https://www.npr.org/2021/03/07...launch-exposed-cover

One of those stories when politicians and/or executives don’t listen to their engineers and tragedies ensue.

The engineer who refused to sign off on the Challenger launch died.

Yeah, ah, remember that at the time.

He was an American Hero.

I went to a talk a few years ago by a guy from a major US airline on "Normalization of Deviance". The example was the Challenger disaster. NASA had been launching at lower and lower temperatures and "gotten away with it"... until they didn't.

He said that Thiokol engineers were trying to call Mission Control to tell them to abort the launch, but were not put through or not taken seriously. I think Allan McDonald was one of those engineers.

Feynman talks about being in the closed meeting referred to in the NPR piece when McDonald came in uninvited to make his remarks. And that led to Feynman's famous O-ring in the ice water demonstration the following day....

RIP, Allan.

RIP, indeed.

A good man.