07 March 2021, 09:20 PM
AxtremusAllan McDonald obituary
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/07...launch-exposed-coverOne 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.
07 March 2021, 10:19 PM
Piano*DadYeah, ah, remember that at the time.
08 March 2021, 11:19 AM
pianojugglerHe 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.
--------------------------------
pj, citizen-poster, unless specifically noted otherwise.
mod-in-training.
pj@ermosworld∙com
All types of erorrs fixed while you wait.
08 March 2021, 02:54 PM
wtgFeynman 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.
--------------------------------
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home. - Australian Aboriginal proverb
Bazootiehead-in-training