On This Day in History: January 27
Allan McDonald refuses to approve disastrous Challenger shuttle mission
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In Volume I of One This Day in History Sh!t Went Down I wrote about the 2003 destruction of space shuttle Columbia and how the worms survived. What worms? Buy the book. For today I’m writing about what happened 17 years and three days previous: The Challenger explosion. But not so much about the catastrophe as about the guy who tried to prevent it and wasn’t listened to.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: January 27, 1986--
On January 28, 1986, Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, taking the lives of seven astronauts. This isn’t about what happened that day, but the day before, when Allan McDonald, who worked for a NASA subcontractor called Thiokol as director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project, refused to sign off on the launch.
McDonald was an engineer and aerospace consultant. The two solid rocket boosters his company built were what generate most of the thrust for liftoff. Those boosters were also what failed, causing the catastrophic explosion that led to the shuttle being ripped apart. McDonald gave three reasons for not signing off on the launch, and they all involved the weather. Rough seas would make it difficult to recover the booster rockets, which were designed to split away from the shuttle two minutes after liftoff. Second, there was ice both on the launch pad and the shuttle itself, and McDonald worried it could damage the heat tiles during launch. Most important, and what he was absolutely fucking right about, was the effect of the cold on the O-rings.
Allan was in a tough spot. If he signed off, he knew he was risking the lives of the astronauts. If he refused, his career was at risk. But he made the right call and said nope, not doing it, saying to 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.” It wasn’t just McDonald who opposed the launch, but his engineering team.
NASA ignored him and put pressure on Thiokol executives to overrule their engineers, which they did. Then, as we all know and just as McDonald predicted, the cold caused the O-ring seals in the joints of the boosters to stiffen so that they failed to contain the pressurized burning gas. Said gas escaped and then everything went to high-velocity explodey excrement. Refusing to sign off on the mission was not the only heroic thing McDonald did. In the aftermath, NASA engaged in a coverup, and McDonald exposed it.
Twelve days after the explosion McDonald sat in the back of a closed presidential commission while a NASA official glossed over the O-rings issue and the warnings of their potential failure. Allan raised his hand and spoke up, calling bullshit. He was demoted at Thiokol for doing so. Then a Democratic member of congress introduced a resolution to forbid future NASA contracts to Thiokol for demoting McDonald. The company then made McDonald a vice president to lead redesigning the joints on the boosters.
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I'm tired, James. Tired of the incessant reminders that one of the leading causes of death for humanity is hubris. And I very much doubt I'm the only one. I wonder how this collective exhaustion can be turned into something of value especially when poor decisions cause the deaths of our best and brightest.
I was in 4th grade in Illinois when a classmate known for pranks told me about the explosion. I went from not believing him, to not wanting to believe him, in about five seconds.
It is a mixture of sadness, nausea, and anger that rises in me every time I read an article about, or see a replay of, that launch. FU NASA.