e joint and in the failure by both Thiokol and NASA's solid rocket booster project office to understand and respond to facts obtained during testing."(57) The report lays the blame for the accident on both the space agency and its solid !
             rocket motor contractor, Morton Thiokol, Inc., Brigham City, Utah.(Fitcher, 132) Neither responded adequately to internal warnings about the faulty seal design, the commission concluded. Nor did either make a "timely effort to develop and verify a new seal after the initial design was shown to be deficient." "Neither organization developed a solution to the unexpected occurrences of the O-ring erosion and blow-by, even though this problem was experienced frequently during shuttle flight history," the report said. "Instead, Thiokol and NASA management came to accept erosion and blow-by as unavoidable and an acceptable flight risk."(132)
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