RIP Bob Ebeling
Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2016 2:42 pm
Finally free from guilt over Challenger disaster, an engineer dies in peace
For three decades Ebeling, a former rocket engineer for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol, had been swamped by his own grief and guilt over the catastrophe he’d failed to stop. In the days before the space shuttle Challenger burned up in mid-air, killing all seven astronauts on board, Ebeling and four other engineers had pleaded with NASA to delay the launch. They had concerns about whether the rubber o-rings on the shuttle’s booster rockets would seal properly in the frigid winter weather. Ebeling even authored an alarmed memo detailing the problems with the rings. Its subject line read, bluntly, “Help!”
But the engineers were overruled. On January 28, 1986, he and his colleagues watched in helpless horror as the shuttle and its crew turned to ashes in the sky.
Full story: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/finall ... ocid=fbmsn
For three decades Ebeling, a former rocket engineer for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol, had been swamped by his own grief and guilt over the catastrophe he’d failed to stop. In the days before the space shuttle Challenger burned up in mid-air, killing all seven astronauts on board, Ebeling and four other engineers had pleaded with NASA to delay the launch. They had concerns about whether the rubber o-rings on the shuttle’s booster rockets would seal properly in the frigid winter weather. Ebeling even authored an alarmed memo detailing the problems with the rings. Its subject line read, bluntly, “Help!”
But the engineers were overruled. On January 28, 1986, he and his colleagues watched in helpless horror as the shuttle and its crew turned to ashes in the sky.
Full story: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/finall ... ocid=fbmsn