Robert Lund
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. He told the Rogers Commission Feb. 25 that he previously had always been in a position of defending the company's decision to proceed with a launch. But he said on launch eve, 'We had to prove to them we weren't ready. 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. Mason told the Rogers Commission Feb. 25 he felt no more than the usual pressure from NASA to reverse the recommendation. 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. Allan J. 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. 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.
After telling his story to the Rogers Commission, McDonald said he was 'set aside' in company hierarchy. Chairman Rogers said May 2 that it appeared McDonald was being 'punished for being right.' Jesse W. 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. Moore, who had been named director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston just five days before the disaster, was in the launch control center at the Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 28. He testified before the Rogers Commission that he was never informed of a launch eve debate in which rocket engineers with Thiokol unanimously opposed the planned blastoff because of concern about the effects of record cold Florida weather on the O-ring seals in Challenger's boosters. Lawrence B. Mulloy Mulloy, 52, the former chief of the solid rocket booster program, told Thiokol's engineers who advised against launching Challenger to prove their case with hard data. On May 9, Marshall Space Flight Center Director William R. Lucas appointed Mulloy to a newly created position, that of assistant to the director of the science and engineering directorate at Marshall. Mulloy said he had expected removal from the post he had held since 1982 and that he may leave NASA. Stanley R. Reinartz Reinartz, 53, had been manager of the shuttle projects office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center only since August 1985. Reinartz knew of Morton Thiokol's recommendation during the Jan. 27 teleconference against launching, but did not pass Thiokol's concern on to top NASA management. Citing health and personal reasons, Reinartz asked to be relieved of his shuttle position April 2 and was returned to his old job as manager of Marshall's special projects office. Sally K. Ride Ride, 35, was the first American woman to fly in space aboard a shuttle. A veteran of a subsequent flight, Ride is a member of the Rogers Commission. In public hearings, she has been especially critical of NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center, who repeatedly signed waivers clearing shuttles for launch despite menacing evidence that booster joints were not operating properly. She told a reporter that she would not fly on a shuttle again until the safety issues surrounding the rocket joints have been resolved. William P. Rogers Rogers, 72, was selected by President Reagan to head the commission to investigate the Challenger accident. Rogers served as attorney general to President Eisenhower from 1958 to 1961 and secretary of state to Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He is now a senior partner in the law firm of Rogers & Wells. Rogers led much of the questioning during a series of public hearings held by the commission and on Feb. 27 said the NASA decision-making process that allowed the Challenger launch to proceed was 'clearly flawed.' Richard H. Truly Truly, 48, is a former shuttle commander who was named to head the shuttle program after the Challenger accident. Truly, a rear admiral, was head of the Navy's Space Command when he was asked to return to NASA. One of his first jobs was to take over leadership of NASA's internal investigation board. It is his job to oversee the recovery of the shuttle program. John W. Young Young, 55, is chief of the astronaut office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. A veteran of six spaceflights, including a walk on the moon, Young wrote an internal memo March 4, later leaked to the media, in which he charged NASA management had allowed launch schedule pressure to compromise flight safety. As for prior concerns about the joints in shuttle booster rockets, Young wrote: 'There is only one driving reason that such a potentially dangerous system would ever be allowed to fly -- launch schedule pressure.'
