This article is first and foremost an acknowledgement of the life of a super engineer, but more importantly that of someone who tried to prevent disaster. A little bit over 26 years ago today, Roger Boisjoly and some of his colleagues warned officials at NASA Challenger might explode. Not heeding those warnings cost the lives of seven very brave souls. Boisjoly, age 73, passed away just the other day, here is a tiny tribute to he and his fellows.
Much has been written in the aftermath of disaster. Movies about the Titanic reveal over and over foolhardy ignorance, and imagine the frustration of the expert climate scientist when his supposed colleague argues “there is no such thing as global warming.” In fact, the history of the world is all about human beings giving effort on behalf of fellow mankind, only to be shut up or even ridiculed for having done so. Columbus to Einstein we are idiotic believers as well as stringent pessimists and disbelievers.
I urge everyone reading this to take a brief moment to consider nighttime for Roger Boisjoly and his four colleagues, every-single-night-after Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight.
The night before Challenger’s engines came to life blasting off with some 7.8 million pounds of thrust, temperatures at the launch pad dropped to 18 °F, well below the suggested 40 °F SRB threshold. As Challenger prepared for liftoff, ice still glistened in the morning Florida sunshine. Extraordinary danger manifested into disaster after liftoff, but what of those rocket scientist voices, the ones not so many remember?
Roger Mark Boisjoly was a mechanical and fluid dynamics engineer who worked for Morton Thiokol, manufacturers of the the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters. As it worked out, the rubber O rings sealing the segments of Challenger’s solid rocket boosters, like all rubber, were succeptible to extremes at the lower end of the termperature spectrum. The subsequent leak, which Boisjoly and his colleauges warned of…
Roger Boisjoly was an ethical man. In these turbulent times we face, such people bear a particular gravity, worth, note.
The rest of the story has been told and amplified a million times. The point here is, no matter what else can be said of Boisjoly, at his passing or after, this rocket scientist did his job. So, we take off our hats one last time to his genius and integrity. To his friends, family, and colleagues, you have our deepest sympathy. He now has the personal thanks of; Francis Richard “Dick” Scobee, Michael John Smith, Ellison Shoji Onizuka, Judith Arlene Resnik, Ronald Ervin McNair, Ph.D., Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory Bruce Jarvis. God Bless you all.
We simply must ask the question; "What great good would these extraordinary individuals have presented to the world, their families, their communities?"
About Phil Butler
