Roger Boisjoly has died.
The name may not ring a bell, but Boisjoly’s place in history certainly will: He was the engineer who tried in vain to persuade NASA that it was unsafe to launch the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986.
The Challenger explosion remains today one of our most evocative images of technology gone wrong. This is due in part to the personal nature of the tragedy – the schoolteacher onboard, the family members watching – and in part to the subsequent revelations that NASA proceeded with the launch despite Boisjoly’s warnings.
My intention here is not to rehash the chain of events that led to the Challenger’s demise, but to show how some of those events demonstrate patterns of error that are commonplace – indeed, almost inevitable – in the operation of complex technological systems. more...