Overview

Rutherford, though always inspiring, was not a great lecturer "To Er was Rutherford!" Bohr was much worse. His failing was that he used too many words to express any idea, wandering about as he spoke, often inaudibly. ^[1]

Sir Mark Oliphant

On January 27, 1986, because of the low temperatures expected for the next morning's launch of the space shuttle Challenger, engineers at Morton Thiokol requested a delay in the launch. From their examinations of previous launches, the engineers knew that the lower the launch temperature, the more likely that explosive gases from the solid booster rockets would escape. In an afternoon meeting, these engineers succeeded in persuading management at Morton Thiokol to request a delay. However, when Morton Thiokol's engineers and management discussed the delay with NASA during a teleconference that evening, they met strong resistance. ^[2] After spending almost two hours in a conference call and reviewing thirteen presentation slides faxed from Morton Thiokol, NASA remained unconvinced of the danger. Moreover, NASA's opposition to the delay was so adamant that Morton Thiokol's management rescinded the request.

The next day, sixty-three seconds into the launch, a solid rocket booster of the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing all seven crew members on board.

One reason that Morton Thiokol's presentation failed to persuade NASA was that the presentation did not target the audience. For instance, in their presentation, the engineers and management at Morton Thiokol did not anticipate the strong bias that NASA had against delaying the...