Xref: utzoo sci.space:8206 sci.space.shuttle:1936
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: space news from Sept 12 AW&ST
Message-ID: <1988Nov14.214139.1892@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Nov4.065730.10761@utzoo.uucp> <7594@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 21:41:39 GMT

In article <7594@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>>                                        ... On the other hand, I would
>>*really* like to see Morton Thiokol out of the SRB business -- they
>>deserve to get their tails kicked from here to the Moon, not to go on
>>getting lucrative contracts into the next century...
>Very easy to bash Thiokol after the fact, but remember it was Thiokol
>engineers protesting the decision to launch Challenger and NASA's
>mid-level managers browbeating the vendor into going along...

And Thiokol managers who ultimately made the decision to ignore the
engineers and tell the customer what he wanted to hear.  Don't forget,
what NASA eventually heard was not "well, we disagree but we'll go
along", it was "we've reconsidered and now see no problem".  NASA is
hardly blameless for the pressure it applied, but it was Thiokol, not
NASA, that ultimately decided to ignore the problem.  Would NASA have
gone ahead if Thiokol had stuck to its guns?  Impossible to be sure,
but I don't think so.

Being honorable under pressure is difficult, yes.  It's ever so much
simpler to take the easy way out and say "I vas chust following orders".
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu