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Remembering Allan McDonald, who refused to approve the Challenger launch
- webwielder2 6y agoThe Reagan administration escaped consequences for pressuring NASA to launch so the schoolteacher could be mentioned in the SOTU. Good history here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1560259809/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apip_auQDyTQwojL9d https://www.amazon.com/dp/1560259809/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apip_auQ...
- valuearb 6y agoNASA leadership escaped consequences for designing a ridiculously unsafe launch system, and playing politics to choose their 4th rated SRB design to get Utah’s congressional vote.
- specialist 6y ago"For All Mankind" includes both of these plot points, with some details changed.
- nabla9 6y agoThere was amazing amount of fear and ass covering after the accident. NASA engineers gave information about O-ring only to Sally Ride (a member of Rogers commission). Sally Ride then gave the information to her friend General Donald Kutyna (an another member of Rogers commission) who she trusted to not to implicate her or the engineers. Then Kutyna found way to inform Feynman so that Feynman could "discover it independently" without the risk of revealing the real source.
- iudqnolq 6y agoThe article tells a different story, with Alan McDonald blowing the whistle to congress.
- nabla9 6y agoThey are part of the same story. Alan McDonald spoke up in the first closed meeting as the article says and told that they have suggested not launching. Focus of the commission started to change but it didn't happen overnight. He didn't "blow whistle to congress".
- vlovich123 6y agoThat’s not amazing to me. This is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences.
- nitrogen 6y agoThis is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences. No, I don't think it is, and it's the pervasive belief that they do that gives the few who do license to continue doing so.
- BalinKing 6y agoPersonally, I assume that these kinds of people, by and large, do get away with it (although I guess that's just a way of restating the original assumption).
- vlovich123 6y agoI mean you are free to believe whatever you want, but, unless you also believe that it’s a large secret conspiracy to fill the important positions with incompetence just in time for a crisis (or to create a crisis down the road), you’re going to have a tough time explaining similar disasters that show similar behavior from your fellow man. At most you can say that greed causes leaders to promote and hire this kind of person, but that’s a tenuous argument in my opinion. The real world observation of WW2, the Milford experiments, Stanford prisoner experiments, Asch conformity experiments, and so many cases of corporate malfeasance, at least to me, show pretty directly that people like Allan McDonald are the exception. The reason also makes sense to me. Social conformity, if you’re in the “in” group yields a lot of benefits and being in the “out” group has a lot of costs. You’re talking not just about societal conformance pressures through things like being a pariah at work or being passed over for promotion. This can be personal pressures where you suddenly have financial pressures you didn’t have before because no one is willing to give you a break. You’ve got your family either putting pressure on you to ease their lives or your own guilt that your family is paying a price for your actions. To withstand that is a minority of people, like those who have strong support from family and trusted friends for whom the societal bonds aren’t as important.
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- consumer451 6y agoStanding up to your org is such a rare and difficult thing. Most of us, myself included, are usually not up to the task. Major respect to Allan McDonald.
- throwaway82932 6y agoIt's difficult for sure. It will draw out every ounce of your political skills. It sometimes means leaving your job, and although it doesn't necessarily mean sacrificing your whole career, optimizing for ethics may impede your ability to optimize for other things like compensation or power. > usually not up to the task Hmm, "usually"? It sounds like you've done at least something sometime, even though you may not have been satisfied. Kudos for doing what you could under the circumstances. Not everyone needs to go full martyr.
- consumer451 6y agoThank you for your kind words. I have done my best, when I can. Not always comfortable, but I am doing just fine. Still feels like I could have done more.
- sixdimensional 6y agoIt is so true. I've done it, not out of ego, but out of passion and belief that it was the right thing, and I've paid the price physically and mentally for it. I respect and honor this man for what he did. RIP Allan McDonald, and thank you for what you left behind. This quote from the article helped me, right here, right now: --- excerpt --- "What we should remember about Al McDonald [is] he would often stress his laws of the seven R's," Maire says. "It was always, always do the right thing, for the right reason at the right time with the right people. [And] you will have no regrets for the rest of your life." --- end excerpt --- When people say that it is not just about about what you do, or why you do it, but who you do it with, it is so easy to gloss over that sometimes, it's about doing your part with the right people. For me, this served as a reminder of high value.
- dash2 6y ago
- Clewza313 6y ago> "his laws of the seven R's ... always do the right thing for the right reason at the right time with the right people. [And] you will have no regrets for the rest of your life." I count 6 R's, did somebody mangle the quote?
- abhorrence 6y agoI count seven: right, right, reason, right, right, regrets, rest.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dnqthao 6y ago7 actually: right, right, reason, right, right, regrets, rest
- derekp7 6y agoI did too the first several times I read through it -- until I read every word individually. Most of the "r's" are on words at the beginning of a word group, but two of them are on words right next to each other.
- fggg444 6y agoit's recursive, the first "r" is from "the seven R's"
- PhantomGremlin 6y agoTragically, Space Shuttle Columbia was also lost, many years later. Lessons learned and forgotten, or perhaps not learned at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia#Final_mission_and_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia#Final_m... A particularly relevant snippet: The report delved deeply into the underlying organizational and cultural issues that the board believed contributed to the accident. The report was highly critical of NASA's decision-making and risk-assessment processes.
- DuskStar 6y agoI wouldn't bet against SLS having a launch failure for the same reasons. (If it ever has more than 5 launches, that is)
- mshroyer 6y agoAt least SLS puts its solid rocket boosters well below the crew capsule, though. So compared with the Shuttle, there's some nonzero possibility of safe abort in the event of an SRB explosion.
- cushychicken 6y agoI got the privilege of having lunch with Mr. McDonald when I was an IEEE officer during college. He gave a lecture at my university on ethics, and the IEEE council got to take him for lunch afterwards. He was not shy at all about saying whatever was on his mind. It was pretty awesome to hear him dunk on his VP, right in the middle of lying to the Rogers commission's face. He was also really open about the fact that nobody at Morton Thiokol trusted him for the better part of a decade after he did that. He said something to the effect of, "It definitely made my career harder, but on the bright side, I never had any major crises of conscience for lying about it. He also didn't give a single fuck about getting a lunch beer at a student gathering. I wish I'd joined him in drinking beer at noon on a Tuesday on IEEE dime.
- hyperbovine 6y agoIt didn't hurt that Congress basically threatened to administer the corporate death penalty to Morton Thiokol if they retaliated against McDonald and others in any way: https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-joint-resolution/634/text?r=85&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-joint-reso...
- irjustin 6y agoThat's post fact. He blew the whistle before and very publicly. This event almost doesn't matter because he didn't care he would have gotten demoted - he was driven by being able to do the right thing. I believe there's a moment before he doesn't sign off on the launch or maybe just before he speaks out against his employer in front of the presidential commission... what will happen to me? what will happen to my family, 4 children? What work will I do? How do I make money? this is all I know... If you've ever worried about your future, job prospects, the unknown, the fear of not being able to provide, these thoughts are heavy. He made this decision and would gladly make it again regardless of outcome. I wish I could say the same for myself.
- 300bps 6y agoIf you've ever worried about your future, job prospects, the unknown, the fear of not being able to provide, these thoughts are heavy. And I can imagine him wondering, as any introspective person would, “what if I’m wrong?” That has to add to the stress.
- xbar 6y agoGodspeed, Allan McDonald.
- neilv 6y agoHopefully, we're in a new era, in which the next Allan McDonalds of various fields will be listened to before tragedies occur.
- monster_group 6y agoI applaud your optimism. (Boeing Max Jets, duh!).
- rectang 6y agoI'm not seeing it. The fundamental dynamic is the balance of power between the individual and the organization, and in the US at least, thanks to a number of Supreme Court decisions, the organization is at an extreme advantage.
- FpUser 6y agoPolitics can benefit greatly from people like him I think.
- dylan604 6y agoHow does Dr Fauci fair for his field?
- rdtwo 6y agoPoorly, don’t mask fauci is wrong thing for the right reason
- hprotagonist 6y agoMad respect for him; also, he’s untouchable. The level of bureaucratic insulation around his position is ... impressive.
- bzbarsky 6y agoMiddling. He keeps making decisions based on how he thinks (and I emphasize _thinks_, because this sort of evaluation of mass public reaction is not really his core expertise) they will play out in the media and politically. The most recent example is him basically saying "yeah, it makes sense for the UK to do first-doses-first, but it doesn't make sense for the US, because people here would not stand for it" and completely dodging the actual question at hand, which is which vaccination regime is better for most rapidly decreasing SARS-Cov-2 infection and COVID-19 deaths. Which is first-doses-first, from everything I can tell of the actual scientific evidence, and I am quite sure he knows that. So basically, he's walking a line between making the right scientific decisions and protecting his position enough (in his estimation) that he gets to make decisions at all, which is compromising some of the decisions he's making.
- euske 6y agoWhile I really do respect this person, I can't help but wondering how many people today on HN could make such a decision, especially those who insist to "move fast and break things" or "rough consensus and working code", etc, etc. Probably not many. (Probably I couldn't either.) It's one thing to praise a hero like him... but how can we be that guy while having a stable job?
- sitkack 6y agoYou can't, you have to be galactic citizen and do the right thing or best we end up like the Borg. If you want to remain true, you have to have FU money and know where that line is. Some peopled don't need that moral cushion, others do, it isn't a value judgement. We need to construct a world where Allan McDonald's can flourish. https://youtu.be/FQDe8Y9BBMo?t=100 https://youtu.be/FQDe8Y9BBMo?t=100 Be the foundation for the future.
- hawkice 6y agoI took a hard line on an ethical issue at work. It crushed me. I left when it got done anyway. I'm never working for a startup again.
- Fordec 6y agoHey, whatever it was, I appreciate people like you are out there regardless of whether the thing got done anyway. I'm in currently in the valley of death phase of startup life working on a tiny piece of the climate problem, but when the day comes that I'm in a position to hire teams I want them to be able to look me in the eye and oppose me when I'm going off the ethics track. How we got here to needing the climate problem fixed was people making their peace with consequences of their actions, and it's not going to be solved by doubling down on that approach.
- bitexploder 6y agoIn my experience big tech is no more ethical than startups. I respect where you are coming from though, there are plenty of other reasons startups are hard. Much of the ethical tapestry at a startup is on the founders.
- gjvc 6y ago"Every disaster movie begins with a scientist being ignored." We absolutely need more men and women like Allan McDonald, in all areas of government, science, education, and industry.
- jack_riminton 6y agoThis is going to be the start of 'Pandemic, the Movie' too
- slingnow 6y agoExcept that there are millions of scientists being ignored every day in just about every field you could imagine. Being ignored doesn't make you wrong or right. It's part of being a scientist. It's in the noise. I would bet good money that every disaster movie could also be tied to a Nostradamus prediction. It doesn't make it relevant.
- gjvc 6y agoDo you have any data to back that up?
- TheButlerian 6y agoSuck cock, corpo(or gov) rat! When your children die I'll have a party. I hope its a blood cancer so you can watch them squeal in pain.
- po 6y agoI think what's interesting about this is that his ethical action was against his own company's interest. He spoke up for his engineering team and what he believed to be true, to an external body, at the expense of the executives and business partners at his company. I feel like there are a lot of parallels in modern-day situations. The common wisdom around PR is to get control of this kind of situation to prevent it.
- zb 6y agoThe film “Challenger: The Final Flight” on Netflix includes interviews with the most important participants in the launch decision, including McDonald. (It also has interviews with many of the astronauts’ families and does a great job at putting their experience front and centre.) The guy whose job it was to send the fax because he happened to be the one who knew how to operate the fax machine is to this day utterly devastated; weeping. The MTI VP who signed off (although the decision was made above his head) admits that he agreed with it at the time, but acknowledges it was a mistake. He’s being interviewed in a large room full of very expensive furniture. The NASA manager who bullied them into agreeing to launch because they couldn’t prove that it was unsafe basically says that if he had his time over he would kill all of the astronauts again. Truly terrifying.
- geofft 6y agoYou don't manage to get that high up the ladder if you let a silly thing like your conscience bother you. (This is not a good thing, to be clear, and whoever figures out a systematic solution to this problem will save countless lives in many generations to come.)
- xapata 6y agoI doubt the people high up the ladder think themselves without conscience. Quite the opposite.
- bostonsre 6y agoI think there are people in both the camps. There are some with consciences that believe in doing the right thing, but also those that are in the sociopath camp. The news is full of the bad leaders that take ridiculous risks (e.g. Boeing) but the good guys don't make the news often.
- geofft 6y agoIf there had been good people in power at NASA at the time, the most important thing they could have done to save lives (not to mention run an effective organization) would be to refuse to promote folks without a demonstrable conscience to management positions. It's all well and good to celebrate Allan McDonald for courageously speaking up, but the hard question is this: had Larry Mulloy or George Hardy ever been in the position where they had to make a decision about whether to courageously speak up, at any point between when they joined NASA and when they got their management roles? If your promotion criteria says that someone's qualified for a higher-level job because they've been doing good work in fair weather, you have absolutely no way to know whether they listen to their conscience - you simply have no data about what happens when they have to make tough calls. And in fact your process is slightly biased against people who do, because sometimes people who don't will take an unwise risk and get lucky. And so over time, as long as disasters remain less common as worries about disasters, the folks who don't listen to their consciences get a little bit more done during their career compared to their peers. We know that Thiokol demoted McDonald for speaking up and sidelined the others who also did. This is a system that systematically avoids empowering the good guys. (And, from all evidence, Mulloy and Hardy were highly capable engineers. I'm not saying NASA should have never hired them - they should have had senior IC roles to fit their strengths and NASA should have looked for folks more like McDonald to make the launch decisions.)
- boringg 6y agoGreat read about something I never knew about. I tip my hat to those people who are able to stand up for whats right (and not grandstanding) given intense pressures to do otherwise. It's also somewhat shocking that NASA would push forward given the very strong push back. Seems like some incredibly strange decision logic for such a high risk situation.
- lsb 6y ago1) Massive respect to Allan McDonald, for piping up in the hearing when he could have very easily kept quiet. 2) Massive respect to NPR, for continuing to publish news in HTML with minimal markup, quick loading for anyone to view.
- spudwaffle 6y agoLove that public radio where the incentives are aligned.
- Drunk_Engineer 6y agoThis is the same NPR which says the internet permits information to spread to easily, and that the whole internet needs to be redesigned to more easily censor. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973791961/with-trump-out-of-office-disinformation-online-is-on-a-decline https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973791961/with-trump-out-of-o...
- adolph 6y agoAlmost as if large organizations are made of people with different viewpoints. Almost as if the technical appreciation of unbloated web pages is orthogonal to the writing within them.
- mrunkel 6y agoDo you think that this four minute interview is somehow a policy statement from NPR?
- cmeacham98 6y agoCan you point me to where in that article the NPR (or an NPR reporter) says that (NOT anywhere they clearly report a third party's thoughts)? Please include the entire sentence in your quote for context.
- gyzmau 6y agoSo you compare the words of someone on the website with the format of this website. OP just praised them for their page layout. Tomato and apple comparison.
- known 6y agoMy brother faced similar situation while working for a Govt project in University; He refused to sign and instead resigned; "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it" --Einstein (b. 1879)
- burrows 6y agoIs Einstein an expert on “listening to one’s conscience”? If not, then it’s just mumbo-jumbo.
- gspr 6y ago> Is Einstein an expert on “listening to one’s conscience”? If not, then it’s just mumbo-jumbo. What rubbish logic. I think we can agree that Einstein was a generally incredibly intelligent and remarkable human. That is enough of an argument to pause for 5 seconds and hear this one sentence out. Then you can discard it as you see fit. In other words, Einstein's status is what has you listening, but the content of what is said has to stand on its own two legs and does not necessarily rely on an argument from authority.
- burrows 6y agoEinstein was remarkable within his domain of expertise. Outside of it he’s a jackass just like everyone else.
- greesil 6y agoTestimony: https://www.c-span.org/video/?126036-1/presidential-commission-space-shuttle-challenger-accident https://www.c-span.org/video/?126036-1/presidential-commissi...
- rantwasp 6y agoat what point does the legend speak up?
- stereo 6y agoHe's the first witness. The transcript is at https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v4part7.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v4part7.htm I looked at the videos of the previous days a bit, and can't find the moment which he describes in the article. Can anyone? The NY Times article of the next day doesn't describe the moment either: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/26/us/man-in-the-news-tenacious-engineer-allan-j-mcdonald.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/26/us/man-in-the-news-tenaci...
- z2trillion 6y agoIn this article, https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a18616/an-oral-history-of-the-space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a18616/an-oral-histor..., Alton Keel says that it was a closed-door hearing, which may explain why there's no video or reporting.
- epivosism 6y agoThe actual Feynman personal take on risk & his investigation: https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm Short and readable. It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?" ... For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoThe Rogers comission was also just going to bury the problem and almost absolve NASA of guilt, Feynman fought to get his appendix in the report, and he also later said that he was being gently lead to discover the O-rings issue during his investigations.
- dmos62 6y agoFeynman had a way with words. I might look him up for some light reading.
- tyleo 6y agoI highly recommend doing so. I had a great time with his book, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”
- maxwelldone 6y agoI enjoyed reading that. Feynman doesn't sugar coat things. I also recommend "what do you care what other people think" book. The second half covers Challenger investigation wich is quite amusing to read.
- bredren 6y agoI’m surprised NPR wrote this today: >Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career, and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children. It is subtle but still—the man had _four_ kids. The decision was risking the life he and his wife were building _together_.
- pasttense01 6y agoThere is another Hacker News article out today very relevant to this issue: FAA safety engineer goes public to slam agency’s oversight of Boeing’s 737 Max https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26376549
- partomniscient 6y agoI found the history of the related company Morton-Thiokol quite useful as part of understanding as well. [1] Especially as I was young at the time it occurred and am not from the US, so probably less exposed to it as well. [1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/morton-thiokol-inc https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-mag...
- hoseja 6y agoWhile it is undoubtedly tragic, I kinda wish it were more acceptable for people to die exploring space, now and then. This focus on absolute safety seems crippling.
- hertzrat 6y agoAre you volunteering? People can be quick to offer other humans as sacrifices for some greater good
- throw123123123 6y agoThere are plenty of volunteers offering their life for a lot less - a whole army of them.
- jiofih 6y agoThe difference is you don’t need 20 years of training and multiple post-doc diplomas to join the army. Every loss there is insanely expensive in terms of human capital.
- hoseja 6y agoAnd they get into a LOT of preventable accidents, without anybody seeming to care very much.
- hertzrat 6y agoI think what you’re saying is true. I want to add that there are other armies of “volunteers” in other areas of life who didn’t actually volunteer in a fully free way
- upbeat_general 6y agoThere is an absolute focus on safety not just for manned missions. Spaceflight is expensive and any small fuckup can cause a loss of many many millions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- known 6y ago"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man" --Elbert Hubbard(b. 1856)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MichaelMoser123 6y agoDid Allan McDonald also give a tip to Richard Feynman? He was the first one who talked about the O-Rings, and everyone was wondering how he got the idea in the first place (or wasn't wondering, since Feynman was an undisputed genius)
- softwhale 6y agoSally Ride had insight into the O-ring failures, and tipped general Donald Kutyna. Kutyna subtly tipped Feynman. Kutyna had invited Feynman over dinner where they talked about Kutyna's car and the O-rings inside of them.. So the story goes. https://emptysqua.re/blog/who-broke-the-challenger-investigation/ https://emptysqua.re/blog/who-broke-the-challenger-investiga... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19032574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19032574
- GuB-42 6y agoWhile Allan McDonald was obviously right, for one case where it was justified, how many other instances there are where an engineer/scientist expressed concerns, was ignored, and everything went fine. I'd say that as a rule, a good engineer will always be concerned. With his knowledge and experience, he will know everything that can go wrong. And asking him to make life-and-death decisions must be really hard when you know that your contraption can always be made safer, given enough time you don't have. How many big milestones were made possible because some clueless executive decided to risk the life of people? How to make the difference, without the benefit of hindsight, between an overly cautious engineer and a savior?
- jacquesm 6y agoYou have not understood the main lesson from the Challenger accident: the fact that everything went fine is not proof that everything is fine. That's exactly what normalization of deviance is all about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- jiofih 6y agoI think you’re being very, very generous in your interpretation of roles. You don’t just risk “innovating” when human lives are at stake, and in this case the danger was very well known: the engineers knew exactly what, and how, it could fail, due to the temperature being way out of spec. Launching under freezing weather was no particular achievement. They could have delayed the launch for better weather with no loss of “big milestones”.
- GuB-42 6y agoYou do risk innovating when human lives are at stake, we wouldn't have a moon landing otherwise. And I never said engineers concerns were unfounded, quite the opposite in fact, engineers know what can go wrong. If your engineers don't say "no", either they are incompetent or they are heartless. And because Allan McDonald was a great engineer and human being, he said "no". My point was more general than the Challenger disaster. When to listen to engineers and when to take unreasonable risks? Here, the answer is obvious, and we know that in general, Allan McDonald was someone to listen to but we have hindsight. How do we make the difference between chances you can't take and over-caution that can drag project forever? It would be interesting to know how risk was calculated in the space shuttle program since we have problems going both ways: two catastrophic accidents, and runaway costs which are, for a large parts, safety-related in response to these accidents.
- diminish 6y agoI remember as a young expat engineer, I've worked for one large consulting job doing UK's NHS's NPfIT project in 2005. I've refused to signoff the architecture due to one of the providers not meeting requirements. One year later I've written a 6 point warning to the C-level of the company, that it's going to fail. Then quit the project and left. Years later, I read that the project was a failure for UK. I still keep my warning letter as a badge of honor, showing to my family and friends. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health that
- Banderly 6y ago+1 here on an ongoing UK government project. It's like a nightmare where you can't move and nobody can hear you scream. You can only watch the inevitable disaster unfold.
- raverbashing 6y ago> He also told NASA officials, "If anything happens to this launch, I wouldn't want to be the person that has to stand in front of a board of inquiry to explain why we launched... ." Wise words, very wise words But one thing that just came to my mind: were the allowed launch temperatures specified at design time? Yes, Florida is hot but it does get chilly sometimes (not rarely, sometimes). Of course my cartoon solution to that launch would be to hold the launch with engines running for 1 or 2 seconds while giant baffles would divert the massive amounts of vapour back into the orbiter and heat it a bit
- whiddershins 6y agoThis story ... so then they hired Richard Feynman to do a detailed analysis and he concluded it was the o-rings? So crazy.
- spacemanmatt 6y agoThat is a great story. I am so used to hearing Richard Feynman credited with leading the blue-ribbon panel that spoke truth to power in a plain-as-dirt method, as well as exposing the mechanism of the O-ring's thermal characteristic.
- antattack 6y agoI have been wondering what law or mechanism (perhaps already existing in other countries) could prevent upper management coverups? For a while I though that press was that mechanism, however after 'embedded press' in Iraq War and governments going after press sources with impunity, or White House refusing to deal with it all together, we know that press can be coopted. We need something better, perhaps a law...or a gofundme for whistleblowers?
- jrochkind1 6y agoMay we all have the courage to stand up against bureaucracy to protect others at risk to our careers and personal security.
- motohagiography 6y ago"Regret for things we did is tempered by time," McDonald said, his expression firm. "But regret for things we did not do is inconsolable." This is the frame that idea needed.
- andrewla 6y agoI don't know specifics here, except to say that the important thing is not whether or not he warned of the disaster or withheld his consent, but how _infrequent_ that event was. Did he sign off on STS-61-C? My understanding is that there were numerous warnings about the Challenger, but the same warnings had been made constantly for every single launch. Sometimes they resulted in delays, etc., but the engineers and managers in charge of the launches had ample evidence of predictions of failure not being borne out because the system was resilient to them. Similar to warnings about 9/11, or Fukushima, or the 2008 GFC, there were people who predicted them. But, like the saying goes "they predicted 25 of the last 7 recessions". I can't say whether McDonald fits this mold, but if he did not -- if he made an unusual prediction -- then that should be front and center here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-61-C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-61-C
- valuearb 6y agoKnowing the specifics matters. The Thiokol SRB design wasn’t safe in very cold weather, and the Challenger launch was on the coldest weather ever attempted. That’s why the warnings for this flight.
- ilaksh 6y agoThere is a parallel here with Boeing and 737 MAX. In both cases an executive or high-level manager interfered with the engineers. In the case of Boeing it actually started right from the beginning with the decision to create a kludge based on very dated designs to try to meet new requirements and save a buck rather than create a new design. Engineers should be in charge of engineering companies and they should also continue to be incentivised to operate as engineering supervisors in those roles rather than just salespeople or accountants. I actually think it's not just the people or the incentives but the nature of money. It's a fundamental technology but I think we should find ways to upgrade it as a high technology so that it integrates better all of our values that might not currently be in the bottom line.
- adamc 6y agoMakes me think of the song "Eminence Front".
- CuriousNinja 6y agoAre there any guidelines on how to prevent such incidents in the future where management overrules engineers /subject matter experts because of deadlines / profit etc ? Can we learn from other professions such as doctors on how to handle these better? I believe it's very rare for a hospital administrator to over rule a doctors decision when it comes to patients health.