In the hours before the ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28th 1986, Robert Ebeling and his colleagues spoke up. They warned their employer -- Morton Thiokol -- and NASA that it was too cold to launch.
The rest is history: their employer and NASA opted to go ahead in spite of their warning. The engineers turned out to be right: the seals in the booster rocket malfunctioned in the cold, so the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after it left the launch pad. Seven astronauts perished.
It's vital to hold up Mr. Ebeling and people like him as role models, just like we hold up the astronauts as heroes. Good engineers can design things. Great engineers, like Mr. Ebeling, have the courage to speak the truth about the things they make. Let's honor his courage.