Groupthink is defined as a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action…. Groupthink refers to the deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.779 In another NASA accident, a launch pad fire took the lives of Apollo I astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee on January 30, 1967. Gene Krantz, the Mission Control Flight Director, addressed his staff by saying,

“We were too gungho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work…. Not one of us stood up and said, “Damn it, STOP!”780 Is this what happened when Thiokol’s management group took off its “engineering hats”?? p-9687