How an Administration Ignored the Lessons of History
Twenty years ago this week the Challenger space shuttle blew up off the coast of the Kennedy Space Center. Like a lot of things the government has done wrong since –9.11, the war in Iraq, the creation of the incompetent and ineffective Department of Homeland Security –Challenger could have been prevented. Sadly, so could have the destruction of her sister ship and crew Columbia in 2003. Not preventing two predictable disasters was a real indictment of NASA management and the political administrations, Reagan and Bush II, which was trying to convert the civilian space program into funds toward the military “black” space effort. A lazy media, defense-contractor- dominated congressional oversight and a feckless NASA management, caused the entire episode to be repeated as Columbia reentered with a hole in its wing. NASA management made no effort from the time they learned of the damage to mount a rescue effort.
The George W. Bush administration escaped much scrutiny for this screw up because the media was more focused on the ramp up to the war in Iraq. It seems the media cannot handle more than one massive government screw-up at a time.
In both cases brave engineers tried to stop the launch and save the crews, only to be blocked by NASA managers beholding to political bosses beholding to defense contractors that really ran the program. Today, the Bush administration has managed to make whistleblowers, and men and women who speak up against a wrong-headed policy or decisions from the inside, to be less than patriotic. This is part of government by spin. It is also immoral, a point that seems not to play much of a role in the national dialogue.
So this story is a history lesson. It is the story of a conservative and careful man who tried to save the Challenger and her crew. The man’s name is Roger Boisjoly. After you read what he did, and the price he paid for it, you may wonder if he regrets it. Not Roger. As an engineer, Roger Boisjoly believes in absolute truth. “It is what it is” he would say. “Unknowns are the enemy. You can’t eliminate them but you can manage them. Deliberately not addressing the dangers is where it becomes a moral question…not to ask the questions and search for the answers is unacceptable.”
Today Roger lectures on morality, ethics and engineering. You can order his amazing presentation. I urge you to if you run any kind of business or governmental entity that has a responsibility for public welfare. I urge you to do it if you have interest in improving our national character. Former staffer Sarah Banner and author Susan Trento contributed to this report.
With No Second Act, Nasa Became a Target for the Military
The years following the Apollo era were defined at NASA by safety compromises and funding struggles. Without an inspiring leader or an international race to the moon to justify more funding, NASA was forced to sacrifice more of its accessibility and safety regulations just to stay alive. During the 1970s, NASA grew weaker, and the military became more forceful in its attempts to take over various NASA programs.
During the Reagan years, NASA Administrator James Beggs and his deputy Hans Mark tried to keep the shuttle program viable, but the fledgling program experienced more cost overruns and delays, due in large part to Air Force demands. Parts and funds were constantly funneled off the shuttle to other programs, making the shuttle fleet vulnerable to cancellation and disaster. Although Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative took precedence over the shuttle, Beggs and Mark fought their way past Reagan’s advisors and secured funding for their other two priorities, the International Space Station and Centaur upper stage. But the upper stage quickly turned into financial chaos and threatened the safety of the few missions on which it was scheduled to fly. And although the ISS had been Beggs’ top priority, it ultimately led to his downfall. In the years leading up to Challenger, NASA was falling into massive disarray and the shuttle fleet continued to suffer from malnourishment.
After they had secured funding for the ISS and Centaur upper stage, Beggs and Mark became White House targets. Mark escaped in time, but Beggs became the target of an investigation for contract fraud. The political right in the White House was furious that Beggs had secured space funds for the civilian run ISS and used the investigation as an excuse to force Beggs out. Three months before the Challenger launch, Beggs was indicted and was forced to take a leave of absence from NASA. His departure left the agency in the hands of the White House’s first choice, Bill Graham, a nuclear weapons specialist with no management experience. Graham was absent from the Cape the day Challenger blew. It was the first time in NASA’s history that the administrator was absent on launch day.
Meanwhile, NASA’s public relations team worked overtime to keep the public interested in the shuttle program. The decision to send a schoolteacher on the shuttle was a dangerous solution that put intense pressure on the agency to launch successfully. The pressure to launch, coupled with the lack of leadership at NASA created enough political chaos to obscure the O-ring problems that were threatening the upcoming Challenger launch. The meeting in which could have stopped the launch that killed the Challenger seven—occurred in the midst of this political chaos.
By December 1983, Beggs and Mark had sold the White House on two of their top priorities. First, Beggs bypassed the White House staff and pitched Reagan on the civilian-run space station: “He was bored, inattentive during the first part of the meeting. His mind drifted…he didn’t have the simplest idea of what space was or how a space station might work. Not knowing what to do I told him it was the perfect platform for keeping an eye on the Russians…that was kind of a white lie, manned platforms are terrible for spying–too much vibration. But that caught his imagination and got me his support.”
Against the advice of his science advisor and senior staff, President Reagan approved funding for the space station. Selling the Reagan White House on the International Space Station and the Centaur Upper Stage were giant victories for Beggs and his deputy, but these victories came at great cost. To keep the Air Force on board, Beggs got Congress to buy the controversial Centaur upper stage for high orbit missions. The liquid fueled stage was so dangerous that the astronauts were secretly asking Congressmen to stop funding the program.
Next, Beggs permitted the Air Force to fly secret missions on the shuttles, which only served to shroud the civilian agency in darkness and lessen Congressional and press oversight. He also let safety slide. Beggs had failed to secure from the White House a promise for a fourth and fifth orbiter, and the delicate shuttle fleet was short of parts, full of safety questions and was facing an overly ambitious launch schedule. Problems with both the liquid and solid rockets hung over the program. But Beggs could not address the problems on the shuttle because if the Air Force sensed weakness, it could go to the president and argue that NASA was unreliable for national security launches. Any support from Reagan that Beggs had acquired would be lost.
But, without even realizing it, the biggest sacrifice Beggs had made in selling the ISS and upper stage was his job. George Keyworth, a former weapons designer from Los Alamos and Reagan’s science advisor, was furious over the space station’s approval. He was an advocate for militarized space and did not want the space station to take funds away from projects like Star Wars. When Beggs and Mark secured funding for the space station, all of their political capital had been spent. Within a year, Hans Mark left NASA for a job as chancellor at the University of Texas before the White House could destroy his career. His departure left Beggs without a deputy and the White House with an opportunity to place one of its right wing ideologues in his place.
Oblivious of how much the White House mistrusted him, Beggs left Hans Mark’s replacement to the White House. When Beggs informed the White House personnel director John Harrington that he needed another deputy, he assumed the White House would send him someone with large-scale management experience—someone who could easily manage the under-funded, accelerating shuttle program right off the bat. He had no idea that Mark’s departure would open the door to Keyworth’s handpicked choice, Dr. William O. Graham, a nuclear weapons expert with no large-scale management experience. To Beggs and several old-line NASA officials, Graham would spell disaster for the civilian agency. Graham’s appointment seemed to certify the rumors that NASA was being dominated by the joint participation of the Air Force in the shuttle program.
The Right Wing Takes over the Space Program
As Beggs vainly fought to prevent Graham’s appointment— and the inevitable deterioration of the civilian agency— Roger Boisjoly and his colleagues at Morton Thoikol, the solid booster contractor for the shuttle, were facing problems of their own. Problems with the shuttle’s O-rings were becoming more prevalent. The two rings of synthetic Viton rubber that seal each joint between the booster’s segments had not been sealing properly, thus allowing burning hot rocket gas to seep past the seal and erode sections of the O-ring. Roger and his fellow engineers knew that if the problem worsened, it could be catastrophic for the shuttle. If enough hot gas escaped past the O-ring seals, the entire shuttle could blow apart. To determine what was causing the seals to fail, they asked MTI and NASA management for permission to conduct more tests. They had no idea that NASA was in the midst of a political firestorm. Before his departure, Hans Mark ordered a review of the solid rocket motor joints and the O-ring seal problem. But, his orders were set aside after he left. Beggs decided that the battle with the White House and Air Force had to be waged and the shuttles could not be grounded for safety or any other reasons.
Another reason why the review never took place was because the funding to fix the O-rings seals was being spent on the construction of new lightweight spun-filament boosters. Unlike the reusable steel boosters NASA currently used on the shuttle, these lightweight expendable boosters could be used to give Air Force launches the extra lift they needed to reach polar orbit from the Vandenburg launch site in California. Although the traditional reusable boosters saved NASA an estimated $26 million each flight, Beggs supported the new expendable boosters to keep the Air Force on board. Mark had convinced Beggs that to keep the shuttle politically and financially viable, NASA had to concede some control to the Air Force. But as the Air Force usurped more funds away from the already under-funded shuttle program for projects like the dangerous Centaur upper-stage and the costly spun-filament boosters, the shuttle program itself came closer and closer to self-immolation.
Beggs was preoccupied with keeping Graham out of his way so many major shuttle decisions fell to the number three man at NASA, Phil Culbertson. But Culbertson was feeling the pressure from Beggs, Congress and the White House to launch. Delaying the launch schedule to review the O-ring problems was not an option. “It was clear the greater the launch rate, the more economical the system would be to operate,” Culbertson explained.
As 1984 came to a close, the O-ring problems were getting worse. Roger and his team needed answers, but Beggs refused to delay the launch schedule to conduct the necessary tests. NASA was preparing to launch nine shuttles in the coming year—the most it had scheduled since the shuttle program began, and Discovery and its top-secret DOD payload (a spy satellite) would be the first to launch on January 24, 1985. Roger was forced to rely on his post-flight inspections to determine whether the next flight would be safe. When Roger journeyed to Florida to lecture Kennedy Space Center (KSC) personnel on proper safety procedures and to conduct the post-flight analysis of Discovery’s solid-rocket boosters, he had no idea that he would one day use his analysis to stop the fatal Challenger launch.
As KSC engineers prepared for Discovery’s launch, Roger explained to a group of engineers and technicians that the field joints on the 150-foot tall solid-rocket boosters were not indestructible. Although the 12-foot diameter of the booster case gave an appearance of being indestructible, the walls of the steel booster cases were only half an inch thick. The shuttle was actually quite delicate. The slightest surface scratch or other damage to the boosters’ sealing surfaces would be catastrophic for the space shuttle program. Even a solitary human hair lying across the O-ring could cause the entire shuttle to blow.
Until then, NASA had launched successfully — except for the terrible fire that killed three astronauts in 1967. The giant Saturn rocket lying on its side outside of the Vehicle Assembly Building paid tribute to those successes every day. The Kennedy Space Center was not just the site of NASA’s greatest achievements; it was the place where dreams were made and where men became heroes. But while NASA’s public relations office would like the world to think that successful shuttle launches like Discovery’s were routine, in reality, they were engineering miracles. As Roger explained to the KSC personnel, every nut, bolt and screw on the shuttle had to be flawless. They had to work perfectly or else people would die. To engineers like Roger, watching a shuttle mission was anything but routine. And as he walked around the Kennedy Space Center, he knew he walked upon hallowed ground.
He marveled at the engineering that sent Mercury and Gemini capsules into space and spent hours inspecting all 40 stories of the Apollo Saturn vehicle. He was also impressed with the VAB itself, which sat at the opposite end of a long parkway that extended for several miles from the launch pad. On the side facing the launch pads 39A and 39B were huge access doors, through which the United Nations Building could easily slide. And adjacent to the VAB were the firing rooms where launch controllers sent men to the moon. From miles away, one could see the enormous American flag painted red, white and blue on one corner of the VAB.
Inside the VAB’s massive walls, several shuttles could be prepared at once on the huge mobile launch pads that once carried the Saturn-Apollo to launch complex 39-A, the slowest part of the rocket’s journey. Since the boosters were too big to ship as a single unit from Utah, they were broken up into four segments. The aft, center and forward field joints connected the four segments in an assembled booster. Both boosters were stacked at the Cape on the giant mobile launch platforms. Then the external fuel tank was attached to the boosters, and the shuttle orbiter was attached to the external fuel tank. While waiting for their assembly, the space shuttle’s big orange external tanks hung like paintings in a giant museum—dwarfed by the very walls upon which they hung. The VAB even had its own weather; rainstorms and weather systems could be created inside the building.
As an engineer who worked for NASA’s contractors, Roger usually only saw the nuts and bolts of the space shuttle—a view most of the American public never sees, but he never got to see his own work collaborate with the rest of the shuttle’s hardware. MTI believed it was easier to send the post-flight inspectors down to the Cape after the shuttle finally launched. That way delays wouldn’t waste MTI’s time or money. But as a result, Roger rarely witnessed the shuttle launches, and this was a great disappointment to him. After all his tests and analyses on individual pieces of hardware were completed, being able to see it all come together in a successful launch was his own personal reward. In a sense, the opportunity to watch Discovery’s lift-off that January was like watching the birth of a child.
But like most worried parents, he watched and waited for something to go wrong. The liquid engines could explode or the vibrations during launch could shake all the tiles off the shuttle leaving it vulnerable to the sun’s scorching rays. A misplaced screw could cause severe damage to the craft. Anything could go wrong and there was very little anyone could do once the solids were lit. After ignition, there was no way to turn the solids off. They would either launch the shuttle into space and burn out on their own or explode. All one could do was watch and wait.
Standing in his shirtsleeves for the first time that trip, Roger patiently waited for the sound of water. At T-.12 seconds, huge torrents of water were poured into the base of the launch pad to prevent the shuttle’s engines soundblast from damaging both the launch pad and the shuttle. Although the mobile launch pad was capped with thick plates of metal, the blowtorch effect emanating from the shuttle would easily destroy it. At T-8.9 seconds the computers ignited the shuttle’s three main liquid engines. As soon as the engines were blasting at full power, an electrical charge was sent to ignite the rubber like solid-rocket fuel compound within each solid rocket booster. Roger heard the voice of Kennedy Launch Control count to ignition. The launch pad was quickly enveloped in steam and smoke. The shuttle struggled against the giant clamps that held it to the pad as the solid rocket boosters waited for ignition.
Suddenly, simultaneously, each booster was lit. The power emanating from the engines was enough to launch the shuttle into space. But a one second delay in ignition from one of the boosters could cause the entire shuttle to spiral into the ground. Although he stood three miles away from the launch pad, Roger felt the ground shake and rumble in response to the shock waves radiating from the craft.
Gradually, the immensity of the shuttle’s mission began to overwhelm his surroundings. All around him, every face was turned toward the launch pad with eager anticipation. In response to the massive power being generated beneath it, the shuttle gently lifted off the launch pad. After several seconds of silence, a giant shock wave rolled over the audience as the shuttle rose though the billowing smoke. He watched as the spaceship lurched upwards, pass the top of the launch tower. Now Houston took control of the flight. From a thousand feet up the shuttle’s huge flame still touched the ground. With his neck arched back and his hands thrust deep into his pockets, Roger watched the shuttle roll over and arch into space until the great machine become the size of a pea.
Everything looked good. Two minutes into flight, he imagined the thrust from the SRBs diminish into nothing, turning the once powerful rockets into dead weight smoking from the burned out fuel. As he walked away from the launch pad, he envisioned the SRBs separate from the external tanks and fall back toward earth so that the orbiter and her crew could fly into space without the hindrance of the additional weight. Far above him, the SRBs plummeted back toward earth, parachuting at 60 miles an hour into the Atlantic.
As Roger and his post-flight team prepared for their inspection of the spent boosters, NASA personnel were already on station near the splashdown point to recover the SRMs and return them to the Cape. To all those at the cape, Discovery’s launch had seemed a stunning success.
Roger watched the port by the VAB for the arrival of the booster recovery ships that were returning the spent solids for inspection. He waited with anticipation as the boosters were moved from the recovery barges into the hanger for inspection. He had no idea that the wonderful memories of the launch on that clear January day were about to be shattered. Instead, Roger was about to get a preview of the hell that awaited a future crew of the shuttle.
A Solid Rocket Motor Nightmare
Roger walked into the hanger and saw the boosters lying horizontally– like giant patients waiting for surgery. As he had done during his eight previous post-flight inspections, he began a preliminary investigation of the SRB external hardware. At first, everything looked normal. The problems he feared had not come true. He was relieved, but deep down he knew that if the shuttle experienced any problems during launch, he would discover them during his inspection of the O-rings.
For the past five years, he had been recording various “anomalies” in the O-ring seals. Previous inspections had revealed minor evidence of hot gas blow-by and O-ring erosion, but the damage never exceeded the established levels of safety. With Discovery’s seemingly flawless launch still fresh in his mind, he began his inspection of the shuttle O-rings hoping to find little to no erosion or hot gas blow-by.
Under normal conditions, when field joint erosion and hot gas blow-by are minimal, the post-flight inspection can take as little as a day. But as Roger began his inspection that January, it became obvious that this inspection would last much longer.
Roger watched as the technicians unpinned the field joints into four separate sections. He approached the gaping engine segments with notepad in hand and began to inspect the forward joint on the left booster. He immediately noticed that the primary O-ring was eroded by 0.010 inches and blackened grease covered an arc length of 80 degrees. This was no anomaly, he thought. Although the amount of erosion was minimal, the amount of blacked grease past the O-ring seal was far more extensive than in previous inspections.
The dark, sooty grease got his attention. Apprehension filled his stomach. Seeing blackened grease past the seal was like seeing the charred remains of a burned out house. The grease gave silent testimony to the ominous event that had occurred during launch. Worried, he moved on to the center field joint on the right booster and was shocked to find that the amount of primary O-ring erosion and blackened grease past the seal were much more extensive. The O-ring had eroded by 0.038 inches and blackened grease covered an arc length of 110 degrees.
The blood rushed from his face and his palms began to sweat. He envisioned Discovery’s gentle arc as it rose above the launch tower, spiraling toward space. He remembered the roar of the engines as they propelled the shuttle and her crew upward. He saw the faces of the audience below, enraptured by the beauty of the engineering miracle that rose above them. Discovery’s liftoff had been anything but flawless. The primary O-ring had clearly lifted off the sealing surface long enough for hot gas to escape and threaten the integrity of the secondary O-ring. Although the secondary O-ring is supposed to act as a back up to the primary O-ring, the extensive damage that Roger discovered was enough to put the secondary O-ring in danger of failure. A few seconds more and Discovery would have exploded in the blue sky above him, killing all five on board. “Thank God,” he said, “Thank God it didn’t leak through the secondary O-ring, or we would have had a major catastrophe.”
Luckily, he believed he understood the cause of the failure. Florida had been experiencing a record-breaking winter. Temperatures around the state had dropped down into the teens and twenties destroying all the citrus crops around the Cape. It was an unprecedented event in Florida’s history. Citrus farmers desperately burned smudgepots in the groves to keep the cold from destroying the trees. The cold temperatures had turned the 1.1 million pounds of propellant inside the craft into a refrigerator keeping the joints and O-rings below 53 degrees. In cold temperatures the O-rings reacted slowly, allowing more hot gas to escape through the seal. Within seconds, as more and more gas escapes, the entire vessel could explode. “It’s got to be cold weather that causes this,” he said remembering the news reports that flashed pictures of frozen oranges across the screen. “There are no other parameters in this joint…we had a typical set of joints.”
Years later, Roger would look back on his trip to Florida that January with painful memories. The evidence he had acquired during that trip should have been enough to stop the Challenger launch. He finally had enough evidence from his post-flight inspection of Discovery’s solid rocket boosters to convince NASA to fix the O-rings; he would always question why he didn’t make Discovery’s O-ring problems into more of an issue. But deep down, Roger knew that even if he had spent every waking minute warning NASA about the field joints’ flawed design, NASA still would have launched Challenger. There was no one there who could have stopped it—who wanted to stop it. Flying was too intertwined with money, politics and the almighty NASA flight schedule. But Roger never really understood the extent of this mindset. He never really knew of the political morass NASA had become. It was inconceivable to him that NASA had somehow lost the leadership that had once sent man to the moon. He had told NASA and MTI repeatedly that the damage he found on Discovery’s O-rings would come back to haunt them in the next cold weather launch if they did not fix the O-rings’ design. Years later, his futile warnings would continue to haunt him, despite the knowledge that there was very little more he could have done.
Before January 1985, MTI’s engineers had great confidence in the tests they had already performed on the O-rings, no matter how rushed or limited the tests had been. The test results had shown that an O-ring could sustain approximately 1/8 of an inch of erosion and still seal the joint without compromising safety. All flights up to that point revealed erosion levels three times below 1/8 of an inch so until January 1985, there had been no real cause for alarm.
But immediately after his post-flight inspection of Discovery’s SRBs, Roger and his coworkers, Brian Russell, Bob Ebeling, and Arnie Thompson, finally had enough confidence in his theory about the precipitating cause of the O-rings’ failure. He immediately informed the Marshal Space Flight Center about his findings at KSC. “Guys,” he said in front of a more than 40 NASA engineers, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to tell you anyway. It is my technical opinion that the precipitating cause of this event was low temperature,” referring to the massive hot gas blow-by he had discovered on the joint. From the bowels of the room, Roger received his response. “You’re right, Rog, we don’t want to hear that.”
If cold weather became a launch constraint, the entire flight schedule would have to be reorganized and time and money would be wasted. Roger’s cold weather theory was not something NASA wanted to hear. But NASA did not have to worry. By the time Discovery had launched, Hans Mark had left and the action order he submitted to review the O-ring problems had already been relegated to the bottom of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center’s priorities.
After Roger’s return from the MSFC, his supervisor, Arnie Thompson, devised a series of preliminary tests to check the ability of the O-ring seals to spring back at various temperatures. Within two months these tests confirmed that cold weather had indeed caused the O-ring seals to nearly fail during Discovery’s launch the previous January. When Larry Mulloy, MTI’s SRB manager, heard Roger’s explanation for the failure, he refused to accept it. “Oh come on, this is a hundred year event, for Christ sake, this is a hundred year event. Do you really think this is going to happen again before we have a chance to fix the joint? No!”
After confirming their theories about the O-ring failures, Roger, Brian, Bob, and Arnie repeatedly warned MTI management about the faulty joint designs, but they never received an adequate response. When Roger and Arnie presented their data to their boss, Jack Kapp, in March, he claimed the data were too sensitive to release. Rather than cause problems for NASA, Jack just wanted to keep things quiet and running on schedule. Funds were scarce, especially since Beggs approved the Centaur upper stage and spun-filament booster projects for the Air Force. NASA couldn’t afford any delays.
After the O-ring problem occurred again in April, Jack did release Roger and Arnie’s data in a rationale meeting on the booster seals. But even then, no additional testing was allowed. After all, Roger explained, “It’s the production of flight motors that results in the revenue. Development testing only creates expenditure, which is even more expensive on a program with minimal funding. And if managers didn’t deliver their product, they wouldn’t get the bonuses they had been promised.”
The Air Force projects had absorbed so much money from the shuttle program that NASA was forced to fly the shuttle as if it were a commercial airline. To remain cost-effective and therefore worthy of future funding from Congress, the shuttle had to fly on a regular launch schedule with very few errors. But forcing the experimental program to follow such a rigid schedule was setting it up for disaster.
To gain leverage in Congress and with the American public, NASA hoped New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe’s maiden flight would give the program a much-needed boost. She would make space travel exciting to the American people again—a feeling that had been missing from the American culture since the end of the Apollo era. In fact, the lack of public support was so great that the three major networks had stopped televising the launches altogether. In a sense, the upcoming Challenger flight—if it succeeded—would breathe new life into the failing shuttle program. There was no room for failure, as Christa told her mother the evening before launch. “They’re going to fly tomorrow, mom, no matter what.”
As the pressure to launch grew, NASA’s desire to fix the O-ring problems diminished, but Roger continued to fight for additional tests. When weather reports from the Cape began to predict below freezing temperatures for Challenger’s launch on January 28, he and his colleagues knew there was no more time for tests. Although the launch had already been postponed several days due to poor weather conditions and other technical problems, they pushed to delay the launch again until temperatures warmed up into the 50’s. If Florida’s citizens had to leave their houses with heavy winter coats on, then it was too cold to launch.
While engineers continued to make their last minute preparations for Challenger’s launch, Roger’s team called a meeting with MTI’s engineering chain of command, including the vice-president of engineering, Bob Lund, to discuss the cold weather launch that was scheduled to occur within the next 24 hours. Lund and his subordinates needed little persuasion. They knew NASA had had a near miss during Discovery’s launch one year before and were aware of the consequences if the o-rings failed. It would mean a criticality 1 failure—defined in the shuttle program as a loss of mission and crew.
The engineering managers unanimously agreed to delay the launch and convened a meeting with the program managers to discuss their reasoning. The vice-president of the space booster program, Joe Kilminster, and his fellow managers, also needed little convincing. Roger and his fellow engineers had convinced everyone up through the program managers that the launch should be scrubbed. It was time to tell NASA.
A phone call was finally scheduled between Morton Thiokol and NASA’s Marshal Space Flight Center for 3:45 pm that day. Judson Lovingood, the Marshall Space Flight Center’s (MSFC) deputy manager of shuttle projects, received MTI’s no-launch recommendation but told them he would relay the communication to his superiors at NASA, all of whom were at Kennedy Space Center preparing for the launch. MTI engineers, he informed his superiors, were submitting a no-launch recommendation due to cold weather conditions. NASA’s MSFC representatives at Kennedy Space Center quickly organized another teleconference for 6:45 that evening, and by the time MTI was informed of the teleconference, MTI’s engineers had only 45 minutes to prepare. It would be the most important meeting of their careers.
The Fateful Conference that Doomed Challenger and Her Crew
By seven pm, NASA and MTI high-level managers had assembled for the teleconference in the Management Information Center. It was a perfect room for conferences such as the one scheduled that evening: well lit, with microphones strategically placed in various corners of the ceiling and table in order to pick up every word. One wall contained sliding whiteboards used for discussions, and at one end of the room was a glass screen and projection machine that Roger, Arnie and Brian used to explain why Challenger was in danger of exploding during a cold weather launch.
As the three groups assembled, a line was being drawn between those who supported the launch and those who did not. But after the day’s meetings with engineering and program managers, there was no line of separation to Roger Boisjoly or his fellow engineers. “Everybody in the room at MTI was there to stop the launch,” Roger said, “I never heard anyone even so much as grunt disapproval of what we were attempting to do.”
Fourteen viewgraphs were presented that evening without any prior rehearsal or review. Roger and his colleagues presented chart after chart explaining the consequences of launching in cold weather, but aside from presenting an unpolished presentation to the customer, they believed NASA would listen in the end. Roger had already informed NASA of his cold weather fears at MSFC one year prior to this presentation and although NASA’s response was not too encouraging, the agency knew about the problems affecting the seals.
In front of 33 high-level managers from NASA and MTI, Roger, Arnie, Bob Ebeling and Brian Russell voiced their concerns again. “This is the position that o-rings are always supposed to have in order to function properly,” they explained while pointing to one of their 14 viewgraphs. “They should always be in contact with both sides of the joint sealing surfaces to seal the gap when pressure is applied to the joint.” O-rings are never supposed to lift off the sealing surfaces on both sides but they did in cold weather.
After presenting their viewgraphs and reiterating the danger of launching in temperatures under 53 degrees, Roger and his team hoped they had successfully convinced NASA to stop the launch. As he surveyed the group, he wondered why none of the chief NASA or MTI executives had attended the meeting. But before Roger could realize the significance of their absence, he was forced to contend with MSFC’s SRB manager Larry Malloy, who was asking him to further quantify his concerns. “Can you give us actual calculation numbers concerning the probability of failure?”
That question alone caused Roger to panic. He didn’t have any more data to support his concerns. Even though the results they had could not prove beyond doubt that the o-rings would fail, he knew there was enough justification to stop the launch. Had they been allowed to continue the resiliency testing they had started after Discovery’s near miss the year before, they would have had the requested proof by now. “What the hell is going on?” he thought. “Why do we have to keep repeating ourselves? They know all of this. They know we don’t have the data yet. Are they going to keep rephrasing everything until they get an answer they like?”
For several minutes, Roger vainly attempted to explain his presentation in a different light, but nothing was acceptable to Mulloy who insisted Roger did not have enough data to support a no-launch recommendation. Roger, at this point, was running out of options. Finally, he replied, “You know very well I can’t get you those numbers because Arnie and I have been trying to get resiliency data since last October.” The stunned silence that filled the room was replaced by an icy stare from MTI’s senior vice-president, Jerry Mason. Roger had stepped over the line admitting such an act of irresponsibility by MTI management in front of the customer.
Suddenly, their role at the teleconference had changed. Roger and his team were not there to prove it was safe to launch. Roger and his team were there to prove it was unsafe to launch. Realizing this made Roger’s argument that much more important—and more difficult. Traditionally, it was the contractor’s job to prove to NASA that all the problems from previous launches had been resolved and the shuttle and her crew would be safe during the mission. In Roger’s experience, if even minor questions existed concerning the safety of the mission, NASA simply wouldn’t fly until it had resolution. But something had changed that night during the teleconference. Roger and his colleagues did not fully realize that NASA had no choice. The mission would fly the next day because it was too costly—financially and politically—not to fly. Roger, Arnie, Bob and Brian could do or say very little to stop it.
When all the charts had finally been presented, it was time for each manager to state his launch recommendation for the record. Roger and his team had already stated their recommendation. It was the first time in NASA’s history that a contractor spoke together in unison to stop a launch. But what happened during the next few minutes would leave an indelible mark on the rest of Roger Boisjoly’s life.
Larry Mulloy asked MTI’s vice-president and program manager Joe Kilminster for his launch recommendation, to which he replied, “Based upon the engineering information that was just presented, I do not recommend launching Challenger tomorrow.” With those words, relief flowed over Roger’s body in a wave of euphoria. Thiokol had done it. It had convinced them to stop the launch. But euphoria quickly turned to despair as Larry Mulloy asked MSFC’s Deputy Director of Science and Engineering, George Hardy for his recommendation.
Traditionally a very serious, hard-working, highly-respected engineering manager, George Hardy revealed the pressure he was under from NASA management that night. “I am appalled at MTI’s no-launch recommendation but I will not overturn it.” With that statement, Roger knew it was all over and began sinking in his chair. Saying he was appalled at MTI’s recommendation carried much greater weight among his peers than offering a no-launch recommendation. For George Hardy to qualify his no-launch recommendation with the word appalled meant MTI’s management was considering more than just astronaut safety that night. MTI and NASA were at the beginning stages of negotiations worth $1 billion to build space rocket boosters into the next century, so MTI could not afford a setback of any kind. Unnecessarily raising false concerns over the launch would be considered a failure and could endanger the negotiations. It would have been political suicide for an MTI manager to support a no-launch recommendation without some sort of qualification. In his mind, Hardy could still do the right thing without directly jeopardizing the negotiations if MTI should admit later on that the O-ring problems were actually more benign than expected.
Roger was aware of these negotiations but he couldn’t believe they would take precedence over astronaut safety. He sat in his chair and watched MTI’s management begin to overturn the no-launch recommendation. Feeling his blood drain from his face, he sat in silence thinking, “Oh no, God, please don’t, please don’t let them launch.”
Then, as if on cue, in a calm yet determined voice, Mulloy continued to say that Roger’s presentation did not fit together and therefore did not support a no-launch recommendation. Roger sat listening to the conversation in silent disbelief, feeling his stomach churn violently in response. He looked across the table to Brian Russell and Arnie Thompson, both of whom appeared anxious and unsettled.
As if responding to their thoughts, Mulloy finally revealed the pressure he was under to launch. With obvious strain in his voice, he asked, “My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch? Next April? Why are you guys trying to come up with launch commit criteria on the eve of the launch?”
For twenty-six years, Roger had worked hard to prevent this very moment from every happening. He was loyal to the hardware and believed in the science that made it function. If something on the hardware didn’t work, then he would conduct the necessary tests until it did work. This way of thinking was not just a matter of safety to Roger. The American space program was inherently risky. Unlike commercial airliners, the space shuttle missions were still in their testing phase. Even fifteen years after Kennedy announced his plan to send man to the moon and back, nothing was ever guaranteed to function as it should. Being loyal to the science that governed the hardware instead of being loyal to the managers that governed him, Roger instilled a sense of control over the technology that would otherwise have spun quickly out of his control.
Roger never hesitated to expose any failures or delay production of the hardware he was working on in the interest of safety. There was never a question in his mind that astronaut safety came first. Ironically, the seven astronauts who were now scheduled to die in less than 12 hours had no idea this teleconference was even taking place. They had no reason to think their safety was in danger for Francis Scobee, Challenger’s commander, had recently asked NASA whether launching in cold weather was such a good idea. NASA gave him the same answer it presented now, that there would be no problem launching in cold temperatures. Everything would be fine.
Just after Mulloy stopped speaking, Joe Kilminster, vice-president of the space booster program at MTI, requested a five-minute off-line caucus and put KSC and MSFC on hold. Immediately, Jerry Mason, senior vice-president at MTI, turned to his fellow managers sitting nearby and said to them in a low yet audible voice, “We have to make a management decision.” Roger and Arnie watched as MTI’s top executives, Jerry Mason, Joe Kilminster and Bob Lund continued to twist the engineering data to support a launch decision.
Realizing what they were about to do, Arnie grabbed a pad of paper, ran up to the front of the room where the three managers were sitting at the table and began redrawing the field joint to explain the inevitable dangers of launching in cold weather. Roger watched as Arnie desperately drew the field joint from memory. After so many presentations on the joint’s faulty design, neither engineer had any trouble drawing it from memory. Roger’s heart continued to race as he watched Arnie discover that no one was paying any attention to him. The only response Arnie received was another icy stare from Jerry Mason. The rest of the room remained silent. Feeling helpless and dejected, Arnie quietly picked up his pad and returned to his seat.
Not yet willing to give up, Roger grabbed two 8X10 color photos that were taken during the post-flight inspection of the 15th and 22nd shuttle flights that he felt best revealed the evidence of hot gas blow-by on the primary O-ring. Placing them in front of the three managers, he yelled at them–implored them—to look at them. The photos clearly showed the difference in character of hot gas blow-by between the 15th flight, which had a seal temperature of 53 degrees Fahrenheit, and the 22nd flight, which had an O-ring temperature of 75 degrees. The 15th flight had massive amounts of blackened grease around its joints whereas the 22nd flight had the normal honey-colored grease around its joints. The conclusion was obvious. More hot gas seeps by the primary seal as the temperature decreases, potentially leading to a failure if the temperature is low enough.
Roger was never very good at hiding his emotions. He often became flushed and visibly upset. His voice rose with each argument he made. If his words were not convincing enough, his body language should have been. One could easily see that Roger was upset and angry and most of all scared.
But the managers ignored him, and Roger received the same icy stares from Jerry Mason that Arnie had received moments before. Defeated, he picked up his photos and returned to his seat. It was useless. They wanted to fly and they were going to fly. In stunned silence he watched the three end their discussion and Jerry Mason asked his three subordinates, “Am I the only one who wants to fly?” Receiving no answer, Mason felt a rush of courage to continue.
The five-minute caucus was quickly nearing the half hour point. There was nothing left to do now except issue the final deathblow to the seven astronauts. Thinking Lund was still undecided, Mason told him, “Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.” All three managers at the table subsequently voted yes in response. The fourth manager, Vice-president Cal Wiggins, who had been sitting against the wall in silent acquiescence, also nodded his head in the affirmative. The managers then handed their new launch criteria to Joe Kilminster and asked him to present them to NASA. After reconnecting with the attendees at MSFC and KSC, Kilminster issued the launch support rationale and recommended that the launching of Challenger proceed as planned. NASA immediately accepted the recommendation and asked if there were any further comments.
Reeling from the events that had just occurred, Roger didn’t hear a thing. Feeling defeated, angry and frightened, Roger sat silent and immobile in his chair. As the teleconference ended, he immediately returned to his office to make one final entry in his logbook. On his way, an engineering manager stopped him in the hallway. “You know you lost your effectiveness in the caucus by screaming at them like you did,” he said. Outraged, Roger screamed back, “Listen, fella, if you were about to fall off a cliff, would you want me to whisper a warning to you or would you want me to scream a warning to you to get your attention?” The words echoed down the hallway as he turned and continued to his office.
Upon reaching his office, Roger recorded his interpretation of the meeting in his logbook: “Held a serious meeting concerning the launch of SRM-25 since it is so cold at the Cape. After much discussion from 1:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. [MST], the engineering recommendation was to delay the flight until the seal was at 53?F to stay within our database. NASA management did not like our recommendations… I sincerely hope that this launch does not result in a catastrophe. I personally do not agree with some of the statements made in Joe Kilminister’s written summary stating that SRM-25 is okay to fly.” Upon closing his logbook, the countdown to Challenger had begun.
It was 10 pm when he finally left the office that evening. The street lamps that lined the cozy streets of Brigham City, Utah, had been glowing for hours. Outside, an unwitting sky sparkled overhead while a cold biting wind took siege of the town’s streets. A thin layer of snow grew bright in the moonlight, giving the streets an eerie glow. The temperature in Utah nearly matched the temperature settling over Florida at that moment. Through the dirty windowpanes of the Thiokol company car, Roger watched the black expanse of the Utah desert pass by in a blur. Since the meeting had ended late, he had missed his usual car pool home. Luckily, two others in the car had also been present at the teleconference and witnessed the unsettling events.
With every passing mile, the voices inside the car rose as Roger and Bob Ebeling regurgitated the events from the last hour. With every complaint, they continued to feed off of each other’s anger. Joel Maw, their younger colleague, drove them silently from MTI through the streets of Brigham City, listening to his seniors bat expletives back and forth. Together, they reviewed their calculations over and over again but repeatedly produced the same conclusion. There was no way the launch could be successful tomorrow. If it did succeed, then it would be by the grace of God.
The predictability of the events he just witnessed sickened him. “I wish I had had a box of grenades and I could level this God damn plant once and for all. They would never be able to launch another one.” Feeling their blood pressures rise, they continued to vent their worries, letting their anger replace their helplessness.
Bob was the first to be dropped off, and Roger watched him cross the threshold of his home. He imagined Bob telling his wife the same thing he was about to admit to Roberta. Joel dropped Roger off next. Watching the taillights of the car slowly proceed down the street toward Joel’s home, Roger opened the door to his. As he opened the door, his eyes met the worried expression on his wife’s face. “What’s wrong?” Roberta asked. The concern in her voice was evident. They had been married over twenty years. She knew when something was bothering her husband. Although they were very close, she was never fully aware of the problems Roger faced at work. He tried hard to isolate her from the problems that kept him awake at night. But tonight, he could not obscure his fears. “We just were in a meeting where they made the decision to launch Challenger tomorrow and kill the astronauts. But outside of that, everything was great. It was great day.”
Roberta stared at him for a couple seconds in stunned silence. Not knowing how to respond, she offered him dinner and a chance to talk about the meeting. Roger began to outline some of his general fears about the low temperature at the Cape and how it would cause a leak in the booster joints, but he was not used to discussing all the specifics with her. By the time he and Roberta went to bed, however, Roger knew the anger and fear that had been building inside him for over a year were not unfounded. He knew that on January 28, 1986, America would experience one of the worst tragedies in its history.
He got into bed and watched the shadows dance across his bedroom ceiling. The silence of nightfall had settled over the neighborhood, only to be interrupted by the occasional car. Roberta slept fitfully, tossing and turning every ten minutes or so. Too overwhelmed from the tension of the day, he could not keep his eyes closed. He noticed Roberta had rolled away from him allowing him to view only the back of her head. Watching the covers rise and fall to the relatively slow rhythm of his wife’s breathing, he surrendered to his anxieties and allowed his mind to replay the evening’s events.
He tried to establish the exact moment everything went wrong. He was angry with himself for not convincing them. He tried to stop them; he tried to translate the fear he felt into engineering terms, but they just wouldn’t listen. They all understood what would happen if something went wrong during launch; they all knew the threat, yet they approved the launch anyway. Why? Why didn’t they listen to him? Why couldn’t he get them to listen? His stomach churned as portions of the meeting flashed across his mind. With his muscles tightening and his teeth grinding, he thought his entire body was about to explode.
Roger looked over at his wife and envisioned his youngest daughter sleeping peacefully in her room down the hallway. If the worst should happen–if those big boosters lit up and the forces inside them escaped past the O-rings, then Challenger – well, that thought was too unbearable to complete. Instead, Roger forced himself to envision the O-rings sealing the joint to prevent the nightmare that haunted him. He hoped that when NASA recovered the boosters, the O-rings would be so eroded that NASA would have no other choice but to fix them. As Roger lay awake in bed rehashing the events from the evening’s meeting, the launch crew began its early morning launch preparations for flight 51-L.
(Copyright Public Education Center 2006}
Joe Trento has covered the military and civilian space programs since the 1960s. He is the author of two books on NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (with Richard Hirsch ) (Praeger 1973) and Prescription for Disaster (with Susan Trento) (Crown, 1987).
