From the readings, it would appear that the Challenger disaster had a few causes as to what went wrong. I would say that there was one cause, but a series of mis-decisions that instead of fixing the problem, ended up perpetuating it leading to the disaster. Empirically speaking, the cause of the Challenger incident can be accredited to the failing of the rubber O-ring in the solid rocket booster. This structural failure allowed the molten aluminum to melt the O-ring and then burn through the strut holding the rocket booster on to the external fuel tank. Once the strut was compromised, the solid rocket booster came loose and collided with the external fuel tank causing the fuel to ignite and the ensuing explosion. All of this, however could have been avoided if NASA had not pressured Thiokol into giving them a green light to launch. The way the story goes is that the shuttle had been sitting out on the launch pad the night before launch when temperatures had reached freezing. The O-rings were known to perform poorly in low temperatures, but NASA did not want to wait to launch, so the managers at NASA and the managers at Thiokol signed off and listed the O-ring performance was just an "acceptable flight risk." According to the article, NASA suffered from what is known as groupthink. It can basically be summed up as a group mentality in which everyone is so fixated on the same goal, that when an issue arises, no one wants to jeopardize the possibility of achieving the desired goal. At least this is what the issue was with NASA. By writing off the issue with the O-rings, instead of devising a solution to the problem, they let it manifest itself at launch as the "major malfunction" that lead to the loss of the crew and the vehicle.
I think Roger Boisjoly was right in sharing information with the public. It seemed apparent that NASA was trying to solve the problem, they did not want to accept any blame for what had happened and instead amiss their internal investigation, they were just looking for ways to shuffle off blame and institute no real change to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. Whether or not it was ethical for Boisjoly to do so, I am not sure but from a moral standpoint, I think that he is right. Then again, shouldn't what is ethically correct also be morally correct as well? If I was in his position, which I hope to never have to be, I think it would depend on the situation. If it was a serious situation which resulted in the death of people and it was clearly the company's fault or the company had some hand in the issue and their trying to spin it and keep their hands clean and not own up to their mistake or try to set forth procedures or practices to ensure that nothing of that nature will ever happen again, I think I would speak up. It would be the right thing to do because in the end, the company or whoever is involved should have to own up to their actions. However if the company was setting forth change to prevent something like this from happening again, I would not speak up because their fixing the problem and they are owning up to their actions. I would expect them to speak up or to say how they're fixing the issue or what their plan is. That being said, I don't think it was right for Boisjoly's colleagues to treat him the way they did. It was not right for him to get removed from the space program, nor for his boss to make his life a "living hell," nor for his colleagues to act as if he didn't exist. If anything they should've backed him up and supported them because he did the right thing. He did what everyone else was too cowardly to do. He spoke up so that the public knew what happened which would force NASA to have to change their protocols to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.