Challenger Engineer Who Warned of Shuttle Disaster Dies | Hacker News Reader

Challenger Engineer Who Warned of Shuttle Disaster Dies

npr.org

221 pointsmolecule26 comments

It bums me out a little that there's not more HN hubbub over this. Andy Grove was a great businessman, but Bob Ebeling was a great engineer. Maybe just not in the ways that HN loves to celebrate.

A handful of clever people end up in the right place at the right time, make billions, and get praised on news aggregator sites. Millions of others lead good lives full of moral bravery, and will rarely get a mention by anyone, anywhere. HN is not the barometer of goodness in any sense.

> "I think that was one of the mistakes that God made," Ebeling says softly. "He shouldn't have picked me for the job. But next time I talk to him, I'm gonna ask him, 'Why me? You picked a loser.' "

This hits me so hard every time I read it. Sometimes in this cruel world, we are given one of the few real good guys. And we waste them.

I try to keep Bob Elbing in mind when I ask if I should say something or not. Thankfully none of my work has ever had a single life, much less 7, depending on what I do. Still, I try to do the right thing and speak up.

We should all strive to be a little more like Bob Ebling. I greatly respect and admire his dedication to the safety of those on board the Challenger, and it makes me proud to be an engineer. The sad passing of Mr Ebling deserves far more coverage, and his efforts deserve more recognition. I'm glad he had closure in the final few weeks of his life.

Ebeling...

Oops.. I blame a lack of coffee this morning.

Such a heartbreaking story. I find it unreasonable how politicians sometimes advocate for ethical oversight of science with the assumption that scientists and engineers aren't ethical or moral people, just robots solving equations.

But we saw the same with the atomic bomb. It was mainly scientists who stood up for the morally right. It is often politicians and management who do the ethically questionable choices.

> "He said, 'The Challenger's going to blow up. Everyone's going to die,' " Serna recalls. "And he was beating his fist on the dashboard. He was frantic."

That is a bit over the top but if true, then amazing. How many engineers can predict something so detailed.

If there's critical a weak point in the design that they're well aware of, that's known to be triggered by certain conditions, and those conditions are in force, then I'd say quite a few.

It takes a huge amount of guts, though, to try and pull the plug on something like a shuttle launch over something as innocuous-sounding as some gaskets. No matter how certain he was that it would cause a disaster, the non-technical brass must have just thought "eh it's a gasket, I had a leaky gasket in my car once, we can handle a few drops of oil."

I'm not so sure it is over the top. We're looking back after the fact. Think about it before the fact. Ebeling knew that it was the coldest that a launch was being attempted, the o-rings didn't seal in that weather, and so he knows something is going to happen, so what's the worst thing that goes through his mind? Total catastrophic failure. I don't think it was a prediction so much as a combination of gut instinct and panic knowing the shuttle should not launch.

What bums me out is the Thiokol executives who really were responsible for this national tragedy, did they ever feel any remorse? Did they repay their debts? Did they even acknowledge that they royally fucked up? No, they collected millions and sipped their brandy.

I would not let the NASA administrator off the hook, either. I would say they are just or even nor responsible.

And what's worse, we don't even know their names. Ebeling's name is everywhere, but the people who are at fault? Just "management."

> Ebeling helped assemble the data that demonstrated the risk. Boisjoly argued for a launch delay. At first, the Thiokol executives agreed and said they wouldn't approve the launch.

> "My God, Thiokol," responded Lawrence Mulloy of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center. "When do you want me to launch? Next April?"

> Despite hours of argument and reams of data, the Thiokol executives relented. McDonald says the data were absolutely clear, but politics and pressure interfered.

I'd put it more on NASA, if that is accurate. Not entirely, but more.

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

> "It was as if he got permission from the world," says his daughter Leslie Ebeling Serna. "He was able to let that part of his life go."

Rest in Peace.

I hope he is able to rest in peace after the outpouring of support and letters he got, after the story initially ran.

Richard Feynman was on the Challenger accident review committee. He wrote about the experience including interviewing the top 4 rocket engineers at the end of his book, '"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character'

I don't follow why Ebeling blamed himself since it appears he did everything a human being could do to stop the launch, but was overruled by management.

I'm really happy he got the closure he needed before he passed.

Is it so hard to include the name of the deceased in the link title?

Managers that don't listen to their own engineers... pretty sure there is a wise soundbite in there somewhere ;)

Rest in peace Bob.

They should name something (like next space craft) in his honor. RIP

Not a spacecraft. Every mission control room should have a big red stop button called the Ebeling button. Anyone at any time can hit that button with no repercussions.

In a way, there is. The Challenger disaster drastically changed how information is propagated up and down during a launch, including how small an issue can be before a launch is scrubbed. I guarantee you there is no launch where Challenger doesn't run through the mind of every person sitting over the launch in Houston.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com