The Ethical Analysis Of Allan Mcdonald's Challenger Disaster

A major player from the Challenger Disaster is Allan McDonald. He was the director of the solid rocket booster project and the Morton-Thiokol representative at Cape Kennedy. Out of the eight different Impediments to Responsible Action, McDonald most represented “fear.” This is shown during the Cape Kennedy conference when “[McDonald] refused to sign the formal recommendation to launch…” but failed to warn everyone that the rocket’s O-rings would not function at one hundred-percent due to the low temperatures expected on the day of the launch. He merely recommended that the launch not happen the next day, but did not suggest it be postponed or present any possible solutions. Furthermore, McDonald failed to meet his professional duty of care.
An engineer’s professional duty of care is to act as any reasonable person would in designing/creating projects that can affect the health and safety of the public. McDonald only met his general professional duty of care by recommending not to launch; however, any true professional would take the extra step to secure the astronauts’ lives, and act cautiously rather than suffering the
It is better to take time on perfecting the work than to fall short of acceptable in any project. Negligence is never okay and will not help anybody in court if damage is done to somebody or to something. Engineering experimentation on both the technical and social should only be done if positive outcome is guaranteed. In this case, we can see that even top professional engineers are susceptible to influences of these impediments. Evidently, everybody is vulnerable to falling into any of the eight impediments to responsible action, but it is the responsibility of us engineers to fulfill our professional duty of care and take care of our