In 2018, Allan McDonald reviewed the Challenger launch decision during a series of seminars about leadership and ethical decision-making to managers at U.S. He later co-authored one of the most definitive accounts of the Challenger disaster - Truth, Lies, and O-Rings : Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. McDonald continued to work at Thiokol until 2001 and retired after 42 years. In 1988, the redesigned joints worked successfully as shuttle flights resumed. The company relented, and McDonald was promoted to vice president and put in charge of the effort to redesign the booster rocket joints that failed during the Challenger launch. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a joint resolution in the House that threatened to forbid Thiokol from getting future NASA contracts given the company's punishment of McDonald and any other Thiokol engineers who spoke freely. That alarmed members of the presidential commission and members of Congress. Morton Thiokol executives were not happy that McDonald spoke up, and they demoted him. The focus of the commission's investigation shifted to the booster rocket O-rings, the efforts of McDonald and his colleagues to stop the launch and the failure of NASA officials to listen. "I'll never forget Chairman Rogers said, 'Would you please come down here on the floor and repeat what I think I heard?' " McDonald said. And we put that in writing and sent that to NASA."įormer Secretary of State William Rogers chaired the commission and stared into the auditorium, squinting in the direction of the voice. I said I think this presidential commission should know that Morton Thiokol was so concerned, we recommended not launching below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. "I was sitting there thinking that's about as deceiving as anything I ever heard," McDonald recalled. He neglected to say that the approval came only after Thiokol executives, under intense pressure from NASA officials, overruled the engineers. The NASA official simply said that Thiokol had some concerns but approved the launch. They presented data showing that O-rings had lost elasticity at a much warmer temperature, 53 degrees F, during an earlier launch. McDonald and his team of Thiokol engineers had strenuously opposed the launch, arguing that freezing overnight temperatures, as low as 18 degrees F, meant that the O-rings at the booster rocket joints would likely stiffen and fail to contain the explosive fuel burning inside the rockets. He had just heard a NASA official completely gloss over a fundamental fact. He was "in the cheap seats in the back" when he raised his hand and spoke. Twelve days after Challenger exploded, McDonald stood up in a closed hearing of a presidential commission investigating the tragedy. "And then afterwards in the aftermath, exposing the cover-up that NASA was engaged in." "One was on the night before the launch, refusing to sign off on the launch authorization and continuing to argue against it," Maier says. "There are two ways in which actions were heroic," recalls Mark Maier, who directs a leadership program at Chapman University and produced a documentary about the Challenger launch decision. Now, 35 years after the Challenger disaster, McDonald's family reports that he died Saturday in Ogden, Utah, after suffering a fall and brain damage. 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." McDonald persistently cited three reasons for a delay: freezing overnight temperatures that could compromise the booster rocket joints ice forming on the launchpad and spacecraft that could damage the orbiter heat tiles at launch and a forecast of rough seas at the booster rocket recovery site. I just thought we were taking risks we shouldn't be taking." "And I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime," McDonald told me. Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. His job was to sign and submit an official form. He was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Challenger "to approve or disapprove a launch if something came up," he told me in 2016, 30 years after Challenger exploded. He was responsible for the two massive rockets, filled with explosive fuel, that lifted space shuttles skyward. McDonald directed the booster rocket project at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol. 27, 1986, Allan McDonald stood on the cusp of history. Listen Allan McDonald in 2016 holds a commemorative poster honoring the seven astronauts killed aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
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