Moore Moore, 46, was associate administrator for spaceflight at the time of the Challenger disaster and as such was the final link in the launch decision chain of command. Chairman Rogers said May 2 that it appeared McDonald was being 'punished for being right.' Jesse W. He arranged a conference call the day before the flight to voice his objections, and fought well into the night - after his superiors had overriden his arguments and signed approval of the launch - to try to convince NASA and Thiokol he was right and they were wrong.Īfter telling his story to the Rogers Commission, McDonald said he was 'set aside' in company hierarchy. McDonald McDonald, 48, was the senior Morton Thiokol engineer at the Kennedy Space Center who refused to approve plans to launch Challenger in the unusually cold weather. Mason acknowledged that the company technically violated NASA rules by basing the launch approval decision on their belief that a backup seal would hold in the event cold weather harmed the primary seal. 25 he felt no more than the usual pressure from NASA to reverse the recommendation. So we got ourselves in the thought process that we were trying to find some way to prove to them it wouldn't work.' Gerald Mason Mason, 59, was the Thiokol vice president in charge of the management meeting in Brigham City, Utah, at which company officials overruled the engineering staff and agreed to launch. But he said on launch eve, 'We had to prove to them we weren't ready. ![]() 25 that he previously had always been in a position of defending the company's decision to proceed with a launch. ![]() Lund, 48, vice president for engineering at Thiokol, was one of the four company officials who overruled staff engineers and agreed to give NASA permission to launch Challenger.
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