"Tell him he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about," McDonald said. The man who came out to get McDonald told him that while watching films, someone from the Science and Engineering Director at Cape Canaveral had noticed that the right solid rocket had a hole in it that he suspected had caused the problem.Īllan McDonald's talk at NASA Langley's Colloquium on Tuesday focused on his book "Truth, Lies and O-rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster." It looks at the pressures to launch the Challenger, the internal cover-ups and the aftermath of the disaster. In fact, McDonald was actually leaving the building at the Huntsville Operations Support Center to catch a flight home when someone ran out and told him he needed to come back. At that point, he was convinced that engine failure or a problem with the fuel tank structure was to blame. The day after the Challenger tragedy, McDonald went to Huntsville, Ala., to join the failure team. 2, at the Colloquium at NASA's Langley Research Center. McDonald, who has detailed his experiences with the Challenger disaster and its aftermath in a book, "Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster," was the featured speaker Tuesday, Oct. "They couldn't believe what they were seeing - and I couldn't either, frankly. "I was as shocked as everybody else was in the room," he said. Instead, following the break-up, the rockets remained intact and continued flying. He had predicted that if the O-rings were to fail, the rockets would explode before the shuttle ever lifted off from the launch site. But as he watched the Challenger disintegrate at the Launch Control Center that cold, sunny January morning, he was baffled. He would soon learn that his worst fears had come true. McDonald, the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project for the engineering contractor Morton Thiokol, was concerned that below-freezing temperatures might impact the integrity of the solid rockets' O-rings. Good, that the astronauts felt it was the safest piece of equipment on the And they gave great compliments about how that program wasĬonducted, and the results were shown by the fact that we flew 110 shuttlesĪfter that and those boosters came back pristine. National Research Council from the National Academy of Engineering in their In fact, it was the most scrutinized project by the
I felt very goodĪbout that with long days, and long time, and tough job. Should have been, is make sure it never happens again. I decided that that's better then thinking about what could have been, and Into safe flight, that they asked me to lead it. And it was a task force that was put together between NASA and theĬompany because it had such a high priority rating to get the shuttle back Job and demoted, and went through that cycle, and then got reinstatedīecause the pressure the company received from both the presidentialĬommission and congress to reinstate me to my position - which they did -Ībout the time the commission's report went to the president to lead the So, that after I had gotten essentially removed from my
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