William Ray Lucas (March 1, 1922 – February 10, 2025) was the fourth Director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

In 1952, Lucas moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to join Wernher von Braun's team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, based at the Redstone Arsenal.

Under his direction, Marshall was responsible for managing the Shuttle's propulsion system, including the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and the main engines on the Orbiter.

[3] Despite Lucas' achievements (he received nearly every honor that NASA could bestow), few people outside the aerospace community heard of him prior to the Challenger tragedy.

In the aftermath of the incident, it emerged that key personnel at Marshall, including Lucas, knew of a potentially catastrophic design flaw with the SRBs as early as 1977.

Instead, the metal parts of the SRB casing bent away from each other, opening a gap through which hot gases could leak out and erode the O-ring seals.

[3] Despite his outward image as a stickler for doing things according to regulations, Lucas flagrantly violated them by ordering his managers not to raise any Marshall-related issue during the "Flight Readiness Review" process that could cause a delay in the launch.

In a YouTube interview published posthumously, Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly stated that: "[Lucas] ran [the MSFC] like a Gestapo prison camp!