Remembering Allan McDonald: He Refused To Approve Challenger Launch, Exposed Cover-Up

[WillBrink]

Took a lot of courage to do what he did. Imagine being him when that shuttle blew up? How he must have felt? Then having to see all the ass covering by higher ups who didn't even have the decency to admit to the mistake that easily could have been avoided had they listened to the guy who knew what the F he was talking about?

"One was on the night before the launch, refusing to sign off on the launch authorization and continuing to argue against it," Maier says. "And then afterwards in the aftermath, exposing the cover-up that NASA was engaged in."

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/07/974534021/remembering-allan-mcdonald-he-refused-to-approve-challenger-launch-exposed-cover?

[Averageman]

Thanks for that, it actually repaired a bit of my total disdain for everything today.
It's too bad we lost such an ethical Man.

[militarymoron]

He's an inspiration to us aerospace engineers, and a reminder that we should always do the right thing. And I don't mean 'right for your career or the company you're working for'.

[WillBrink]

Thanks for that, it actually repaired a bit of my total disdain for everything today.
It's too bad we lost such an ethical Man.

A commodity that seems to be getting rarer by the year, but they still exist.


He's an inspiration to us aerospace engineers, and a reminder that we should always do the right thing. And I don't mean 'right for your career or the company you're working for'.

I hope his story and experience is told and taught far and wide among the community.

I can't imagine he must have felt when it went bad.

[SteyrAUG]

That guy and Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, there should be statues of them at elementary schools everywhere.

I remember watching a documentary recently about Challenger and they covered Allan McDonald in some detail. Stuff like this really makes me angry. It's like when we send some special operations group on a high risk operation for some low value objective or otherwise send them out with less than acceptable support.

Do they really think there is an endless supply of people who can do these jobs? Wanna know who is easily replaceable? The guy who hears the problem and then goes, shouldn't be a problem - don't worry about it...it's been ok in the past.

They should make a statue of that guy and put it next to the statue of the guy who got the radar report of a large formation of planes approaching Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and said "I wouldn't worry about it." Two names that should live on in infamy.

[Sam]

He's an inspiration to us aerospace engineers, and a reminder that we should always do the right thing. And I don't mean 'right for your career or the company you're working for'.

He is an inspiration to all engineers and we have discussed his values and ethics at many professional engineers meetings.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I know the big story and I watched some kind a documentary/movie about it from the viewpoint of Professor Feynman. Does anybody remember what that was? What I mainly took from that was that somebody was drip feeding stuff to Feynman so that he would figure it out himself, and he eventually did that and realized that he had been “played”.


Pulled from the linked NPR article:


"What we should remember about Al McDonald [is] he would often stress his laws of the seven R's," Maier says. "It was always, always do the right thing for the right reason at the right time with the right people. [And] you will have no regrets for the rest of your life."

[3 AE]

"It was always, always do the right thing for the right reason at the right time with the right people. [And] you will have no regrets for the rest of your life."

"Eleventh Commandment" right there.