Dittemore

Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, would be talking to reporters later that day, and he needed numbers and information.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

Sean O'Keefe, who was badly advised by his NASA lieutenants, made unwise public statements deriding the "foamologists"; and even Ron Dittemore, NASA's technically expert shuttle program manager, joined in with categorical denials.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

Ron Dittemore, the shuttle program manager, would be talking to reporters later that day, and he needed numbers and information.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

Ignorant of the fact that the Kennedy group had already made such a request, and that it had just been peevishly canceled, they sent out two requests of their own, directed, appropriately, to Ron Dittemore and Linda Ham, but through channels that were a little off-center, and happened to fail.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

At the top of the tangle, neither Ron Dittemore nor Linda Ham ever learned that the Debris Assessment Team wanted pictures; at the bottom, the Debris Assessment engineers heard the "no" without suspecting that it was not an answer to their request.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

Sean O'Keefe, who was badly advised by his NASA lieutenants, made unwise public statements deriding the "foamologists"; and even Ron Dittemore, NASA's technically expert shuttle program manager, joined in with categorical denials.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

At no point since the accident had anyone at NASA stepped forward to accept personal responsibility for contributing to this accident — not Linda Ham, not Ron Dittemore, and certainly not Sean O'Keefe.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

Dittemore was traveling at the time, and has since retired.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

But like her boss, Ron Dittemore, with whom she discussed the Columbia foam strike several times, she was so immersed in the closed world of shuttle management that she simply did not elevate the event — this "in-family" thing — to the level of concerns requiring action.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003

In the Houston hierarchy it operated above the flight controllers in the Mission Control room, and just below the shuttle program manager, Ron Dittemore.

Columbia's Last Flight 2003