News Remembering Allan McDonald: He Refused To Approve Challenger Launch, Exposed Cover-Up

[GLS]

Remembering Allan McDonald: He Refused To Approve Challenger Launch, Exposed Cover-Up​

On Jan. 27, 1986, Allan McDonald stood on the cusp of history.
McDonald directed the booster rocket project at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol. He was responsible for the two massive rockets, filled with explosive fuel, that lifted space shuttles skyward. He was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Challenger "to approve or disapprove a launch if something came up," he told me in 2016, 30 years after Challenger exploded.
His job was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he'd risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. Refuse to sign, and he'd risk his job, his career and the good life he'd built for his wife and four children.
"And I made the smartest decision I ever made in my lifetime," McDonald told me. "I refused to sign it. I just thought we were taking risks we shouldn't be taking."
(...)
Now, 35 years after the Challenger disaster, McDonald's family reports that he died Saturday in Ogden, Utah, after suffering a fall and brain damage. He was 83 years old.

https://text.npr.org/974534021

 

[GLS]

Here he is "spilling the beans":

(he is the first to testify in this video, others follow)

 

[Star Voyager]

One of the real heroes of the space program, not afraid to speak up at the risk of his career. Hope there are some people in the program today that will follow his example. Godspeed, sir.

 

[Gargantua2024]

We've lost one of the most noble people in the history of spaceflight. Ad astra Sir MacDonald