One of the engineers who warned that launching the space shuttle Challenger could prove disastrous will speak at UNLV next week.

"Inside Views of the Challenger Disaster" will be the topic when Roger Boisjoly speaks at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the Thomas Beam Engineering Complex, Room A-107. The public is invited to attend this free event.

At the time of the shuttle explosion, Boisjoly, who was employed as a technical troubleshooter at Morton Thiokol, was one of five engineers who had been charged with solving the joint seal problems with the shuttle's rocket boosters. Morton Thiokol management overruled the group's recommendation that the launch not take place because the joint seals could fail.

After the joint seals did fail and the Challenger exploded, killing all on board, Boisjoly's testimony and submission of documents to the commission investigating the disaster were vital to exposing the truth about technical and management problems both before and after the explosion, said Robert Boehm, UNLV professor of mechanical engineering.

Boisjoly's presentation is part of a National Science Foundation-funded summer research program that has brought 16 student engineers from around the nation to UNLV's mechanical engineering department. His talk is part of the program's engineering ethics component.

For additional information, call Boehm at 895-4160.