Word: thiokol
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That conviction was based largely on testimony indicating how NASA officials had dealt with the preflight concerns expressed by two of the shuttle's prime contractors: Morton Thiokol, which makes the solid-fuel boosters that are the main focus of the search for a cause of the disaster, and Rockwell International, which manufactures the orbiter. Officials and engineers of both companies insisted that they had opposed the launch, at least initially, because of the cold weather and ice at the pad. But the NASA officials who heard the complaints contended that the objections had never been raised as forcefully...
...each participant to recall the discussions in the way that might put the best light on his performance and ease his conscience. George Hardy, a high engineering official at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the boosters were developed, last week accused Allan McDonald, the top Thiokol engineer present at Cape Canaveral for the launch, of having drawn on a "convenience of memory" in testifying about his preflight safety objections. Rogers protested that the comment implied McDonald might be lying and asked Hardy to withdraw...
...Analyst Richard Cook had warned in an internal memo that unless the O rings were improved, a "catastrophic" failure might follow. Three weeks ago, he revealed that during every shuttle launch, some engineers had "held their breath" in fear of an O-ring failure. Last week Engineer Roger Boisjoly, Thiokol's top expert on the rings, testified that he had sent a similar memo to his superiors only days after Cook sent his. On any one flight, his memo warned, it was "a jump ball" as to whether the seal would hold, and if it did not, "the result would...
Last week's testimony also provided distressing new detail about the weather- related worries that developed as a cold front hit the Cape on Jan. 27. After hearing forecasts that the Florida temperature might fall to as low as 18 degrees F that night, Robert Ebeling, a Thiokol 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...
Incredible as it may seem, Shuttle Director Moore also had been one of the officials who were never told of the heated opposition to the launch by Thiokol engineers or the discovery of the booster's cold spots. Asked by the Senate subcommittee what he would have done if he had known about the cold spots, Moore replied, "I would have asked more questions about what the readings indicated." Said Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore Jr.: "The record calls into question the way alarm bells are rung and heard" at NASA...