Netflix Special Challenger The Final Flight - curious omission.

Submitted by GhostRiders t3_10l1b3d in space

The Challenger disaster is was a major part of my childhood and as such over the years I have read many books and watched many shows about it.

I noticed this series on Netflix which was made in 2020 and began to watch.

As each I watched each episode I noticed a that a name which has become synonymous with the disaster had so far hadn't been mentioned and that is Roger Boisjoly.

Roger Boisjoly has always been portrayed as the main voice against the launch of Challenger and yet in this documentary where many former employees of Morton Thiokol who were personally involved in the tradgey at no point mentioned his name.

The only reference to Roger Boisjoly is picture of a letter that had his signature on it.

I found it bizarre that any documentary in this day and age about Challenger does not mention one of the most important and well known person involved in the tradgey.

So the question I now ask considering how many former employees of Morton Thiokol that were involved as well as NASA and Independent Journalists, has Roger Boisjoly part been massively overplayed due to his witness statement, consequent interviews and reputation as a whistle-blower or is that even to this day, his former colleagues still hold a significant grudge against him even after his death that they would agree to take part in this documentary his Roger was completely omitted.

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SFDinKC t1_j5vnr4y wrote

I was working at Morton Thiokol as a preliminary design engineer when the Challenger accident happened. I had only been there 3 months and it was my first job out of college. I remember a lot more talk on that morning being about how Al McDonald was going to get fired as soon as the shuttle made orbit for not signing off on the flight readiness statement the night before. In the few weeks after the disaster I heard more about Boisjoly. Mostly how people thought he was starting to have a nervous breakdown because he felt so bad that he was unable to get NASA to take the o-ring cold issue seriously enough in the months leading up to the launch.

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danielravennest t1_j5w3jq3 wrote

Small world department. I was working for Boeing's space systems division at the time, and we had a two-stage solid rocket in the cargo bay that flight. It was intended to send a NASA communications satellite to high orbit.

People in our division knew the astronauts, because we trained them how to deploy the upper stage with the satellite from the cargo bay. Until they found our rocket intact on the ocean floor, we didn't know if the accident was our fault, because it was 27,000 pounds of rocket fuel. Man that was a tense couple of weeks.

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mike-foley t1_j5wu3un wrote

That gave me chills.. Can't imagine how it impacted all of you.

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danielravennest t1_j5zmnfi wrote

For me personally, I went to work on the Space Station project the following year. Space systems is my career, but Shuttle technology carrying people was too flawed. That was borne out by the second Shuttle accident, and I fear for crew flying on the SLS rocket, which is still Shuttle tech (in some cases literally reused old Shuttle parts).

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zoinkability t1_j61hogk wrote

The one potential saving grace I see for SLS is that there is a realistic escape aystem

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mike-foley t1_j5znnok wrote

I don't see SLS lasting beyond 3-5 launches.

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JohnHazardWandering t1_j63qdgh wrote

That's more likely due to it being crazy expensive, not a safety issue though, right?

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mike-foley t1_j63ssuz wrote

Crazy expensive, sure.. But that means there won’t be as many launches as the Shuttle so the odds are in its favor that it won’t go boom. Maybe. I guess we’ll see.

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[deleted] t1_j622wvr wrote

[deleted]

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DirkMcDougal t1_j6252j7 wrote

Some of the SRB segments are literally re-used segments from shuttle SRB's. And the the first few flights are using RS-25's which flew on shuttle missions.... then throwing them in the ocean.

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sardoodledom_autism t1_j5yenm6 wrote

I had to read sections of his book Truth Lies and Orings in my professional ethics class. It’s amazing how the man was right, did everything he could to stop the accident, then still got demoted and punished.

He won in the end but you have to wonder if 9 times out of 10 PR departments would have hung him out to dry

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MugillacuttyHOF37 t1_j613snt wrote

Do you know if he tried to go to the media to expose the issue or was that even a possibility?

Not pointing fingers, I'm just curious as it was before my time and my knowledge of the accident is just articles I've found on the web.

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jason2354 t1_j61uc9u wrote

It was the night before the launch before the internet.

Even if he could get to someone, there would be zero reach to the story in such a short amount of time.

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MugillacuttyHOF37 t1_j61zu9s wrote

I did not know it was the night before...wow, what a tough position for him to be in. Thanks for the answer.

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sardoodledom_autism t1_j65enb4 wrote

He went to the congressional hearings and threw everyone under the bus, then was immediately demoted. Congress had to step in and fight to get his position back

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Dumguy1214 t1_j5vx706 wrote

history is laced with persons that have figured something out and labelled as mad men

who believes something is so small you cant see it

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BDW3 t1_j5y2aee wrote

This is the theory of the tenth man. But very few companies and industries execute that theory sadly.

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OptimusSublime t1_j5u1tbo wrote

Yeah I noticed that too. I wrote a very comprehensive report for my engineering degree regarding the ethics involved in that whole situation and he was the one voice that needed to be listened to the most, and the omission of his work really devalued the documentary, though it was still fascinating.

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Heavyspire t1_j5ya3w0 wrote

Did this incident change how the launch process happens?

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TrueBirch t1_j5zofmm wrote

Absolutely. Don't take my word for it, here's a detailed NASA press release about some of the changes they were making as a result. The review board went far beyond just looking at the launch process. They took a comprehensive review of the entire program, and most of their suggestions had nothing to do with not launching in cold temperatures.

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lilrabbitfoofoo t1_j5uhdz1 wrote

Shuttle Senior QC also tried to call off the launch and were likewise overruled. I talked to one of them just hours after the disaster and they told me then that they already were sure it was the O-rings and the cold. This information would take a long time to reach the general public.

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Sledgehammer925 t1_j5vni9j wrote

A documentary should always be taken with a grain of salt. Or an entire salt lick.

There’s been documentaries that have had interviews edited in such a way as to say the exact opposite of what the interviewee was saying.

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Vertigomums19 t1_j5zvma8 wrote

I was going to ask “who produced it? Who funded the documentary?” That can sway the lean.

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thx1138a t1_j5vsqrq wrote

Your phrasing suggests you haven’t finished the documentary. Is that right?

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Syonoq t1_j5wq1cw wrote

I scrolled down because, either I watched THE OTHER Challenger Documentary or….

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GhostRiders OP t1_j5vuxjn wrote

One more episode to go.

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thx1138a t1_j68rvqo wrote

I’ve a feeling Boisjoly appears more in the last, if it’s the one I saw.

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GhostRiders OP t1_j68szol wrote

Nope, not one mention of him...

The documentary is called Challenger The Final Flight. It was released in 2020 and it was made 4 different production companies one of them being bad robot.

After a little research into the people who had a major role in this shows product its even more strange that Roger had been left out as they had been close colleagues with him.

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windysideofcare t1_j60txcf wrote

I remember that day so vividly. I came home from school and my mom told me what had happened and I looked down into the basement and saw it replaying over and over again on the TV. We had just returned the day before from a trip to Orlando and Kennedy space Center and we were standing outside waiting to watch the shuttle take off on one of its delayed days. We had met some astronauts at Kennedy space Center and I didn't realize being a young kid that the man that I had met and gotten an autograph of was a different astronaut and not one that was on the Challenger. But that definitely was a wake-up call for me and changed my childhood to one that was not quite so innocent. God rest all their souls.

As for your post I wonder why they left him out? That is so bizarre.

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Fmartins84 t1_j5yhoe8 wrote

Documentaries aren't what they used to. Now everything is water washed, everything is made to shock you, not inform or teach you.

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Crizznik t1_j5z25lp wrote

I've got bad news for you, it was never any different. The documentaries that get famous for being good actually have always been in the minority.

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13ventrm t1_j62dqpp wrote

I'd hazard that for some reason they want to try and reduce the perception of how avoidable the accident was. Cut out the guy warning everyone, then there's a lot less culpability landing in the laps of those who disregarded the warnings.

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squarek1 t1_j5u3pag wrote

Probably didn't sign a release so couldn't use his name etc. Just a guess

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betterl8thannvr t1_j5ua9dz wrote

He's dead, but also no release would be required if he was alive.

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TrueBirch t1_j5zonh8 wrote

Yeah, he made enough public statements that you could include a lot of coverage just by quoting public statements. US government reports generally have no copyright, you can use them in your own work however you want.

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Decronym t1_j626cic wrote

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |SRB|Solid Rocket Booster| |SSME|Space Shuttle Main Engine|

^(3 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 26 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8486 for this sub, first seen 27th Jan 2023, 04:21]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

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egregiouscodswallop t1_j5uffub wrote

I'm too young to remember the Challenger personally but here are two theories when it comes to making documentaries: 1) his public appearance made him seem important at the time, but he was essentially a mouthpiece for others who were more entrenched in the story and 2) the creators could be either too old or too young, either assuming everyone would already know him or that he was some irrelevant character since he never came up during interviews. Either way, sounds like he could have been cut for time. Especially if his role was mainly media based since media offer us a window to the drama and the documentarian was already backstage in the thick of it.

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