Allan J McDonald - Refused to Sign — Transcript

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1. 0:04and so he said well we'll go back and
2. 0:07and look at all of the data we have we'd
3. 0:09like to go in a caucus to make sure that
4. 0:11we've presented everything we have and
5. 0:13we'll come back on so we asked for a
6. 0:155minute
7. 0:17caucus uh that caucus lasted for a half
8. 0:20hour and and I thought well what they're
9. 0:21doing is they're running some
10. 0:23calculations to come up with uh you know
11. 0:26what the best temperature would be or
12. 0:27the lowest they would accept
13. 0:30they came back on a half hour later and
14. 0:33now it wasn't the vice president of
15. 0:34engineering speaking who had spoke
16. 0:37before it was my
17. 0:38boss and he came back on and said they
18. 0:41had reassessed all the data and based on
19. 0:43the assessment all the data they
20. 0:45conclude that it's okay to proceed on
21. 0:47with the launch as planned now they
22. 0:49didn't give any temperature at all it
23. 0:52kind of took me back a little bit but I
24. 0:53didn't quite understand that and then uh
25. 0:57some uh fellow from NASA Marshall said
26. 1:00well uh we need that launch
27. 1:02recommendation in writing and signed by
28. 1:06a uh Martin th call
29. 1:11official I knew who that was supposed to
30. 1:13be me that's why I was the cap I had to
31. 1:16prove it and I did the smartest thing I
32. 1:18did in my entire life I refused to sign
33. 1:22the lunch recommendation because I
34. 1:23didn't understand it I didn't feel good
35. 1:25about
36. 1:25it so I forced my boss to sign it in
37. 1:29fact ta it down to me he got even with
38. 1:32me later but
39. 1:35uh we proceeded on with the launch based
40. 1:38on this uh uh
41. 1:41reassessment which was obviously
42. 1:43pressured by uh NASA to which surprised
43. 1:46me because what happened is that the
44. 1:49engineers back in Utah got themselves
45. 1:52into position where they were
46. 1:55essentially told to prove it would fail
47. 1:58now proving it will fail is a different
48. 2:00question than saying it's safe to fly
49. 2:04they could not prove that it would fail
50. 2:07which is really true and it was a burden
51. 2:10of proof got
52. 2:13switched and and you got to be careful
53. 2:15of things like that