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Roger Boisjoly dies at 73; engineer tried to halt Challenger launch

375 points by pwg 15y ago

jgrahamc 15y ago
RIP Responsible Engineer
raphman 15y ago
From the Rogers report [1]: Engineers at Thiokol also were increasingly concerned about the problem. On July 22, 1985, Roger Boisjoly of the structures section wrote a memorandum predicting NASA might give the motor contract to a competitor or there might be a flight failure if Thiokol did not come up with a timely solution. Nine days later (July 31) Boisjoly wrote another memorandum titled "O-ring Erosion/Potential Failure Criticality" to R. K. Lund, Thiokol's Vice President of Engineering: "The mistakenly accepted position on the joint problem was to fly without fear of failure and to run a series of design evaluations which would ultimately lead to a solution or at least a significant reduction of the erosion problem. This position is now changed as a result of the [51-B] nozzle joint erosion which eroded a secondary O-ring with the primary O-ring never sealing. If the same scenario should occur in a field joint (and it could), then it is a jump ball whether as to the success or failure of the joint because the secondary O-ring cannot respond to the clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization. The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order-loss of human life." Boisjoly recommended setting up a team to solve the O-ring problem, and concluded by stating: "It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem, with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities." [1] http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm
- lutorm 15y ago
  Boisjoly recommended setting up a team to solve the O-ring problem And there was a team working on it. IIRC, a redesign of the joint was being worked on. But no one suggested, before the evening before the launch, that launches should be stopped until the redesign was completed.
  - ScottBurson 15y ago
    No. But they did suggest that launching in unusually cold weather was a very bad idea.
mcdillon 15y ago
"When he was pressed by NASA the night before the liftoff to sign a written recommendation approving the launch, he refused, and later argued late into the night for a launch cancellation. When McDonald later disclosed the secret debate to accident investigators, he was isolated and his career destroyed." This is quite simply astonishing; everything I have ever learned in my engineering classes said to do what McDonald did and look what happened to him.
- feralchimp 15y ago
  What's the statute of limitations on negligent homicide?
- joering2 15y ago
  may be slight offtopic, but this kind of news touches me. It shouldnt since NASA is a government agency and we all know how bureaucratic it can get, but for some reason NASA always stand to me as a well behave agency with strong morale. This is an exception from all other government entities. But this news proves my feeling were wrong.
- johngalt 15y ago
  Having integrity would be easy if you never had to fight and the results always benefitted you. Life is not a fair thing. Engineers place a lot of emphasis on having the right answer and almost no emphasis on ensuring their influence. It doesn't matter how right you are if nobody will follow your direction.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  Yes, this to me is the most disturbing aspect of the story. It's one thing that the mistake was made in the first place; no one could be completely sure what would happen. But to then ostracize the people who warned of the possible catastrophe -- that's a corrupt culture.
cellularmitosis 15y ago
While watching the new iPad UI course from CMU ( http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2012/winter/ipad-course.shtml http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2012/winter/ipad-cours... ), the lecturer touched on what happened with the Challenger, using it as an example in a point he was trying to make. However, I was struck by wrong he got it. He was making a point about how just having the data available isnt enough - the modern challenge is to make sense of big data in a meaningful way through visualization. And to back this point up, he made it sound like a bunch of engineers didn't look closely at the data sheet for the rubber used in their o-rings and oopsy! The challenger blew up. Shrug, Who knew? I'll tell you who knew. Roger. "The engineers" knew perfectly well what was going to happen. It was management who refused to listen to them and launched anyway. Feyman's account of his involvement in investigating this disaster in "the pleasure of finding things out" was excellent. In one exercise, he bad the engineers and management write down what they honestly thought the failure rate of the shuttle was. Management quoted 1 in 100,000, while engineering quoted 1 in 100. The challenger disaster was a symptom of a complete breakdown in communication between engineering and management at NASA.
- gallamine 15y ago
  I don't dispute what you say, but I think it's too easy to absolve the engineers of any fault. If they knew that the public was being lied to, and that there was a good chance of people being killed, they should have been more vocal. When lives are on the line, you can't just say, "well, I told management ... "
  - hga 15y ago
    Don't forget the additional step of "Find a new career", for doing that will get you blacklisted just as the much milder actions of Boisjoly did.
- ThomPete 15y ago
  I think the point with that was that those who needed to know didn't know because they hadn't been presented the data in a meaningful way. So you are correct that he knew, but you are wrong in claiming the lecturer got it wrong. It is exactly because those who makes the decisions don't have the necessary know-how that visualizing the data in a meaningful way is so much more important.
3lit3H4ck3r 15y ago
Stunning. "When the space shuttle Columbia burned up on reentry in 2003, killing its crew of seven, the accident was blamed on the same kinds of management failures that occurred with the Challenger. By that time, Boisjoly believed that NASA was beyond reform, some of its officials should be indicted on manslaughter charges and the agency abolished." "NASA's mismanagement "is not going to stop until somebody gets sent to hard rock hotel," Boisjoly said. "I don't care how many commissions you have. These guys have a way of numbing their brains. They have destroyed $5 billion worth of hardware and 14 lives because of their nonsense." "
- afterburner 15y ago
  Yes, nothing has changed. Lessons were not learned. And this was known before the Columbia disaster, in fact not long after the commission on the Challenger. It bears striking resemblances to the financial crisis.
shareme 15y ago
Now for contrast what happens when those lower field engineers are management in the SpaceX case? Hopefully no loss of life ever..
- hga 15y ago
  That's unrealistic. I'd settle for no stupid, reasonably avoidable loss of life.
kevinalexbrown 15y ago
What strikes me about the episode in terms of "general life lessons" isn't just "Listen to the engineers" (you should, though); it's that under the pressure to Get Stuff Done, there's a huge temptation to brush legitimate concerns under the rug. "These guys tell me this shuttle is unsafe, but space launch is never completely safe" --> "These guys tell me this user data isn't secure but no software is completely safe." Now that the newness of the space program has worn off a bit, it's easy to say "why didn't they just delay the launch?" but back in the day, it was an issue of national pride, and the managers, simple-minded as they may have been, were under an extreme amount of pressure to pull the launch off. I guess it's just worth remembering that even if you're under pressure to ship, launch, or publish, if the guys whose job it is to know tell you to reconsider, you probably should.
- kahawe 15y ago
  I guess this is also a problem of different goals, according compensation and what you have to pay in case you were wrong... those guys having to push things through and make it happen in time, under budget get paid for just that - and not for having prevented a disaster. Just like bank managers make fat profits from taking on huge risks and then don't have to pay for it when it explodes in their face and nothing happens there; no person is responsible. It just happened. (Another problem probably is communication between engineers and (project) managers - you can not be blatantly un-subtle enough... if the worst case is complete data loss then you paint them that picture in no subtle terms; if the worst case is catastrophic equipment failure, explosions, launching pad annihilated and several lives including the millions spent training them lost, then that's what you tell them and document in very direct terms.)
dmethvin 15y ago
The fate of the Challenger engineers is depressing because they were essentially kicked out of their profession for knowing the right and moral answer. Thankfully, very few of us will be faced with these honestly life-or-death technical decisions. I think there are parallels to right-or-wrong issues that we face in our own industry on a regular basis, for example: http://johnnye.net/articles/ios-apps-want-your-contacts,-not-just-path.html http://johnnye.net/articles/ios-apps-want-your-contacts,-not... Are phrases like "standard industry practice" and "covered by the click-through license" today's weasel words that rationalize us implementing immoral management demands?
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > I think there are parallels to right-or-wrong issues that we face in our own industry on a regular basis, for example: If our software deals with privacy and personal information then it can even become life or death in some countries. A dissident in a brutal authoritarian regime could lose his life if the software has a bug in it, for example. The other area were moral choices take place is in licensing and patents. Can be on both large scales (like we see with big companies use busybox for their platform) or smaller scales (copying code from one project to another without even giving credit).
  - bwarp 15y ago
    Fine historical example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust Please don't downvote me - I'm not invoking Godwins Law here ;-)
    - rdtsc 15y ago
      Yeah that is a good point. One can argue that technology is a tool and it can be used for evil. But with this stuff: "without IBM's machinery, continuing UPKEEP and SERVICE, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located ON-SITE or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did" [emphasis mine] The idea is basically: So there were not pocket calculators that they bought and then deployed in concentration camps and IBM can claim complete ignorance over the use. These machines need constant & professional service. Having them onsite meant that IBM sent technicians there probably. One had to wonder what those technician's response do the 24/7 billowing crematorium and emaciated bodies were. However, on the other side (and I have not read the book, just looked at the topic many years ago superficially) I am not aware of any IBM engineers' stories about an actual site visit... So I don't know what to think and how guilty IBM really is...
ctdonath 15y ago
In “Visual Explanations” http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex Edward Tufte wrote a must-read analysis of why admonitions to postpone the launch were ignored.
- baconner 15y ago
  That's one of my two must reads on this incident. I can't think of a better examples of how visualization illiteracy can contribute to disaster. The other one is Feynman's account of the investigation afterwards http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553347845 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553347845
- gammarator 15y ago
  Boisjoly and others have argued that Tufte's criticism is misguided, as he misunderstands the engineering: http://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf http://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf . Shorter blog summary here: http://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the-challenger http://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the...
crikli 15y ago
"Their pleas and technical theories were rejected by senior managers at the company and NASA, who told them they had failed to prove their case and that the shuttle would be launched in freezing temperatures the next morning. It was among the great engineering miscalculations in history." Horsepucky: the engineers calculations weren't mis-anything. The historical record has long since proven that the engineers were repeatedly ignored by their management and by bureaucrats at NASA.
mcantelon 15y ago
What are the names of those above Boisjoly who ignored him and made the call to launch? Good to know the names of the heroes in this story, but good also to know the names of the villains.
mithaler 15y ago
For more background on the engineer-manager disconnect that led to the Challenger disaster, it's worth reading about Richard Feynman's famous appendix to the Rogers report (even Wikipedia's summary is a fascinating read): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_of_Richard_Feynman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_o...
damoncali 15y ago
I spent 6 years as a structural engineer on space shuttle flights. A few thoughts: While I don't know the people involved with Challenger - I was in 6th grade at the time - it goes well against my own experience that NASA management had anything but the interests of the crew in mind. To a fault. In fact, your average NASA employee doted on astronauts like a star struck little girl. What the crew wanted, the crew got. You could always tell who the astronaut was when you saw a group walking about the centers - he/she was the one whose every semi-whimsical comment extracted voluminous and polite laughter from the others in the group. I was, however, working when Columbia blew up. In fact, my mission was supposed to fly on it when it got back. Although sad, I feel comfortable saying that most of the people working on these things sort of know it's going to happen from time to time. It wasn't exactly surprising to us or the crew. Blaming managers and celebrating engineers is overly simplistic. The line is not as well defined as you might think. I had few - if any (I can't think of a single one, actually) - managers (either contractors or NASA employees) who were not experienced engineers. The safety rules for a shuttle payload, let alone the actual orbiter, are voluminous and arcane. It is the primary reason that very little new technology comes out of the manned space flight program. Everything new is considered too dangerous because it hasn't been flown before. This stuff is insanely dangerous. It is pretty damn easy to come up with a way some piece of hardware you're working on could kill someone. The complexity is enormous. The number of people involved is in the thousands, and they're spread all over the country. Different centers have different rules. As a result, you make life-and-death decisions literally every day. It's not such a big deal, because there is a lot of formal process in place to make sure it gets done right. The the "standards" are what keep space flight as we know it as safe as it is. Are they or the processes by which they are enforced perfect? Hell no. The system failed. People failed. But we knew this would happen, and we did it anyway because it's the price of exploring the frontiers. We learned from Challenger. We learned from Columbia. We will learn from the next catastrophic failure. NASA isn't perfect. In fact, you might say the bloated organization and government involvement makes this sort of thing inevitable. But I bet the small privateers exploring manned space flight will run into their own challenges. Basically, what I'm saying is that we need to keep this in a larger perspective. Obsessing over one failure in what is a centuries-long quest is not helpful. Dissect it, learn from it, and move on.
- 15y ago
sheepthief 15y ago
Here's the memo in which Boisjoly warns of a potential "catastrophe of the highest order - loss of human life." http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/result-would-be-catastrophe.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/result-would-be-catastr...
asynchronous13 15y ago
Ronald Reagan was supposed to give a state of the union address a couple days after the launch. He wanted to use the success of the space program as part of that speech. While there was no direct order, it's clear that NASA management felt significant political pressure to push the launch forward or risk reduced funding from congress. It's clear they screwed up, just wanted to add some context to the climate when they made these decisions.
- damoncali 15y ago
  This comment needs more upvotes. The political pressure on NASA is extreme. The only people doted over more than the astronauts were the politicians. Look into the origins of the Triana satellite and its subsequent fate for a particularly ridiculous example.
  - oz 15y ago
    Seconded. It is a common cognitive failure of us the engineering-minded to underestimate how important politics and other human factors are.
    - 3lit3H4ck3r 15y ago
      I know this is a movie. But I think we all get the point. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ Gordon Cooper: You boys know what makes this bird go up? FUNDING makes this bird go up. Gus Grissom: He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
You can go through any catastrophe in a complex system and piece together a chain of events that show how "obvious" it was that it was going to happen. What you miss are all the chains that say every complex system is going to end in catastrophe, because when they don't end, nobody looks. It is kind of an anti-survivor bias. It is also why it is a bad idea to make policy changes strictly off the cause of a single failure, and that is where things like commissions should help: you can move the focus to looking at the entire problem set for weaknesses instead of just leaving it with "make a better o-ring".
InclinedPlane 15y ago
For the curious, I ran into an excellent document which is an excerpt from an after the fact risk assessment of the Shuttle System over time: http://traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/NASAShuttleRiskReview-excerpt.pdf http://traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/NASAShuttleRiskRevie... It's quite fascinating and pretty eye opening.
bconway 15y ago
What I find most interesting is the contrast this article's discussion paints with the one we saw only 2 weeks ago, How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?[1]. Some of the highly-rated HN comments included: Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong. The problem here is that NASA is a political agency, not a scientific one. Each year, elected politicians sit down and decide how much they're going to get. This provides thoughtful perspective on policy trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518559
dennisgorelik 15y ago
"Boisjoly could not watch the launch, so certain was he that the shuttle would blow up." One thing is to believe that the chance of blowing up is ~1% (which is enough to prevent launch). Another thing is to be certain, that it WILL blow up (I assume 90%+ probability here). If he was so certain, why he could not convince his management?
- coles 15y ago
  It's worth reading the Wikipedia entry on the following report and Feynman's findings. Anonymous polling of engineers showed they estimated a general probability of catastrophic disaster in a shuttle launch between 1% and 2%.
  - dennisgorelik 15y ago
    So latimes.com's article blew it out of proportions. 2% chance of disaster is not nearly the same as "so certain was he that the shuttle would blow up."
    - blasdel 15y ago
      You're conflating two different estimates: Boisjoly was certain that the particular launch would fail, and a survey of engineers gave a 1-2% estimate for failure across all flights. Both of those predictions turned out to be extraordinarily accurate.
arto 15y ago
The story in more detail at NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/rem... [...] "We all knew what the implication was without actually coming out and saying it," a tearful Boisjoly told Zwerdling in 1986. "We all knew if the seals failed the shuttle would blow up." Armed with the data that described that possibility, Boisjoly and his colleagues argued persistently and vigorously for hours. At first, Thiokol managers agreed with them and formally recommended a launch delay. But NASA officials on a conference call challenged that recommendation. "I am appalled," said NASA's George Hardy, according to Boisjoly and our other source in the room. "I am appalled by your recommendation." Another shuttle program manager, Lawrence Mulloy, didn't hide his disdain. "My God, Thiokol," he said. "When do you want me to launch--next April?" These words and this debate were not known publicly until our interviews with Boisjoly and his colleague. They told us that the NASA pressure caused Thiokol managers to "put their management hats on," as one source told us. They overruled Boisjoly and the other engineers and told NASA to go ahead and launch. "We thought that if the seals failed the shuttle would never get off the launch pad," Boisjoly told Zwerdling. So, when Challenger lifted off without incident, he and the others watching television screens at Thiokol's Utah plant were relieved. "And when we were one minute into the launch a friend turned to me and said, 'Oh God. We made it. We made it!'" Boisjoly continued. "Then, a few seconds later, the shuttle blew up. And we all knew exactly what happened."
snowpolar 15y ago
I don't know science so please pardon me if my comment makes no sense in this context. What if by some stroke of luck, Challenger was extremely lucky enough to not explode on that 1st launch...What would happen to these righteous people such as Roger? Condemned by the people around them as some over worrying, insane self righteous people who thought they know everything. If you get what I mean... It's sad that the challenger explosion happened, but at the same time it helps to highlight an important issue which may otherwise remain buried. In software/web development context, it's of course harder to say this thing is going to blow up because a serious technical debt usually only climbs in after a much longer time for which by then, the people responsible may have left . Leaving the next victim to clean it up. This also is a sad state when it comes to final year projects, where students try to do everything that could impress to the graders on the outside to get the top grade. While students who make the extra effort for a clean and maintainble backend did not get the top grades because the lecturer only looks at the outside during presentation.

375 points by pwg 15y ago

RIP Responsible Engineer

From the Rogers report [1]: Engineers at Thiokol also were increasingly concerned about the problem. On July 22, 1985, Roger Boisjoly of the structures section wrote a memorandum predicting NASA might give the motor contract to a competitor or there might be a flight failure if Thiokol did not come up with a timely solution. Nine days later (July 31) Boisjoly wrote another memorandum titled "O-ring Erosion/Potential Failure Criticality" to R. K. Lund, Thiokol's Vice President of Engineering: "The mistakenly accepted position on the joint problem was to fly without fear of failure and to run a series of design evaluations which would ultimately lead to a solution or at least a significant reduction of the erosion problem. This position is now changed as a result of the [51-B] nozzle joint erosion which eroded a secondary O-ring with the primary O-ring never sealing. If the same scenario should occur in a field joint (and it could), then it is a jump ball whether as to the success or failure of the joint because the secondary O-ring cannot respond to the clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization. The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order-loss of human life." Boisjoly recommended setting up a team to solve the O-ring problem, and concluded by stating: "It is my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to dedicate a team to solve the problem, with the field joint having the number one priority, then we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight along with all the launch pad facilities." [1] http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm

lutorm 15y ago
Boisjoly recommended setting up a team to solve the O-ring problem And there was a team working on it. IIRC, a redesign of the joint was being worked on. But no one suggested, before the evening before the launch, that launches should be stopped until the redesign was completed.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  No. But they did suggest that launching in unusually cold weather was a very bad idea.

mcdillon 15y ago

"When he was pressed by NASA the night before the liftoff to sign a written recommendation approving the launch, he refused, and later argued late into the night for a launch cancellation. When McDonald later disclosed the secret debate to accident investigators, he was isolated and his career destroyed." This is quite simply astonishing; everything I have ever learned in my engineering classes said to do what McDonald did and look what happened to him.

feralchimp 15y ago
What's the statute of limitations on negligent homicide?
joering2 15y ago
may be slight offtopic, but this kind of news touches me. It shouldnt since NASA is a government agency and we all know how bureaucratic it can get, but for some reason NASA always stand to me as a well behave agency with strong morale. This is an exception from all other government entities. But this news proves my feeling were wrong.
johngalt 15y ago
Having integrity would be easy if you never had to fight and the results always benefitted you. Life is not a fair thing. Engineers place a lot of emphasis on having the right answer and almost no emphasis on ensuring their influence. It doesn't matter how right you are if nobody will follow your direction.
ScottBurson 15y ago
Yes, this to me is the most disturbing aspect of the story. It's one thing that the mistake was made in the first place; no one could be completely sure what would happen. But to then ostracize the people who warned of the possible catastrophe -- that's a corrupt culture.

cellularmitosis 15y ago

While watching the new iPad UI course from CMU ( http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2012/winter/ipad-course.shtml http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2012/winter/ipad-cours... ), the lecturer touched on what happened with the Challenger, using it as an example in a point he was trying to make. However, I was struck by wrong he got it. He was making a point about how just having the data available isnt enough - the modern challenge is to make sense of big data in a meaningful way through visualization. And to back this point up, he made it sound like a bunch of engineers didn't look closely at the data sheet for the rubber used in their o-rings and oopsy! The challenger blew up. Shrug, Who knew? I'll tell you who knew. Roger. "The engineers" knew perfectly well what was going to happen. It was management who refused to listen to them and launched anyway. Feyman's account of his involvement in investigating this disaster in "the pleasure of finding things out" was excellent. In one exercise, he bad the engineers and management write down what they honestly thought the failure rate of the shuttle was. Management quoted 1 in 100,000, while engineering quoted 1 in 100. The challenger disaster was a symptom of a complete breakdown in communication between engineering and management at NASA.

gallamine 15y ago
I don't dispute what you say, but I think it's too easy to absolve the engineers of any fault. If they knew that the public was being lied to, and that there was a good chance of people being killed, they should have been more vocal. When lives are on the line, you can't just say, "well, I told management ... "
- hga 15y ago
  Don't forget the additional step of "Find a new career", for doing that will get you blacklisted just as the much milder actions of Boisjoly did.
ThomPete 15y ago
I think the point with that was that those who needed to know didn't know because they hadn't been presented the data in a meaningful way. So you are correct that he knew, but you are wrong in claiming the lecturer got it wrong. It is exactly because those who makes the decisions don't have the necessary know-how that visualizing the data in a meaningful way is so much more important.

3lit3H4ck3r 15y ago

Stunning. "When the space shuttle Columbia burned up on reentry in 2003, killing its crew of seven, the accident was blamed on the same kinds of management failures that occurred with the Challenger. By that time, Boisjoly believed that NASA was beyond reform, some of its officials should be indicted on manslaughter charges and the agency abolished." "NASA's mismanagement "is not going to stop until somebody gets sent to hard rock hotel," Boisjoly said. "I don't care how many commissions you have. These guys have a way of numbing their brains. They have destroyed $5 billion worth of hardware and 14 lives because of their nonsense." "

afterburner 15y ago
Yes, nothing has changed. Lessons were not learned. And this was known before the Columbia disaster, in fact not long after the commission on the Challenger. It bears striking resemblances to the financial crisis.

shareme 15y ago

Now for contrast what happens when those lower field engineers are management in the SpaceX case? Hopefully no loss of life ever..

hga 15y ago
That's unrealistic. I'd settle for no stupid, reasonably avoidable loss of life.

kevinalexbrown 15y ago

What strikes me about the episode in terms of "general life lessons" isn't just "Listen to the engineers" (you should, though); it's that under the pressure to Get Stuff Done, there's a huge temptation to brush legitimate concerns under the rug. "These guys tell me this shuttle is unsafe, but space launch is never completely safe" --> "These guys tell me this user data isn't secure but no software is completely safe." Now that the newness of the space program has worn off a bit, it's easy to say "why didn't they just delay the launch?" but back in the day, it was an issue of national pride, and the managers, simple-minded as they may have been, were under an extreme amount of pressure to pull the launch off. I guess it's just worth remembering that even if you're under pressure to ship, launch, or publish, if the guys whose job it is to know tell you to reconsider, you probably should.

kahawe 15y ago
I guess this is also a problem of different goals, according compensation and what you have to pay in case you were wrong... those guys having to push things through and make it happen in time, under budget get paid for just that - and not for having prevented a disaster. Just like bank managers make fat profits from taking on huge risks and then don't have to pay for it when it explodes in their face and nothing happens there; no person is responsible. It just happened. (Another problem probably is communication between engineers and (project) managers - you can not be blatantly un-subtle enough... if the worst case is complete data loss then you paint them that picture in no subtle terms; if the worst case is catastrophic equipment failure, explosions, launching pad annihilated and several lives including the millions spent training them lost, then that's what you tell them and document in very direct terms.)

dmethvin 15y ago

The fate of the Challenger engineers is depressing because they were essentially kicked out of their profession for knowing the right and moral answer. Thankfully, very few of us will be faced with these honestly life-or-death technical decisions. I think there are parallels to right-or-wrong issues that we face in our own industry on a regular basis, for example: http://johnnye.net/articles/ios-apps-want-your-contacts,-not-just-path.html http://johnnye.net/articles/ios-apps-want-your-contacts,-not... Are phrases like "standard industry practice" and "covered by the click-through license" today's weasel words that rationalize us implementing immoral management demands?

rdtsc 15y ago
> I think there are parallels to right-or-wrong issues that we face in our own industry on a regular basis, for example: If our software deals with privacy and personal information then it can even become life or death in some countries. A dissident in a brutal authoritarian regime could lose his life if the software has a bug in it, for example. The other area were moral choices take place is in licensing and patents. Can be on both large scales (like we see with big companies use busybox for their platform) or smaller scales (copying code from one project to another without even giving credit).
- bwarp 15y ago
  Fine historical example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust Please don't downvote me - I'm not invoking Godwins Law here ;-)
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    Yeah that is a good point. One can argue that technology is a tool and it can be used for evil. But with this stuff: "without IBM's machinery, continuing UPKEEP and SERVICE, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located ON-SITE or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did" [emphasis mine] The idea is basically: So there were not pocket calculators that they bought and then deployed in concentration camps and IBM can claim complete ignorance over the use. These machines need constant & professional service. Having them onsite meant that IBM sent technicians there probably. One had to wonder what those technician's response do the 24/7 billowing crematorium and emaciated bodies were. However, on the other side (and I have not read the book, just looked at the topic many years ago superficially) I am not aware of any IBM engineers' stories about an actual site visit... So I don't know what to think and how guilty IBM really is...

ctdonath 15y ago

In “Visual Explanations” http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex Edward Tufte wrote a must-read analysis of why admonitions to postpone the launch were ignored.

baconner 15y ago
That's one of my two must reads on this incident. I can't think of a better examples of how visualization illiteracy can contribute to disaster. The other one is Feynman's account of the investigation afterwards http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553347845 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553347845
gammarator 15y ago
Boisjoly and others have argued that Tufte's criticism is misguided, as he misunderstands the engineering: http://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf http://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf . Shorter blog summary here: http://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the-challenger http://eagereyes.org/criticism/tufte-and-the-truth-about-the...

crikli 15y ago

"Their pleas and technical theories were rejected by senior managers at the company and NASA, who told them they had failed to prove their case and that the shuttle would be launched in freezing temperatures the next morning. It was among the great engineering miscalculations in history." Horsepucky: the engineers calculations weren't mis-anything. The historical record has long since proven that the engineers were repeatedly ignored by their management and by bureaucrats at NASA.

mcantelon 15y ago

What are the names of those above Boisjoly who ignored him and made the call to launch? Good to know the names of the heroes in this story, but good also to know the names of the villains.

mithaler 15y ago

For more background on the engineer-manager disconnect that led to the Challenger disaster, it's worth reading about Richard Feynman's famous appendix to the Rogers report (even Wikipedia's summary is a fascinating read): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_of_Richard_Feynman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report#Role_o...

damoncali 15y ago

I spent 6 years as a structural engineer on space shuttle flights. A few thoughts: While I don't know the people involved with Challenger - I was in 6th grade at the time - it goes well against my own experience that NASA management had anything but the interests of the crew in mind. To a fault. In fact, your average NASA employee doted on astronauts like a star struck little girl. What the crew wanted, the crew got. You could always tell who the astronaut was when you saw a group walking about the centers - he/she was the one whose every semi-whimsical comment extracted voluminous and polite laughter from the others in the group. I was, however, working when Columbia blew up. In fact, my mission was supposed to fly on it when it got back. Although sad, I feel comfortable saying that most of the people working on these things sort of know it's going to happen from time to time. It wasn't exactly surprising to us or the crew. Blaming managers and celebrating engineers is overly simplistic. The line is not as well defined as you might think. I had few - if any (I can't think of a single one, actually) - managers (either contractors or NASA employees) who were not experienced engineers. The safety rules for a shuttle payload, let alone the actual orbiter, are voluminous and arcane. It is the primary reason that very little new technology comes out of the manned space flight program. Everything new is considered too dangerous because it hasn't been flown before. This stuff is insanely dangerous. It is pretty damn easy to come up with a way some piece of hardware you're working on could kill someone. The complexity is enormous. The number of people involved is in the thousands, and they're spread all over the country. Different centers have different rules. As a result, you make life-and-death decisions literally every day. It's not such a big deal, because there is a lot of formal process in place to make sure it gets done right. The the "standards" are what keep space flight as we know it as safe as it is. Are they or the processes by which they are enforced perfect? Hell no. The system failed. People failed. But we knew this would happen, and we did it anyway because it's the price of exploring the frontiers. We learned from Challenger. We learned from Columbia. We will learn from the next catastrophic failure. NASA isn't perfect. In fact, you might say the bloated organization and government involvement makes this sort of thing inevitable. But I bet the small privateers exploring manned space flight will run into their own challenges. Basically, what I'm saying is that we need to keep this in a larger perspective. Obsessing over one failure in what is a centuries-long quest is not helpful. Dissect it, learn from it, and move on.

15y ago

sheepthief 15y ago

Here's the memo in which Boisjoly warns of a potential "catastrophe of the highest order - loss of human life." http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/result-would-be-catastrophe.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/result-would-be-catastr...

asynchronous13 15y ago

Ronald Reagan was supposed to give a state of the union address a couple days after the launch. He wanted to use the success of the space program as part of that speech. While there was no direct order, it's clear that NASA management felt significant political pressure to push the launch forward or risk reduced funding from congress. It's clear they screwed up, just wanted to add some context to the climate when they made these decisions.

damoncali 15y ago
This comment needs more upvotes. The political pressure on NASA is extreme. The only people doted over more than the astronauts were the politicians. Look into the origins of the Triana satellite and its subsequent fate for a particularly ridiculous example.
- oz 15y ago
  Seconded. It is a common cognitive failure of us the engineering-minded to underestimate how important politics and other human factors are.
  - 3lit3H4ck3r 15y ago
    I know this is a movie. But I think we all get the point. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ Gordon Cooper: You boys know what makes this bird go up? FUNDING makes this bird go up. Gus Grissom: He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

You can go through any catastrophe in a complex system and piece together a chain of events that show how "obvious" it was that it was going to happen. What you miss are all the chains that say every complex system is going to end in catastrophe, because when they don't end, nobody looks. It is kind of an anti-survivor bias. It is also why it is a bad idea to make policy changes strictly off the cause of a single failure, and that is where things like commissions should help: you can move the focus to looking at the entire problem set for weaknesses instead of just leaving it with "make a better o-ring".

InclinedPlane 15y ago

For the curious, I ran into an excellent document which is an excerpt from an after the fact risk assessment of the Shuttle System over time: http://traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/NASAShuttleRiskReview-excerpt.pdf http://traffic.libsyn.com/sciencefriday/NASAShuttleRiskRevie... It's quite fascinating and pretty eye opening.

bconway 15y ago

What I find most interesting is the contrast this article's discussion paints with the one we saw only 2 weeks ago, How Much Is an Astronaut's Life Worth?[1]. Some of the highly-rated HN comments included: Space is dangerous. We should stop pretending it can be made "safe". It just gives politicians something to wag their tongues at when something inevitably goes wrong. The problem here is that NASA is a political agency, not a scientific one. Each year, elected politicians sit down and decide how much they're going to get. This provides thoughtful perspective on policy trade-offs. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3518559

dennisgorelik 15y ago

"Boisjoly could not watch the launch, so certain was he that the shuttle would blow up." One thing is to believe that the chance of blowing up is ~1% (which is enough to prevent launch). Another thing is to be certain, that it WILL blow up (I assume 90%+ probability here). If he was so certain, why he could not convince his management?

coles 15y ago
It's worth reading the Wikipedia entry on the following report and Feynman's findings. Anonymous polling of engineers showed they estimated a general probability of catastrophic disaster in a shuttle launch between 1% and 2%.
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  So latimes.com's article blew it out of proportions. 2% chance of disaster is not nearly the same as "so certain was he that the shuttle would blow up."
  - blasdel 15y ago
    You're conflating two different estimates: Boisjoly was certain that the particular launch would fail, and a survey of engineers gave a 1-2% estimate for failure across all flights. Both of those predictions turned out to be extraordinarily accurate.

arto 15y ago

The story in more detail at NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/remembering-roger-boisjoly-he-tried-to-stop-shuttle-challenger-launch http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/06/146490064/rem... [...] "We all knew what the implication was without actually coming out and saying it," a tearful Boisjoly told Zwerdling in 1986. "We all knew if the seals failed the shuttle would blow up." Armed with the data that described that possibility, Boisjoly and his colleagues argued persistently and vigorously for hours. At first, Thiokol managers agreed with them and formally recommended a launch delay. But NASA officials on a conference call challenged that recommendation. "I am appalled," said NASA's George Hardy, according to Boisjoly and our other source in the room. "I am appalled by your recommendation." Another shuttle program manager, Lawrence Mulloy, didn't hide his disdain. "My God, Thiokol," he said. "When do you want me to launch--next April?" These words and this debate were not known publicly until our interviews with Boisjoly and his colleague. They told us that the NASA pressure caused Thiokol managers to "put their management hats on," as one source told us. They overruled Boisjoly and the other engineers and told NASA to go ahead and launch. "We thought that if the seals failed the shuttle would never get off the launch pad," Boisjoly told Zwerdling. So, when Challenger lifted off without incident, he and the others watching television screens at Thiokol's Utah plant were relieved. "And when we were one minute into the launch a friend turned to me and said, 'Oh God. We made it. We made it!'" Boisjoly continued. "Then, a few seconds later, the shuttle blew up. And we all knew exactly what happened."

snowpolar 15y ago

I don't know science so please pardon me if my comment makes no sense in this context. What if by some stroke of luck, Challenger was extremely lucky enough to not explode on that 1st launch...What would happen to these righteous people such as Roger? Condemned by the people around them as some over worrying, insane self righteous people who thought they know everything. If you get what I mean... It's sad that the challenger explosion happened, but at the same time it helps to highlight an important issue which may otherwise remain buried. In software/web development context, it's of course harder to say this thing is going to blow up because a serious technical debt usually only climbs in after a much longer time for which by then, the people responsible may have left . Leaving the next victim to clean it up. This also is a sad state when it comes to final year projects, where students try to do everything that could impress to the graders on the outside to get the top grade. While students who make the extra effort for a clean and maintainble backend did not get the top grades because the lecturer only looks at the outside during presentation.