In cold temperatures, O-rings in the joints might not seal, they said, and could allow flames to reach the rocket’s metal casing. Their pleas and technical theories were rejected by senior managers at the company and NASA who said they had failed to prove their case and that the shuttle would be launched in freezing temperatures the next morning.
It was among the biggest engineering miscalculations in history.
A little more than a minute after launch, flames shot out of the booster joint, melted through the nearby hydrogen fuel tank and ignited a fireball that was watched by the astronauts’ families and much of the nation on television.
Mr. Boisjoly could not watch the launch, so certain was he that the shuttle would blow up. In the months and years that followed, the disaster changed his career and permanently poisoned his view that NASA could be trusted to make the right decisions when matters came to life and death.
Mr. Boisjoly, 73, died of cancer Jan. 6 in Nephi, Utah, his family said.
The Challenger disaster and the resulting investigation pulled back the curtain on NASA’s internal culture, revealing a bureaucracy that had made safety secondary to its launch objectives and to the political support it needed to continue the shuttle program.
“It was the end of the dream,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org and a longtime analyst of U.S. aerospace. “Before the Challenger, you could think about the idea of going boldly where no one had gone before. The accident ended it.”
Mr. Boisjoly was not the only engineer who attempted to stop the launch and suffered for blowing the whistle.
Allan J. McDonald was Thiokol’s program manager for the solid-rocket booster and became the most important critic of the accident afterward. When he was pressed by NASA the night before liftoff to sign a written recommendation approving the launch, he refused and argued late into the night for a launch cancellation.
When McDonald disclosed the secret debate to accident investigators, he was isolated and his career destroyed.
In a 2003 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Boisjoly recalled that NASA tried to blackball him from the industry, leaving Mr. Boisjoly to spend 17 years as a forensic engineer and a lecturer on engineering ethics.
When the space shuttle Columbia burned up on reentry in 2003, killing its crew of seven, the accident was blamed on the same kinds of management failures that occurred with the Challenger shuttle. By that time, Mr. Boisjoly said that NASA was beyond reform, some of its officials should be indicted on manslaughter charges and the agency abolished.
NASA’s mismanagement “is not going to stop until somebody gets sent to hard rock hotel,” Mr. Boisjoly said. “I don’t care how many commissions you have. These guys have a way of numbing their brains. They have destroyed $5 billion worth of hardware and 14 lives because of their nonsense.”
Roger Mark Boisjoly was born April 25, 1938, and raised in Lowell, Mass., and he graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Survivors include his wife of 49 years, Roberta Malcolm Boisjoly; two daughters; three brothers; and eight grandchildren.
— Los Angeles Times
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