Allan McDonald, Thiokol engineer who refused to log out when Challenger started, dies in Ogden | Local news

OGDEN – It’s pretty safe to say that if there was a senior principal in Allan McDonald’s life it was “do the right thing”.

McDonald, an engineer who refused to approve the ultimately disastrous launch of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, died last week in Ogden. He was 83 years old. His daughter Meghan McDonald Goggin told the New York Times that his death was due to complications from a fall.

McDonald was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1937 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University in 1959 and a Masters of Engineering Administration from the University of Utah in 1967. This is evident from his biography of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. According to the biography, he worked for ATK Thiokol Propulsion for 42 years and retired in 2001. At the time of the Challenger incident, he was the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor project.

Before the fateful flight in January 1986, McDonald, Thiokol’s senior representative at the Kennedy Space Center, told his superiors that temperatures were too cold to safely use the rocket-booster motors Thiokol had built for launch . Despite significant pressure from its employers and NASA, McDonald and his team of engineers refused to clear the launch. His supervisors in Utah ignored the warnings and faxed a document to NASA stating that the company had approved the launch.

The Challenger naturally began to disintegrate 73 seconds into the flight, killing all seven astronauts who were on board.

“I was lucky enough to do the right thing for the right reason and the smartest thing I have ever done in my life was refuse to sign my go-ahead permit,” McDonald said on a 2011 Standard Examiner Profile. “I just didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel like we should take the risk we were taking.”

After the disastrous flight, McDonald passed the information on to the Presidential Commission, which was investigating the accident, saying NASA and Thiokol had worked to cover up the truth about the launch decision. He was eventually removed from his job and removed from the joint NASA Thiokol Failure Analysis team. After Congress realized these acts were retaliation against McDonald, it passed a resolution to restore his job for the only time such a thing has happened in American history.

McDonald continued his engineering career and led the solid rocket motor redesign as Thiokol’s vice president of engineering for space operations, according to AICE Bio. His work in rocket propulsion has been patented several times and has published over 80 specialist articles that have been presented at national and international conferences.

NPR’s Howard Berkes interviewed McDonald in 2016 and said he knew his objection could cost him his job and career, but “he also knew the lives of the seven astronauts were at stake.”

Berkes said McDonald’s anti-launch stance and efforts to ascertain the truth of the incident changed not only the course of the Challenger investigation but also the entire launch decision process at NASA.

“He and his engineers have also taught important lessons to thousands of engineers, engineering students, and managers at NASA, as well as in colleges and corporations around the world,” Berkes told the standards auditor in an email. “Listen to dissent. Don’t let schedule, policy, or financial pressures make cloud engineering decisions.”

In February 2020, after Republican Mitt Romney became the first US Senator in history to vote to convict and recall a president of his own political party during the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, McDonald wrote a letter to the Standards Auditor, in which he drew parallels between his Challenger experience and Romney’s voice in condemnation.

“Mitt, thank you for taking to the streets and choosing your conscience because you know it wouldn’t make you very popular with your ‘super boss’ and many of your co-workers,” said McDonald in the letter. “I was there, did that.”

McDonald said Romney demonstrated some of the same principles he lived by after surviving the Challenger fiasco. The retired engineer named it “McDonald’s Laws of the 7 R’s, Plus 1”.

“Do the right thing for the right reason, at the right time, with the right people,” McDonald said in the letter. “And you won’t have any regrets. It will help you sleep well for the rest of your life. (PS You don’t always have to be right, but you always have to be honest).”