I heard that Morton Thiokol Engineers stated that Columbia had 33% chance to fail upon lift due to the cold temperatures. BEFORE Columbia lifted off.
They were excused from the meeting and the managers took over and gave NASA the OK to launch.
I could be wrong though but I heard that in an engineering meeting back in the day.
Nope, you’re absolutely correct. I’m a test engineer and we’ve had briefings and training about how to present test data. The Morton Thiokol engineers weren’t able to get across to the managers that there was going to be a problem. That’s not to blame them, because the managers wanted that shuttle to launch and wouldn’t ask the questions that needed to be asked.