Roger Boisjoy: Engineer who warned of space shuttle Challenger disaster, has died.

[LongTomH]

Roger Boisjoy was a contractor for Morton Thiokol in 1986 when he, and four colleagues tried to warn NASA of the danger of launching the space shuttle Challenger when temperatures were below freezing. Those four brave whistle-blowers were the only people to lose their jobs over the Challenger tragedy.

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Now, there are tributes to him all over the web; at the Huffington Post: Roger Boisjoy: NASA Contractor Who Warned of Challenger Disaster, Dies at 73.

Boisjoly died of cancer on Jan. 6 in Nephi, about 40 miles south of Provo, his wife Roberta Boisjoly said.

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Boisjoly, an engineer at rocket-builder Morton Thiokol Inc., warned in 1985 that seals on the booster rocket joints could fail in freezing temperatures.

"The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order – loss of human life," he wrote in a memo.

On the eve of the ill-fated flight, Boisjoly and several colleagues reiterated their concerns and argued against launching because of predicted cold weather at the Kennedy Space Center. They were overruled by Morton Thiokol managers, who gave NASA the green light.

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After the accident, Boisjoly testified to a presidential commission investigating the Challenger accident. The group determined that hot gases leaked through a joint in one of the booster rockets shortly after blastoff that ended with the explosion of the shuttle's hydrogen fuel.

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"When I realized what was happening, it absolutely destroyed me," Boisjoly told The Associated Press in a 1988 telephone interview. "It destroyed my career, my life, everything else. I'm just now getting back to the point where I think I'll be able to work as an engineer again."

There are other tributes: at NPR: Remembering Roger Boisjoy: He Tried to Stop Shuttle Challenger Launch:

Three weeks later, he told NPR's Daniel Zwerdling in an unrecorded and confidential interview, "I fought like Hell to stop that launch. I'm so torn up inside I can hardly talk about it, even now."

But Boisjoly did talk about it in a hotel room in Alabama, revealing for the first time the details of that effort to keep Challenger on the launch pad. He asked that he not be named but he agreed to be quoted anonymously. As he spoke with Zwerdling, a second engineer revealed the same details to me under the same conditions at his home in Brigham City, Utah.

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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."

From the Corante R&D blog: Roger Boisjoy and the Management Hat:

When NASA overruled the Thiokol engineers, it was with a quote that no one who works with data, on the front lines of a project, should ever forget: "Take off your engineer hat," they told Boisjoly and the others, "and put your management hat on". Well, the people behind that recommendation managed their way to seven deaths and a spectacular setback for the US space program. As Richard Feynman said in his famous Appendix F to the Rogers Commission report, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled".

Not even with our latest management techniques can nature be fooled, no matter how much six-sigma, 4S, and what-have-you gets deployed. Nothing else works, either. Nature does not care where you went to school, what it says on your business cards, how glossy your presentation is, or how expensive your shirt. That's one of the things I like most about it, and I think that any scientist should know what I'm talking about when I say that. The real world is the real world, and the data are the data.

[MarkCharles]

1. I studied this while at MIT, as a teacher, we were...

warned about "groupthink" and the dangers of not asserting ourselves.

To think that the man who was squelched by his peers could have saved so many important people's lives.

It is sad to see him leave our world, sad to know what he could have done, but was restricted from doing, all by the foolish human codes, laws, mores, and structures we put in place. How we humans restrict our fellow humans' from free expression. We all have a lot to learn from this man, a lot more to learn from losing him.