In cold weather, the rings would become so inflexible that they might fail to seal against the metal surfaces of the casing—and not just in the first moments after the rockets lit, but at any point during their two-minute flight. But when Boisjoly reported the findings to his manager in the engineering department at Thiokol, he told him to keep the data to himself; it would be too damaging to the company if anyone at NASA learned what they had found.
