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

Link only to the L.A. Times obituary. Roger Boisjoly, a major figure in trying to halt the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger dies of cancer at age 73.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-roger-boisjoly-20120207,0,2248999.story

The night before the launch, a teleconference was held between engineers and management from Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and Morton-Thiokol in Utah.

From here:
A heated debate went on for several minutes before Mulloy bypassed Lund and asked Joe Kilminster for his opinion. Kilminster was in management, although he had an extensive engineering background. By bypassing the engineers, Mulloy was calling for a middle-management decision, but Kilminster stood by his engineers. Several other managers at Marshall expressed their doubts about the recommendations, and finally Kilminster asked for a meeting off of the net, so Thiokol could review its data. Boisjoly and Thompson tried to convince their senior managers to stay with their original decision not to launch. A senior executive at Thiokol, Jerald Mason, commented that a management decision was required. The managers seemed to believe the O-rings could be eroded up to one third of their diameter and still seat properly, regardless of the temperature. The data presented to them showed no correlation between temperature and the blow-by gasses which eroded the O-rings in previous missions. According to testimony by Kilminster and Boisjoly, Mason finally turned to Bob Lund and said, "Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat." Joe Kilminster wrote out the new recommendation and went back on line with the teleconference. The new recommendation stated that the cold was still a safety concern, but their people had found that the original data was indeed inconclusive and their "engineering assessment" was that launch was recommended, even though the engineers had no part in writing the new recommendation and refused to sign it.

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