Allan McDonald refused to approve Challenger launch, exposed cover-up (2021)

The launch could have gone right, and no one would have known anything about the decision process besides a few insiders. I am sure that on project as complex and as risky as a Space Shuttle, there is always an engineer that is not satisfied with some aspect, for some valid reason. But at some point, one needs to launch the thing, despite the complains. How many projects luckily succeeded after a reckless decision?

In many accidents, we can point at an engineer who foreshadowed it, as it is the case here. Usually followed by blaming those who proceeded anyways. But these decision makers are in a difficult position. Saying "no" is easy and safe, but at some point, one needs to say "yes" and take risks, otherwise nothing would be done. So, whose "no" to ignore? Not Allan's apparently.

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

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

McDonald’s loyalty was not beholden to his bosses, or what society or the country wanted at that moment in time. He knew a certain truth, based on facts he was aware of, and stuck by them.

This is so refreshing in todays world, where almost everyone seems to be a slave to some kind of groupthink, at least in public.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o&pp=ygUZbm9ybWFsaXp...

For me one of the more interesting side-bar discussions are those around deciding to use horizontal testing of the boosters despite that not being an operational configuration. This resulted in flexing of the joints that was not at all similar to the flight configuration and hindered identification of the weaknesses of the original "field joint" design.

Neither Ride nor Kutyna could risk exposing the information themselves, but no would could question or impeach Feynman.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raMmRKGkGD4

[1] https://lithub.com/how-legendary-physicist-richard-feynman-h...

Sadly, human society has a blind spot when it comes to inventions with short-term benefits but long-term detriments.

I would love to see more programmers refusing to work on AI.

How much of him being a hero is a coincidence? Did he refuse to sign the previous launches? Did NASA have reasons to believe that the launch could be successful? How much of a role does probability play here. I mean if someone literally tells you something isn't safe, especially the person who made it, you can't tell him it will work. There is somekind of bias here.

Sounds kinda familiar?

Dude got a lunch beer without a second though. (My man!)

He then gave a talk that afternoon talking about interrupting a closed session of the Challenger commission to gainsay a Thiokol VP. The VP in question testified to Congress that he wasn't aware of any launch risks. Macdonald stood up, went to the aisle, and said something to the effect of "Mr. Yeager, that is not true - this man was informed of the risks multiple times before the launch. I was the one that told him." (He was addressing Chuck Yeager, btw. Yeah, that Chuck Yeager.)

No mean feat to have the stones to interrupt a congressional hearing stacked with America's aviation and space heavyweights.

As much as his action were admirable, the most shocking thing about that story was how the politicians rallied to protect him after his demotion, forcing his company to keep and actually promote him. That's why I get both sad and angry when I hear the new mantra of "Government can't do anything, the markets have to regulate that problem."

It sounds like the most noteworthy part of his legacy is attempting to do the right thing, but with the wrong people.

I think this is meaningful to mention, because saying to do "the right things, at the right time, with the right people" is easy -- but harder is figuring out what that really means, and how do you achieve that state when you have incomplete control?

(One corporation though seems to withdraw from that language due to the attitude of the project and its representatives.)

Something that I find really frustrating is that it seems that there's an international "caste" of honest engineers who are ready, and have been ready for centuries if not millenia, to pull the metaphorical trigger on advancing human society to the next level. International rail systems, replacing all electrical generation with nuclear, creating safe and well-inspected commercial airplanes, etc.

Blocking that "caste" from uniting with each other and coordinating these projects are the Old Guard; the "local area warlords", although these days they may have different titles than they would have a thousand years ago. These people do not speak a language of technical accuracy, but rather their primary guiding principles are personal loyalty, as was common in old honor societies. They introduce graft, violence, corruption, dishonesty, and personal asset capture into these projects and keep them from coming to fruition. They would not sacrifice their lifestyles in order to introduce technical excellence into the system they're charged with managing, but instead think more about their workload, their salary, their personal obligations to their other (often dishonest) friends, and their career tracks.

It wouldn't even occur to me to worry more about a promotion than than the technical merit of a machine or system I was engaged with. I would never lie about something myself a colleague of mine said or did. For those reasons I will never be particularly competitive with the people who do become VPs and executive managers.

How many different people around the world, and especially that are on HackerNews, are in my exact situation? With the right funding and leadership could all quit our stupid fucking jobs building adtech or joining customer databases together or generating glorified Excel spreadsheets and instead be the International Railway Corps, or the International Nuclear Corps. And yet since we can't generate the cashflow necessary to satisfy the Local Area Warlords that own all the tooling facilities and the markets and the land, it will never be.

Sure, but they need to understand the risks, and be open about the choices they are making. Ideally at the time but certainly coving it up after it goes wrong is not acceptable.

I just keep waiting for that magical invisible hand to swoop in and fix this cluster f_ck... What could possibly be holding it up?

And then all of their government contracts should have been revoked.

My hero, but also Don Quixote. I'm a huge believer in Personal Integrity and Ethics, but I am painfully aware that this makes me a fairly hated minority (basically, people believe that I'm a stuck-up prig), especially in this crowd.

I was fortunate to find an employer that also believed in these values. They had many other faults, but deficient institutional Integrity was not one of them.

https://rumble.com/v4wxpje-challenger-astronauts-alive-deman...