Three decades ago, McDonald organized a teleconference with NASA officials, Thiokol executives and the worried engineers.Įbeling helped assemble the data that demonstrated the risk. "If you hadn't called me," McDonald told Ebeling, "they were in such a 'go' mode, we'd have never been able to stop it." McDonald phoned Ebeling recently after hearing the NPR story.
He called his boss, Allan McDonald, who was Thiokol's representative at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "We all knew if the seals failed, the shuttle would blow up," said engineer Roger Boisjoly in a 1986 interview with NPR's Daniel Zwerdling.Įbeling was the first to sound the alarm the morning before the Challenger launch. They worried that cold temperatures overnight - the forecast said 18 degrees - would stiffen the rubber O-ring seals that prevent burning rocket fuel from leaking out of booster joints. They sent supportive emails and letters after our January story marking the 30th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy.Įbeling was one of five booster rocket engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to stop the 1986 Challenger launch. Hundreds of NPR readers and listeners helped Ebeling overcome persistent guilt in the weeks before his death. "He was able to let that part of his life go."Įbeling died Monday at age 89 in Brigham City, Utah, after a long illness, according to his daughter Kathy Ebeling. "It was as if he got permission from the world," says his daughter Leslie Ebeling Serna. But at the end of his life, his family says, he was finally able to find peace.
Bob Ebeling with his daughter Kathy (center) and his wife, Darlene.īob Ebeling spent a third of his life consumed with guilt about the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
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