Sorry, Feynman was a joke. As a Thiokol engineer, I sure didn’t him to explain why o-rings fail at low temperature – his great claim to fame from the Challenger accident, like he was the only person in the world that could figure this out. It was figured out and widely known for decades – rubber loses its resiliency at low temperatures. NASA required a SRB that was good to go at temperatures above X for Y dollars and that’s what Thiokol delivered. When NASA came back on the night before the Challenger launch and said we want to launch at Z (lower than X), Thiokol engineers said NO! but were overruled by their NASA a** kissing managers (I know I later worked for one of these prizewinning jerks). So, the Challenger disaster came as no surprise to us – we sure as h*** didn’t need some nobel prize winning p***k to tell us the how and why that NASA screwed the pooch.
jmdeur, calling Feynman a joke and a nobel prize winning p***k in the same post is an irony in itself, but more to the point, he was the reason why so many people who were not Thiokol engineers learned about the cause of the accident and more importantly, the disconnect between the science and the management.
The guy’s audience was not you or your former NASA asskissing managers, it’s the general public.
Sorry if your ego was hurt because he got famous (he actually was already a famous scientist) by using a piece of knowledge you guys had all along but that’s what happens in every field, because you have to be somewhat prominent to get that TV airtime, to get some attention and to be taken seriously.He fulfilled his role and the society is better for it.
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Sorry, Feynman was a joke. As a Thiokol engineer, I sure didn’t him to explain why o-rings fail at low temperature – his great claim to fame from the Challenger accident, like he was the only person in the world that could figure this out. It was figured out and widely known for decades – rubber loses its resiliency at low temperatures. NASA required a SRB that was good to go at temperatures above X for Y dollars and that’s what Thiokol delivered. When NASA came back on the night before the Challenger launch and said we want to launch at Z (lower than X), Thiokol engineers said NO! but were overruled by their NASA a** kissing managers (I know I later worked for one of these prizewinning jerks). So, the Challenger disaster came as no surprise to us – we sure as h*** didn’t need some nobel prize winning p***k to tell us the how and why that NASA screwed the pooch.
jmdeur, calling Feynman a joke and a nobel prize winning p***k in the same post is an irony in itself, but more to the point, he was the reason why so many people who were not Thiokol engineers learned about the cause of the accident and more importantly, the disconnect between the science and the management.
The guy’s audience was not you or your former NASA asskissing managers, it’s the general public.
Sorry if your ego was hurt because he got famous (he actually was already a famous scientist) by using a piece of knowledge you guys had all along but that’s what happens in every field, because you have to be somewhat prominent to get that TV airtime, to get some attention and to be taken seriously.He fulfilled his role and the society is better for it.