Word: lunde
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Captain: Ken Lund...
Captain: Ken Lund...
When the all-important teleconference began at 8:45 p.m., Lawrence Mulloy, chief of the booster program at Marshall, had joined Reinartz and McDonald at the Cape end of the network. Lovingood and Hardy were at Huntsville. In Utah, Lund was joined by Joe Kilminster, vice president for booster programs; Jerald Mason, senior vice president, and Calvin Wiggins, vice president for space projects. A dozen Thiokol engineers in Utah were also participating. Boisjoly presented six charts that had been transmitted to the others and argued that "lower temperature was a factor" in O-ring performance. Lund, the highest engineering officer...
...supported Thiokol's no- go position, asked for a five-minute recess to consider NASA's objections. The break stretched on for half an hour. Caucusing in Utah, the engineers remained unanimous against the launch. Nonetheless, Mason declared that "we have to make a management decision," then turned to Lund and asked him to 'take off his engineering hat and put on his management hat." In front of the surprised engineers, Mason polled only the management officials, getting Lund, Wiggins and Kilminster to join him in giving NASA a recommendation from Thiokol to launch...
Understandably, the Rogers commission wanted to know what had caused the switch at Thiokol. Testified Lund: "We got ourselves into the thought process that we were trying to find some way to prove to them it (the booster) wouldn't work. We couldn't prove absolutely that it wouldn't work." When Mason was asked whether telling Lund to put on his management hat did not amount to pressuring his subordinate to change his mind, he replied, "Well, I hope not, but it could be interpreted that way." Both Hardy and Mulloy insisted that they had exerted no pressure...