He did his job but that doesn't mean he has final say. I've read enough interviews to know he carried a heavy weight with him until his death because he felt he should have pushed back more. I think there's some confusion that I'm advocating an engineer must stop all risky actions at any cost. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if an engineer doesn't bring up a risk because "The boss doesn't want to hear it" that's willful negligence. Fighting for a position and being overruled is different that meekly rolling over.
If you believe engineering is a public trust profession, you owe it to the public to at least do due diligence. My issue is the people in this thread saying "It's all managements fault" and displacing any responsibility from the engineers. The engineers are the technical authority for management. We should strive to make sure management understands that technical risk; if they do and proceed anyway I think the engineers have done their job. That's what I think happened with Challenger. That's different from placating management because you're afraid for your job or plowing forward knowing a design will put people at risk.
If the bar was to get every program engineer to give a GO, there would never be another launch. There are engineers who don't trust aircraft that have flown for decades in part because we are bad at judging overall systemic risk. NASA has since instituted formal dissenting opinion processes and distinct technical authorities to allow risks to be raised and formally acknowledged without grinding the process to a halt.
If you believe engineering is a public trust profession, you owe it to the public to at least do due diligence. My issue is the people in this thread saying "It's all managements fault" and displacing any responsibility from the engineers. The engineers are the technical authority for management. We should strive to make sure management understands that technical risk; if they do and proceed anyway I think the engineers have done their job. That's what I think happened with Challenger. That's different from placating management because you're afraid for your job or plowing forward knowing a design will put people at risk.
If the bar was to get every program engineer to give a GO, there would never be another launch. There are engineers who don't trust aircraft that have flown for decades in part because we are bad at judging overall systemic risk. NASA has since instituted formal dissenting opinion processes and distinct technical authorities to allow risks to be raised and formally acknowledged without grinding the process to a halt.