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Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years of Guilt

144 points by curtis 11y ago

brotherjerky 11y ago
Related: If you haven't read Edward Tufte's take down of the PowerPoint slides from the Challenger test data, I highly recommend checking it out: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
- epc 11y ago
  Tufte's analysis covers the Columbia disaster in 2003.
  - andykellr 11y ago
    A quick Google search turned up this excerpt of his analysis of the Challenger disaster (beginning on page 14). https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tufte-Visual-and-Statistical-Thinking.pdf https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tuf...
    - brotherjerky 11y ago
      Yes, this is what I meant to reference. Thanks.
      - epc 11y ago
        Ah, ok, Tufte also released an analysis of the PowerPoint decks analyzing the Columbia tile problems. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
- jordanb 11y ago
  Tufte has done some neat stuff but his claim that Challenger (or even more tenuously, Columbia) were caused by bad powerpoint presentations strains credibility. The problem wasn't that the right people didn't know the danger. The problem was that they had enormous political pressure on them to move forward, and they were able to discount the danger in their own minds and fail to stop the launch despite being informed.
- mannykannot 11y ago
  Tufte's argument is a classic example of an expert placing too much importance on his specialty. In this case, the presentation of the data was, at worst, a second-order issue: the data themselves were enough for anyone prepared to listen.
zrail 11y ago
This is a beautiful outcome. I remember reading the original story and thinking that it was incredibly sad that he's holding that guilt, after doing all that he could do to prevent the disaster he saw coming. The statement from Bolden is particularly meaningful. Nobody can speak for the people who died on the flight, but as a contemporary colleague he can reflect on what they may have thought, as astronauts and test pilots.
lotharbot 11y ago
I'm glad to see Bob finally able to find peace. Just the step of coming forward and talking about Challenger was huge; the outpouring of love and kindness from all corners of the globe is incredible. (I've known him for about ten years -- he attends a small church in Brigham City where my father-in-law is the pastor. From what I understand, even most of his closest friends had no idea.)
zhte415 11y ago
What I concluded from the short but quite touching article: Speak out if you see something wrong, no matter what the profession. Speak out with a passion. Because not doing so will end in traumatizing guilt, which Mr. Ebeling was fighting with for so long, despite doing so. The fantastic quote by Charlie Bolden: "We honor [the Challenger astronauts] not through bearing the burden of their loss, but by constantly reminding each other to remain vigilant," the statement read. "And to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up so that our astronauts can safely carry out their missions."
- jacalata 11y ago
  That's a weird lesson to learn from a story about a guy who spoke out and still carried that guilt. It seems more like a lesson of "win the argument or you will be traumatized"?
  - tekklloneer 11y ago
    There's a lot of variations on "it's better to have loved", and this is one of them. You're more likely to regret not doing something than doing it with good intent and sound reason.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  To me the issue was more NASA letting down their devoted employees by not giving credit where its due (negative and positive). They let the guy taking the bullet in real life and said nothing at the time. What a nasty double penalty.
throwaway_exer 11y ago
Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty. Those graphs are an embarrassment ... they certainly collected far more data than depicted there. And there should have been pre-launch documentation of what the acceptable minimum operating temperature. Do you really think that any of the shuttle parts were mfg. without temp and vibration data?
- byoung2 11y ago
  Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty. I think you're right they should feel guilty, not because they didn't argue hard enough to stop the launch, but for knowingly allowing a flawed SRB design to stay in service for so long. It was a well-known fact that the o-ring design was flawed, even before the first shuttle launched. In several launches, the joints in the SRB flared out, causing leaks, but luckily the o-ring slipped out of its groove and sealed the joint. This was not part of the design, but they change the spec to account for this unintended effect. This is why they should feel guilty. Instead of fixing the flaw, they counted on a Rube Goldberg-like sequence of events to fix it.
  - hga 11y ago
    Indeed, o-rings are supposed to seal on compression, not expansion, and when it turned out in the field that these joins flexed enough to require sealing under the latter they should have been revised. But, hey, the shuttles didn't blow up prior to Challenger, and certainly nothing short of a catastrophe would have motivated NASA to pay for such an expensive undertaking, there was no "allow a flawed SRB design to stay in service", that wasn't their decision, as show in the meetings before the fateful launch. As it was, the SRBs were hacks designed to decrease development costs vs. safety or cost in operation.
    - byoung2 11y ago
      You're right it was a budget decision made by NASA, but the engineers should have stressed the point long before Jan 28, 1986. I think the term for that is normalization of variance. If my buddy has driven drunk many times and not killed anyone, then he can drive drunk tonight and not kill anyone. Except tonight he drives drunk and kill 7 people. The sin here is in letting someone amass a history of drunk driving incidents. The issue I think wasn't raised was that all the successful launches before Challenger were outliers...the engineers knew it and instead of raising the issue early and saying the o ring implementation was effectively duct tape, they changed the spec to allow for extrusion and slipping of the o ring. In fact, on the day of Challenger's fateful launch, Thiokol engineers were relieved, and even congratulated each other that the shuttle even made it off the launchpad. Despite the expansion in the joint, and o ring failure, aluminum oxides filled the joint, sealing it. If not for abnormally strong wind shear, this seal might have held, and the disaster might not have happened. In this alternate timeline, would Thiokol and NASA have ever addressed the issue?
nullc 11y ago
This is relevant and well worth the time: http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html
fapjacks 11y ago
The radio interview was crushingly sad, listening in the car to that old guy blame himself. It was one of the saddest things I have heard in a while.
DrBazza 11y ago
Great article. Doesn't Musk/Space-X now review any launch if anyone has a concern? What does NASA now do?
- dave2000 11y ago
  NASA doesn't launch anything because there's a concern that it'll steal resources from exciting new ways of killing people.
zw123456 11y ago
The story behind the space shuttle is very interesting. Some of the early designs were really cool http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the-space-shuttle-could-have-be-1528524224 http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the-space-shu... The real issue in my view, is not Bob's fault (obviously) but politics. Although this is maybe bit off topic, From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process "While NASA would likely have chosen liquid boosters had it complete control over the design, the Office of Management and Budget insisted on less expensive solid boosters due to their lower projected development costs" The real issue was that it had to be built large enough to carry military payloads or else congress would not fund it. That really forced a lot of terrible design compromises. I would tell Bob to not feel guilty, the ones that need to feel guilty are the politicians and OMB people who boxed the engineers into a corner. It will be interesting to see if the private sector who is taking a lot of this development over will be safer. Just my 2 cents.

144 points by curtis 11y ago

Related: If you haven't read Edward Tufte's take down of the PowerPoint slides from the Challenger test data, I highly recommend checking it out: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

epc 11y ago
Tufte's analysis covers the Columbia disaster in 2003.
- andykellr 11y ago
  A quick Google search turned up this excerpt of his analysis of the Challenger disaster (beginning on page 14). https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tufte-Visual-and-Statistical-Thinking.pdf https://blogs.stockton.edu/hist4690/files/2012/06/Edward-Tuf...
  - brotherjerky 11y ago
    Yes, this is what I meant to reference. Thanks.
    - epc 11y ago
      Ah, ok, Tufte also released an analysis of the PowerPoint decks analyzing the Columbia tile problems. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
jordanb 11y ago
Tufte has done some neat stuff but his claim that Challenger (or even more tenuously, Columbia) were caused by bad powerpoint presentations strains credibility. The problem wasn't that the right people didn't know the danger. The problem was that they had enormous political pressure on them to move forward, and they were able to discount the danger in their own minds and fail to stop the launch despite being informed.
mannykannot 11y ago
Tufte's argument is a classic example of an expert placing too much importance on his specialty. In this case, the presentation of the data was, at worst, a second-order issue: the data themselves were enough for anyone prepared to listen.

zrail 11y ago

This is a beautiful outcome. I remember reading the original story and thinking that it was incredibly sad that he's holding that guilt, after doing all that he could do to prevent the disaster he saw coming. The statement from Bolden is particularly meaningful. Nobody can speak for the people who died on the flight, but as a contemporary colleague he can reflect on what they may have thought, as astronauts and test pilots.

lotharbot 11y ago

I'm glad to see Bob finally able to find peace. Just the step of coming forward and talking about Challenger was huge; the outpouring of love and kindness from all corners of the globe is incredible. (I've known him for about ten years -- he attends a small church in Brigham City where my father-in-law is the pastor. From what I understand, even most of his closest friends had no idea.)

zhte415 11y ago

What I concluded from the short but quite touching article: Speak out if you see something wrong, no matter what the profession. Speak out with a passion. Because not doing so will end in traumatizing guilt, which Mr. Ebeling was fighting with for so long, despite doing so. The fantastic quote by Charlie Bolden: "We honor [the Challenger astronauts] not through bearing the burden of their loss, but by constantly reminding each other to remain vigilant," the statement read. "And to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up so that our astronauts can safely carry out their missions."

jacalata 11y ago
That's a weird lesson to learn from a story about a guy who spoke out and still carried that guilt. It seems more like a lesson of "win the argument or you will be traumatized"?
- tekklloneer 11y ago
  There's a lot of variations on "it's better to have loved", and this is one of them. You're more likely to regret not doing something than doing it with good intent and sound reason.
agumonkey 11y ago
To me the issue was more NASA letting down their devoted employees by not giving credit where its due (negative and positive). They let the guy taking the bullet in real life and said nothing at the time. What a nasty double penalty.

throwaway_exer 11y ago

Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty. Those graphs are an embarrassment ... they certainly collected far more data than depicted there. And there should have been pre-launch documentation of what the acceptable minimum operating temperature. Do you really think that any of the shuttle parts were mfg. without temp and vibration data?

byoung2 11y ago
Excuse me, but as a Sr. Engineer, the Thiokol engineers should go to the grave feeling guilty. I think you're right they should feel guilty, not because they didn't argue hard enough to stop the launch, but for knowingly allowing a flawed SRB design to stay in service for so long. It was a well-known fact that the o-ring design was flawed, even before the first shuttle launched. In several launches, the joints in the SRB flared out, causing leaks, but luckily the o-ring slipped out of its groove and sealed the joint. This was not part of the design, but they change the spec to account for this unintended effect. This is why they should feel guilty. Instead of fixing the flaw, they counted on a Rube Goldberg-like sequence of events to fix it.
- hga 11y ago
  Indeed, o-rings are supposed to seal on compression, not expansion, and when it turned out in the field that these joins flexed enough to require sealing under the latter they should have been revised. But, hey, the shuttles didn't blow up prior to Challenger, and certainly nothing short of a catastrophe would have motivated NASA to pay for such an expensive undertaking, there was no "allow a flawed SRB design to stay in service", that wasn't their decision, as show in the meetings before the fateful launch. As it was, the SRBs were hacks designed to decrease development costs vs. safety or cost in operation.
  - byoung2 11y ago
    You're right it was a budget decision made by NASA, but the engineers should have stressed the point long before Jan 28, 1986. I think the term for that is normalization of variance. If my buddy has driven drunk many times and not killed anyone, then he can drive drunk tonight and not kill anyone. Except tonight he drives drunk and kill 7 people. The sin here is in letting someone amass a history of drunk driving incidents. The issue I think wasn't raised was that all the successful launches before Challenger were outliers...the engineers knew it and instead of raising the issue early and saying the o ring implementation was effectively duct tape, they changed the spec to allow for extrusion and slipping of the o ring. In fact, on the day of Challenger's fateful launch, Thiokol engineers were relieved, and even congratulated each other that the shuttle even made it off the launchpad. Despite the expansion in the joint, and o ring failure, aluminum oxides filled the joint, sealing it. If not for abnormally strong wind shear, this seal might have held, and the disaster might not have happened. In this alternate timeline, would Thiokol and NASA have ever addressed the issue?

nullc 11y ago

This is relevant and well worth the time: http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html

fapjacks 11y ago

The radio interview was crushingly sad, listening in the car to that old guy blame himself. It was one of the saddest things I have heard in a while.

DrBazza 11y ago

Great article. Doesn't Musk/Space-X now review any launch if anyone has a concern? What does NASA now do?

dave2000 11y ago
NASA doesn't launch anything because there's a concern that it'll steal resources from exciting new ways of killing people.

zw123456 11y ago

The story behind the space shuttle is very interesting. Some of the early designs were really cool http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the-space-shuttle-could-have-be-1528524224 http://io9.gizmodo.com/early-design-specs-show-the-space-shu... The real issue in my view, is not Bob's fault (obviously) but politics. Although this is maybe bit off topic, From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_design_process "While NASA would likely have chosen liquid boosters had it complete control over the design, the Office of Management and Budget insisted on less expensive solid boosters due to their lower projected development costs" The real issue was that it had to be built large enough to carry military payloads or else congress would not fund it. That really forced a lot of terrible design compromises. I would tell Bob to not feel guilty, the ones that need to feel guilty are the politicians and OMB people who boxed the engineers into a corner. It will be interesting to see if the private sector who is taking a lot of this development over will be safer. Just my 2 cents.