Roger Boisjoly

Roger Boisjoly ( born April 25, 1938 in Lowell, Massachusetts, † January 6, 2012 in Nephi, Utah ) was an American engineer, who appeared as futile Warner before the Challenger disaster.

Life

Roger Boisjoly worked since 1980 for the Morton Thiokol, the manufacturer of the external solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle program. He already pointed out the error-prone design of the so-called O -rings in July 1985. The failure of this seal rings ultimately led to the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, in which the entire crew died. The sealing rings, which should seal the individual segments of the solid rocket against each other, had been severely damaged already at a mission in July 1985. Boisjoly was studying the O-rings and found that especially at very low outdoor temperatures during the start, the elasticity of the rings disappeared and could lead to a discharge of hot gases with disastrous effects it as a result.

Boisjoly added a new problem before in his company, but was not taken very seriously. Morton Thiokol negotiated at that time with NASA on a new contract, with the possibility existed that NASA except Morton Thiokol future would allow another supplier. Since Boisjoly not let loose, was internally a "task force" set up, but received loud Boisjoly little management support. End of 1985, Boisjoly warned explicitly against a disaster at one of the upcoming Challenger missions.

The planned launch of the space shuttle on 28 January 1986 took place under particularly unfavorable weather conditions. The night temperatures were be up to -6 ° C. Boisjoly took with his colleagues the view that this would affect the functioning of the seal rings dangerous. The management of Morton Thiokol agreed that this issue is serious enough to move the already repeatedly shifted start again. However, NASA was under pressure from the public. In a teleconference with NASA management, the manager of Morton Thiokol moved back ultimately to the position that their data were not clearly interpretable. Then the fatal Challenger mission STS -51 -L was started. Boisjolys warnings proved to be justified.

After the explosion of the space shuttle, which took the lives of seven astronauts, President Ronald Reagan ordered a commission of inquiry to explore the cause of the crash. Roger Boisjoly was one of the witnesses. As a result, Boisjoly left, become a whistleblower to be an outsider, his company. He worked thereafter with ethics in the workplace.

With this theme, he was a popular guest speaker and has lectured at over 50 universities in the U.S.. In 1988, he was honored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with the " Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility".