nytimes.com— Mr. Boisjoly wrote a portentous memo six months before the Space Shuttle Challenger’s explosion, warning that if it was too cold, seals connecting sections of the shuttle’s rocket boosters could fail.
Feb 5, 2012View in Crawl 4
Truly sad that nobody listened to him and put profit and publicity over safety. Morton Thiokol and NASA could have avoided such a tragedy had they just listened to this man and other engineers.
What's worse is that what happened to whistle-blowers then still often happens.
morton-thiokol's on site engineer said" i am uncertain if the seals will hold up". he was overruled by nasa management who didnt want a delay. stupid. someone should have stood up and said no. ask wtf are we doing being dangerous intentionally? dumb should be a crime.
while reagan never directly said to launch the teacher... it was made known that it was part of his state of the union address and the VP... the head of the space program wanted it done.
Kind of ironic that this article appears in the NY Times. Water-carryier for government imperialism and bs.
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An article about a whistle-blower that is afraid to provide the facts.
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Article about a WHISTLE-BLOWER and the article contains THIS paragraph:
"Four Thiokol vice presidents, all engineers themselves, went offline to huddle. They later said that they had worried they lacked conclusive data to stop a launching that had already been postponed twice. They thought the naysayers might be operating on gut reaction, not science."
It wasn't that it had already been postponed twice - nice whistleblowing NYTimes - jeepers! The pressure was on because it was the day of The State Of The Union Address. IT WAS THE DAY OF THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. That is why Thiokol was under pressure from NASA who was under pressure from Reagan's pygmies to get that thing off the ground.
The speech was written, Reagan was going on tv before the nation and he was going to boast of a launch that he personnaly had a finger in. He, Reagan, had put a school teacher on the shuttle. So Reagan's staff put the screws to NASA who put the screws to Thiokol.
An article about a whistle-blower that is afraid to provide the facts.
You can't expect more from the NY Times but you can expect a lot less.
I remember telling a friend before this shuttle launched, that we had never had a problem with the shuttle on re-entry, guess murphy's law proved me to speak too soon! Then again, i'm just a pre-cog anyway!
finitiaFeb 6, 2012
Truly sad that nobody listened to him and put profit and publicity over safety. Morton Thiokol and NASA could have avoided such a tragedy had they just listened to this man and other engineers.
What's worse is that what happened to whistle-blowers then still often happens.
Closed AccountFeb 6, 2012
morton-thiokol's on site engineer said" i am uncertain if the seals will hold up". he was overruled by nasa management who didnt want a delay. stupid. someone should have stood up and said no. ask wtf are we doing being dangerous intentionally? dumb should be a crime.
starmanjonesFeb 6, 2012
while reagan never directly said to launch the teacher... it was made known that it was part of his state of the union address and the VP... the head of the space program wanted it done.
Closed AccountFeb 6, 2012
yup. case of politics overruling safety. criminal is what it was.
jagpopFeb 6, 2012
Kind of ironic that this article appears in the NY Times. Water-carryier for government imperialism and bs.
*******
An article about a whistle-blower that is afraid to provide the facts.
*******
Article about a WHISTLE-BLOWER and the article contains THIS paragraph:
"Four Thiokol vice presidents, all engineers themselves, went offline to huddle. They later said that they had worried they lacked conclusive data to stop a launching that had already been postponed twice. They thought the naysayers might be operating on gut reaction, not science."
It wasn't that it had already been postponed twice - nice whistleblowing NYTimes - jeepers! The pressure was on because it was the day of The State Of The Union Address. IT WAS THE DAY OF THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS. That is why Thiokol was under pressure from NASA who was under pressure from Reagan's pygmies to get that thing off the ground.
The speech was written, Reagan was going on tv before the nation and he was going to boast of a launch that he personnaly had a finger in. He, Reagan, had put a school teacher on the shuttle. So Reagan's staff put the screws to NASA who put the screws to Thiokol.
An article about a whistle-blower that is afraid to provide the facts.
You can't expect more from the NY Times but you can expect a lot less.
battmannFeb 7, 2012
I remember telling a friend before this shuttle launched, that we had never had a problem with the shuttle on re-entry, guess murphy's law proved me to speak too soon! Then again, i'm just a pre-cog anyway!