RIP Bob Ebeling

A friend sent me this NPR story, Challenger Engineer Who Warned Of Shuttle Disaster Dies, and it got me to thinking. But first, the meat of the story:

[Bob] Ebeling was one of five booster rocket engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to stop the 1986 Challenger launch. They worried that cold temperatures overnight — the forecast said 18 degrees — would stiffen the rubber O-ring seals that prevent burning rocket fuel from leaking out of booster joints. 

...Ebeling was the first to sound the alarm the morning before the Challenger launch. He called his boss, Allan McDonald, who was Thiokol's representative at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

...Three decades ago, McDonald organized a teleconference with NASA officials, Thiokol executives and the worried engineers. 

Ebeling helped assemble the data that demonstrated the risk. [Another engineer, Roger] 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.

(hat tip to National Geographic for the pic)

This is what happens when we let government bureaucrats and corporate executives run things: People die. Profits and CYA intentions are not valid justifications for action or inaction, especially in the face of people who know what is happening better than the bureaucrats and executives.

This is also where the Peter Principle comes into play: Failure by decision makers is evidence where people have risen to the level of their incompetence. It happens equally in government and the private sector. People like NASA's Lawrence Mulloy and Thiokol's Allan McDonald are examples of people who were successful in previous roles, so their "trial and error"-minded higher-ups assumed they could be successful with more political roles, i.e. making decisions where politics is a factor. Unfortunately, their higher-ups were politicians who only considered the human  political factors as important. Hence, the shuttle blowing up was an irrelevant factor in their decision, only the launch-or-no-launch was important.

But the human tragedy of such failures doesn't end with the people who died:

Ebeling blamed himself for failing to convince Thiokol executives and NASA to wait for warmer weather. 

"I think that was one of the mistakes God made," Ebeling told me in January. "He shouldn't have picked me for that job." 

The morning of the launch, a distraught Ebeling drove to Thiokol's remote Utah complex with his daughter. 

"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." 

Serna, Ebeling and Boisjoly sat together in a crowded conference room as live video of the launch appeared on a large projection screen. When Challenger exploded, Serna says, "I could feel [Ebeling] trembling. And then he wept — loudly. And then Roger started crying."

Ebeling carried the burden of guilt, even though he wasn't responsible for the launch decision, up until shortly before his death, when many reached out to him:

But that work didn't diminish lingering pain and guilt. God "picked a loser," Ebeling said in January, thinking back to his role in the Challenger launch. 

Then Ebeling heard from hundreds of NPR readers and listeners, who responded to our January story. 

"God didn't pick a loser. He picked Bob Ebeling," said Jim Sides, a utilities engineer in North Carolina. 

"Bob Ebeling did his job that night," Sides continued. "He did the right thing, and that does not make him a loser. That makes him a winner." 

Ebeling also heard from two of the people who had overruled the engineers back in 1986. Former Thiokol executive Robert Lund and former NASA official George Hardy told him that Challenger was not his burden to bear. 

And NASA sent a statement, saying that the deaths of the seven Challenger astronauts served to remind the space agency "to remain vigilant and to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up." 

The burden began to lift even as Ebeling's health declined. A few weeks before his death, he thanked those who reached out to him. 

"You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease," Ebeling said. "You have to have an end to everything." 

Bob Ebeling died Monday, but the legacy he leaves is a lesson to all of us: Fight for what you know to be right, and listen to those who tell you that you are wrong. God bless Bob Ebeling.