I stated "The point of Roger Boisjoly's information and affiliation
with a group such as onlineethics.org is for all of us to benefit from
his personal story to stop the launch of challenger, and prevent the
tragedy that occurred jan 28 1986"

Derek Lyons replied "Except - he didn't actually take any actual action
to stop the launch and prevent the tragedy. When push came to shove -
he folded. His actual message seems to be "you can claim an ethical
victory even if you failed". (Or to put it even finer "it does not
matter if people died, so long as you've done the minimum to salve you
our conscience"

Interesting critique of one mans actions derek, firstly I hope you may
you never be faced with the burden Boisjoly and his colleagues have to
bear for attempting to, but not being able to stop a tragedy from
occurring, but I quess that may fall under the category of only being
human. Now the historical account in the Rogers commission report
shows boisjoly was talking to the right people, and presenting the
correct evidence to postpone the cold weather launch of sts-51l on jan
28, 1986, but his advice was ignored by people who had the authority to
overrule him, and did. Now maybe, just maybe, if adopted, Roger
Boisjoly recommendations in his "Nasa's midlife crisis, a context
for change" presented to the congressional subcommittee of space and
science technology of 1991, could have implemented the changes within
nasa to prevent the Columbia tragedy (ie making nasa upper management
criminally responsible for their decisions, if they are found to be
negligent). A great understanding how ethical engineering issues
applies to the launching of space vehicles can be found in the
individual cases described inside the onlineethics.org website (such as
the issues roger boisjoly faced when attempting to convince nasa
mission manager not to launch sts-51l on the cold weather morning of
jan 28, 1986.)

http://www.onlineethics.org/eng/index.html
"onlineethics.org: Engineering Pracitce
This section of the OEC contains cases, discussions, and ethical
guidelines bearing on the professional responsibilities of engineers.
These range over the engineering disciplines from civil to electrical
to biomedical engineering. The cases themselves vary significantly in
structure. Some are discussion cases that present open-ended situations
requiring a response. Some are descriptions of completed actions and
call for a judgment on an action taken. Many cases are brief, but some
detailed descriptions also appear. Most cases are at least loosely
based on real incidents, in order to give a realistic impression of the
moral problems that face engineers.
In Memoriam -- Roland Schinzinger (1926 - 2004)
Electrical engineer, pioneer in engineering ethics, and longtime
advisor to the OEC.
Cases
A variety of types of engineering cases that raise ethical issues,
including detailed historical cases, such as Three-Mile Island accident
and Roger Boisjoly on the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster,
International cases, NSPE BER judgements, Michael Pritchard's
Hypothetical cases with commentaries, and cases reported to the
IEEE."

Open sharing of information is crucial to improving everybody's
understanding of the universe around us.
Tom