Word: reinartz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...disclosed last week that just five days before the disaster, the Marshall managers had virtually dismissed the recurring flaws in the joint, deciding in an unsigned internal memo that "this problem is considered closed." Three of the Marshall officials who pushed the fatal launch are leaving their posts. Stanley Reinartz, the shuttle manager, last month asked for reassignment; George Hardy, deputy director of science and engineering, took early retirement at 55; Lawrence Mulloy, the booster manager, last week was shifted to another position at the center...
...shuttle projects office at Marshall, set up a teleconference among engineers and managers at * the Cape, Huntsville and in Utah to discuss the O-ring problem. Before it began, Lovingood got the impression that Thiokol was concerned enough to seek a flight delay. He asked his boss, Stanley Reinartz, shuttle projects manager at Marshall who was then at the Cape, to tell Arnold Aldrich, the overall shuttle manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, who was also in Florida, that a flight delay was likely. But Reinartz decided to wait until he had "a full understanding of the situation...
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...
When the teleconference resumed and Kilminster announced the startling turnabout, Marshall's shuttle manager Reinartz asked if anyone on the network had any comment on the decision. There was no response. Thiokol was now on record as no longer opposing the launch, and the telephone hookup was ended. Kilminster telefaxed a memo to the Cape and Huntsville formalizing the change...
...Reinartz testified that he had never told Aldrich, his launch-command superior, about the discussion with Thiokol or about that firm's original opposition to the flight. He argued that since the issue had been resolved, there was no need to do so. When Mulloy took the same position, a commissioner, Air Force Major General Donald Kutyna, observed bitingly, "If this was an airplane and I just had a fight with Boeing over whether the wing could fall off, I think I'd tell the pilot." Reinartz explained that he had informed his boss, William Lucas, director of the Marshall...