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From: pritch@osu-eddie.UUCP (Norman Pritchett)
Newsgroups: net.columbia,net.space
Subject: Re: Morton-Thiokol Engineering Claims
Message-ID: <1406@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Feb-86 06:26:21 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.1406
Posted: Fri Feb 28 06:26:21 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 04:55:05 EST
References: <1301@decwrl.DEC.COM> <564@mmm.UUCP>
Reply-To: pritch@osu-eddie.UUCP (Norman Pritchett)
Organization: The Ohio State University
Lines: 38
Xref: watmath net.columbia:2520 net.space:6106

In article <564@mmm.UUCP> mrgofor@mmm.UUCP (MKR) writes:
>In article <1301@decwrl.DEC.COM> eros@chovax.DEC writes:
>>
>>  Over the last few days, engineers at Morton-Thiokol have been falling
>>  all over one another to express how sure they were that the O-rings
>>  on the SRBs would fail during launch and how schedule-minded and
>>  inflexible NASA management was about delaying the mission.
>>  
>>  This brings up an interesting question - if these folks were
>>  so sure of the danger to the SRBs (in fact, one senior engineer said
>>  that he and other engineers expressed surprise at launch time that
>>  Challenger cleared the tower without incident) why didn't they go
>>  to the media with their concerns?  
>>  
>>  Tony Eros
>>  !decwrl!chovax!eros
>
>	If the MT engineers were 75% sure that the shuttle would not make
>it, would that justify "going to the media" (aka "going over their bosses'
>heads")? What, then, if the 25% chance happened and all went well? They'd
>be in the bread lines, that's what. The bosses made the decisions, and at
>some point, you have to acknowledge the authority of those "in power". You
>really don't want that sort of anarchy going on in a company that handles
>such sensitive ventures as this. You want to invest the authority in the 
>right people and in the right decision-making systems, and follow those
>rules.
>

Even after the accident, they couldn't voice their concerns until after the
cuase was determined.  There is the likelyhood that some other failure may
have been the cause and the M-T engineerings coming out immediately would
have prevented an objective anylsis of the evidence.

-- 
Norm Pritchett, The Ohio State University
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