Word: sealing
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...immigrants come to this University anyway, some becoming part of its most stifling traditions, others resisting them but still receiving the Harvard seal of assimilation on their resume. Most are probably less cynical than my friend, and more similar to my grandparents, viewing their educational triumph as a culmination rather than an aberration. Getting into Harvard means acceptance. But often that assimilation can mean changing the immigrant heritage without changing the institution...
While the search for a fix proceeded, Bob Ebeling, manager of the booster- ignition system at Morton Thiokol, wrote a plaintive interoffice memo on Oct. 1, 1985, saying, "HELP! The seal task force is constantly being delayed by every possible means . . . The allegiance to the O-ring investigation task force is very limited to a group of engineers numbering 8-10 . . . We wish we could get action by verbal request, but such is not the case. This is a red flag...
There was yet another roadblock to action: despite the documents, top flight officials at Marshall, including Mulloy, believed that the seal had redundancy in the critical early stages of ignition. Dutifully, however, Mulloy slapped a formal launch constraint on the joint problem. That meant that there could be no shuttle flight until the seal was fixed. But few above Mulloy even knew the constraint existed; worse yet, having imposed the restraint, Mulloy routinely waived it before each launch. So the shuttles flew, its astronauts innocently unaware of the lingering joint danger...
...joint's troubled history was completely dismissed on the eve of Challenger's launch. The seals had long been flagged as a problem that could be aggravated by low temperatures. Yet George Hardy, Marshall's deputy director of science and engineering, declared that he was "appalled" by Thiokol's reasoning that the cape's cold weather, predicted to be in the 30s at lift-off, should lead to a delay. In the now notorious teleconference, four Thiokol vice presidents at first concurred with the fears of their engineers. But when they heard the NASA objections, they decided to take...
...sharply about 40 miles from Chernobyl, extensive decontamination measures will be needed to make the immediate vicinity livable. He said the shattered reactor core, which is being entombed in concrete, remains hot beneath the 5,000-ton pile of sand, lead pellets and boron that helicopters have dumped to seal in radiation. Said Velikhov: "I would not like to create the illusion that all our problems are over, but I think that now we do not need to expect any unpleasant surprises...