Word: lunde
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...engineer at the company's plant in Brigham City, Utah, telephoned McDonald at the Cape about 4 p.m. He said that he and other engineers at the plant were worried about the seals. McDonald then got the latest prediction, about 22 degrees , and, finding this "very serious," called Robert Lund, the vice president for engineering at Thiokol, to urge a full-scale analysis to determine if the seals could perform safely at that temperature. It should be "an engineering decision," McDonald told Lund, "not a programmanagement decision...
Back in Utah, preparations for the pivotal teleconference were rushed. Lund ordered all data collected on any correlation between temperature and the amount of erosion experienced in the O rings on previous flights. Boisjoly worried in particular about Shuttle Mission 51-C in January 1985, in which the seal temperature had been 53 degrees (although the air had warmed to 66 degrees by the time of launch). When the spent boosters were recovered from that flight, what Boisjoly described as black soot "just like coal" was found behind a primary ring in one booster, indicating that gases had blown past...
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...