Talk:Roger Boisjoly

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Articles [1], [2] from The New York Times regarding Boisjoly's legal action against Morton Thiokol.
United States ex rel. Boisjoly v. Morton Thiokol, 706 F. Supp. 795, 809–810 (N.D. Utah 1988), civil no. NC-87-091W; the US$2 billion lawsuit brought by Boisjoly on behalf of the U.S. government alleging violation of the False Claims Act in connection with the Challenger disaster (dismissed together with Boisjoly, below). Available on LexisNexis.
Boisjoly v. Morton Thiokol, 706 F. Supp. 795, 809–810 (N.D. Utah 1988), civil no. NC-87-079W; the lawsuit brought by Boisjoly on his own behalf for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, antitrust, witness tampering, and civil conspiracy in connection with his treatment before and after the Challenger disaster (dismissed together with U.S. ex rel. Boisjoly, above). Available on LexisNexis.

Sign in, mystery source

From the "Sources of information" section:

"Most of this information is taken from personal accounts by Robert Boisjoly and others during a TV Documentary on Channel 4 in the UK, which aired on 2 February 2006. It is accepted by this editor that these views may not be impartial, which may account for any discrepancies in the information above."

And who is Robert Boisjoly? Is he a son of Roger? --ChrisWinter 05:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Roger Boisjoly Passed away on January 6, 2012 after a courageous fight with cancer. --Darlene Richens, daughter of Roger Mark Boisjoly — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.40.106.42 (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cosmetic Changes

I stumbled across this page because I'm in a class studying the Challenger disaster and noticed that it (while informative) didn't look too pretty. I'm going to try and format/structure it. Spizzywik 04:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gross Factual Errors Exist

It appears that whoever wrote the body of the text on "O-ring safety concerns" and "Challenger disaster" failed to read with any degree of completeness the source material cited.

For example the O-ring failures were exacerbated by the leak test which pushed the primary o-ring onto the wrong side of the o-ring groove, thus setting the stage for the o-ring having to move from one side of the groove to the other. The chance for combustion gas blow-by was significantly increased as a result, particularly in cold weather. The text then mentions the O-ring failures observed on 51C without attributing the failure to 51C. If you don't know about 51C, this portion is very misleading. There are other technical issues leading to cascading failure probability in the o-rings and in the joint itself. What was entered either needs to be greatly simplified, without pretense of offering an explanation of the failure mechanisms, or it needs to be greatly complicated, thereby offering a more accurate explanation of how the failure occurred.

The cause-and-effect discussion in the disaster section in the paragraph beginning "Boisjoly's concerns..." is incorrect. The O-rings did not fail completely immediately after ignition and burn away, nor was putty acting as a sealant during this period. Indeed (again referring to cited sources) blow-holes through the putty are what allowed initial erosion (burning) of the o-rings. The putty was designed to act as an insulator, not a sealant. I removed the reference to aluminum oxide sealant, and substituted putty in the article, but that is an accurate comment in the sense of the original paragraph, which like the SRM joint design, is fatally flawed. This paragraph should be re-written to be accurate instead of misleading.

A better reference is an article published by IEEE Spectrum, February 1987, "Fatal Flaw in 51L". I can't find my copy and don't know how to find a copy.

Carrellk (talk) 10:09, 29 January 2013 (UTC)carrellk[reply]