engineering program than engineers do.) The reason for the O-rings was because Morton Thiokol built the SRBs at their main plant rather than a dedicated facility near the Cape doing so in the classic game of pork barrel politics. The SRB had to be built in sectio

    • Agreed! He, Bob Ebeling, and Roger Boisjoly all deserve far more credit in the annals of engineering lore than they currently get. Let's try to correct that, shall we?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:08PM (#61134368) Journal

    https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]

    A Business Tale: a Story of Ethics, Choices, Success -- and a Very Large Rabbit by Jennings, Marianne M

  • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:22PM (#61134394)

    Highly recommended for any engineer of any age. You will think better after having read it.

    • by Latent Heat ( 558884 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:50PM (#61134476)

      I guy I worked for claims that the Challenger slammed into a serious wind shear, and gosh how many times I viewed the video clip of the Challenger yawing on that ascent in response to a strong crosswind. And the "zero" in the accelerometer trace where he claimed that is where it spiked only a numeric overflow was reported as exact zero in the telemetry. And yes, the dude had an agenda because he consulted for a company selling a wind-profiling radar that NASA would not purchase, relying instead on weather balloons.

      But the dude's research engineering expertise was an winds aloft and high altitude wind shears because he was "into" tropo-scatter radio communication.

      His claim is that the Challenger broke apart because it was yawed into that crosswind, and at the wind shear boundary, it broke up from slamming into still air with that high yaw angle before it could weathervane to go straight.

      Yeah, yeah and yeah, the puff of smoke from the solid rocket booster at launch and the claims that there were flames jetting out of the booster that torched the External Tank, only you can't see them directly in the video, and the Dude and I had endless arguments about all of that.

      His take was that NASA glommed on to the O-ring theory because it was the lesser scandal than to admit that the Shuttle was that vulnerable to clear-air atmospheric phenomena. They could fix the O-ring and keep flying but the other cause could have grounded the program early on.

      OK, maybe it was the combination of O-rings and a bad wind shear. And for all of those saying the wind shear theory is nonsense, what are people telling me about engineers being open and honest about all possibilities and not giving in to peer pressure and consensus thinking?

      • The wind shear did have a factor, in that it loosened the debris that had plugged up the leak shortly after lift off.

        Maybe if it hadn’t been as windy, history might have been different (though probably only slightly so - I think another accident likely would still have happened given NASA’s culture).

      • by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @02:43AM (#61135050) Homepage
        You are mistaking two things:

        A) MEASURING wind shear. That is what baloons do.

        B) FORECASTING wind shear for launches.

        Forecasting wind shear has been done for ages before the challenger disaster. It is a standard item in any airport forecast. So the other person who should have never signed the launch authorisation is the range met officer. He (this being United States of Troglodytia in 1986 I do not expect that to be she) carries a lot of the blame for this one. Wind shear, temperature, temperature gradient - you name it. The launch authorisation should have been denied.

        That by the way is not my opinion - I am quoting. The quote is from my dear mom who in the 1960es commanded a military met radar supporting the USSR nuclear deterrent and after that worked for 20+ years as a civilian radar met at an airport. For her Challenger is a "trigger word". She starts swearing when she hears it and she is damn right.

        • Apparently at the time of the Challenger disaster, a wind profiling radar set could give real-time information on the winds aloft along the trajectory of the Shuttle. It may have been Rockwell Collins making such a thing because Wind Shear Dude consulted for them. Based on his research area, Wind Shear Dude was as informed as anybody regarding what information could be obtained about air velocity from a radar set at the correct frequency and with the required signal processing to sort out the returns.

          O

  • by irving47 ( 73147 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:39PM (#61134448) Homepage

    I kept thinking someone posted an old story... the other guy with a very similar story was Bob Ebeling

    • I kept thinking someone posted an old story... the other guy with a very similar story was Bob Ebeling

      Thank you. One of them came to my university for a lecture on ethics. The name escapes me, but the lecture does not. When this news story broke, I had a sense of deja vu. Now I know why.

    • Roger Boisjoly, [npr.org] was a third. It seems there were many engineers at Morton Thiokol trying to stop the launch. However, it's widely reported that it was only one.
  • the time in the workplace.

  • by kackle ( 910159 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @09:57PM (#61134486)
    Take a trip with me in 1967
    With Grissom, White, and Chaffee on a rocket ride to heaven
    A dead-end date aboard AS-204
    It was American made
    Only the best for our boys
    And we were rockin' at the T-Dance
    Rockin' at the T-Dance
    .
    .
    .
    Take a trip with me to Kansas City MO
    To the Hyatt House, to the big dance floor
    You can still see the ghosts
    But you can't see the sense
    Why they let the monkey go
    And blamed the monkey wrench

    - The Rainmakers [youtube.com]
  • The related stories in the link are also a good (and sometimes, tearful) read.

  • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:13PM (#61134516)

    This documentary [netflix.com] on Netflix is worth a watch also.

  • Feynman (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:40PM (#61134558)

    Richard Feynman, with help from General Kutyna and Sally Ride, was another real hero there. William Rogers tried to dissuade him from investigating but Feynman persisted. [wikipedia.org]

  • The first line in the summary reveals a world of information:

    His job was to sign and submit an official form.

    REALLY!?! His job was to sign the form? No need to perform an analysis and render a professional opinion? Just sign the form?

    So we're saying that by refusing to sign the form, he was shirking his duty?

    No wonder we're fucked!

    • Are you a fucking idiot? The form is the final step of any process, where you've done all your work and shown all your workings, idiot.
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        That wooshing sound is the point flying far above your head. That form was an approval for launch. His actual job is to determine if that form should be signed or not. Falling in to the mental trap of thinking his job is to sign the form is how things end up exploding when you don't want them to.

        • Slashdot stories are badly written to the point of incomprehensibility.
          Complaining might make you feel better, but the Editors are clearly incapable of learning to do their job, so don't expect improvement.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Still missing it. I am not complaining about TFS or TFA. Management involved in the GO decision also believed that it was his job to sign the form, and when he didn't do his job, they demoted him and did the job in his place. Then KABOOM!

  • by TuballoyThunder ( 534063 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @11:00PM (#61134600)
    You can only give up your integrity once.
  • by hoofie ( 201045 ) <mickey@@@mouse...com> on Monday March 08, 2021 @01:32AM (#61134910)

    A very brave man who got absolutely hammered for his decision yet was proved 100% correct - only it took the deaths of all onboard to prove him right.

    Every engineer who works on anything with a safety element should remember his name and what he did

  • Courageous Man (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @02:16AM (#61134994) Homepage Journal

    He owns the ultimate I told you so.

    I was fresh out of Engineering School and only working at Rocketdyne the maker of the main engines (SSME) for a month before the Challenger incident. At first, the SSMEs were suspect as the turbine blades had a history of cracking. Immediately after the Challenger disintegrated there was a PA announcement at work that there was a system failure for flight STS-51. Everyone looked at each other stunned and wondered what is a "system failure" (pre-internet folks). Right after the announcement groups of guards come in and started securing all the build books. Each pump had a build book recording tolerance, exceptions, additional work performed, etc. for the turbopumps. They locked them up in a secure room and posted a 24-hour guard. They were afraid some engineer or mechanic would realize their screwup and go and change the record. We didn't know the full scope of what happened until people went out for lunch and came back.

    For the next 3 months, I helped collect data that was compiled into a report for Richard Feynman. I doubt he even read it though as he was already focusing on the solid rocket boosters.

  • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:09AM (#61135182)
    If you haven’t read “Truth, Lies and O-Rings” I can whole-heartedly recommend it. Allan’s style is engaging, the story is remarkably interesting and his integrity and honesty shine through.

    One of the observations I’d make about both the Challenger Disaster and the 737Max debacle concerns the role of oversight.

    In the case of Challenger, Allan describes how the normal routine for a pre-flight check would be for NASA to go through every last tiny issue or defect that they had discovered during the preparation for the launch and the mission and they would grill all of their sub-contractors and make them demonstrate that the issue had been successfully addressed. On the morning of the Challenger disaster, NASA took an inverse role, saying, effectively, “We’ve decided to launch... unless you can prove to us that it is unsafe to do so.” Reading this part of the book was a particularly chilling experience.

    In the case of the 737Max, the FAA did tantamount to the same thing by allowing Boeing to select, hire, train and pay the salaries of the engineers tasked with ensuring that the aircraft was safe.

    In both cases, the results were tragic. Decisions were made with transparently the wrong motive and wrong outcome, driven by avoidable conflicts-of-interest which the party in the supervisory role (NASA, the FAA) had either allowed to come in to effect or had created.

    Doubtless the FAA would not thank us for spotting the similarities between the two events. Doubtless they would not thank us for asking why they did not learn from the lessons of the Challenger disaster.

    But they should have done. Those lessons should be a mandatory part of the training program of any branch of the Federal government that has any form of oversight or supervisory responsibility for any industry. They should be part of government ethics training. They should be subject to regular, on-going and independent audit by an Inspector General’s office.

    Sadly, we’ve had the tragedies. Now we need to learn the lessons and stop them repeating.
  • The flying brick was a miserable design. the real tragedy was signing of on the project. Allan McDonald was a true technical hero. He stood up and called it a crock of shit. This is Why I love the movie Armageddon yeah sometimes the best geniuses on the planet don't know there ass from a hole in the asteroid. Andropov and Rockhound said it best. "American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!" " You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has
  • If only we had similar people doing for MBA programs what Allan MacDonald did with engineering programs. Maybe then we could see business decisions being made where the only criteria was the near term bottom line.
  • by shubus ( 1382007 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:03PM (#61136516)
    And some do not. I well remember the Challenger disaster as I saw it happen in real time. I remember and the inquiry and the words of Allan MacDonald, Roger Boisjoly and Bob Ebeling but the suits at Morton Thiokol prevailed despite these engineers well considered objections. The Challenger disaster still remains fresh in my memory and to this day I don't trust the suits, I trust the engineers.
  • Sadly is does take a truly unique person who has the courage to stand against the all the pressures and to hold their ground, I hope we can all aspire to be as strong as Allen McDonald when the chips are down and when it really counts. Very few people are remembered for "doing the right thing" and Allen will be remembered as one of the few who held strong on his morals and integrity and an inspiration to us all.

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