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well, yes. Lets agree on the fact that Robert Lund, the Vice President of Engineering, and Joe Kilminster, the Vice President of the Space Booster Programs, rec

well, yes. Lets agree on the fact that Robert Lund, the Vice President of Engineering, and Joe Kilminster, the Vice President of the Space Booster Programs, recommended against launching ... I am saying that Robert Lund and Joe Kilminster are partly responsible for these horrible deaths and that instead of some paper recommendation they should have immediately given their resignation and made a press announcement of the situation (regardless of the consequences of breach of NDA or the ending of their careers) or otherwise prevented the launch, not least because as the senior executives with engineering oversight they would have been well aware of the organisation politics / buck passing culture

dogleash 2y ago
Whoever wrote that section on wikipedia didn't do a great job. They're mentioned by name when they were against the launch, and they're "Morton Thiokol leadership" when they change their mind. It's technically true but misleading, I was so confused reading it I had to reference the Roger's Commission report because I thought (correctly) that Kilminster was one that faxed in a signed recommendation to launch to overrule the engineer on site.
whycome 2y ago
There was also a good chance that the flight successfully would reach orbit. Then what?
- dogleash 2y ago
  Then they keep launching with lower strictness "because it worked last time" until something else fails. Feynman's section of the investigation report is basically the argument that's what was already happening at NASA and the O-rings were just the first thing to fail catastrophically.
  - nordsieck 2y ago
    That's exactly what happened with tile damage. The very first Shuttle flight - STS-1 experienced serious tile damage. And others (famously, the antenna mission) had similar experiences. But it wasn't until the Columbia disaster that anyone suffered for it.
- librasteve 2y ago
  as set out in the article there is a 1/1000,000 O ring related failure rate for the normal design and an unknown (but now know to be ~1/50) failure rate for the NASA specified design - should corporate / military entities risk life at 1 million to one ... that seems fair to me with the understanding of the crew - but it is definitely not good engineering practice (and is likely a criminal offence) to take an unknown risk with a human crew

dogleash 2y ago

Whoever wrote that section on wikipedia didn't do a great job. They're mentioned by name when they were against the launch, and they're "Morton Thiokol leadership" when they change their mind. It's technically true but misleading, I was so confused reading it I had to reference the Roger's Commission report because I thought (correctly) that Kilminster was one that faxed in a signed recommendation to launch to overrule the engineer on site.

whycome 2y ago

There was also a good chance that the flight successfully would reach orbit. Then what?

dogleash 2y ago
Then they keep launching with lower strictness "because it worked last time" until something else fails. Feynman's section of the investigation report is basically the argument that's what was already happening at NASA and the O-rings were just the first thing to fail catastrophically.
- nordsieck 2y ago
  That's exactly what happened with tile damage. The very first Shuttle flight - STS-1 experienced serious tile damage. And others (famously, the antenna mission) had similar experiences. But it wasn't until the Columbia disaster that anyone suffered for it.
librasteve 2y ago
as set out in the article there is a 1/1000,000 O ring related failure rate for the normal design and an unknown (but now know to be ~1/50) failure rate for the NASA specified design - should corporate / military entities risk life at 1 million to one ... that seems fair to me with the understanding of the crew - but it is definitely not good engineering practice (and is likely a criminal offence) to take an unknown risk with a human crew