Word: booster
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...right rocket is the chief suspect as the cause of the tragedy and investigators want to retrieve its debris for possible clues. Some officials have said the cause may never be found unless the booster can be examined...
...hearings did make it clear that there had long been doubts about the reliability of the seals at the three joints between the booster rocket's four main segments. Attention remained focused on the two large synthetic rubber O rings set in grooves and designed, like washers in a faucet, to keep the rocket's superhot gases from escaping out the joints...
...amount of erosion experienced in the O rings on previous flights. Boisjoly worried in particular about Shuttle Mission 51-C in January 1985, in which the seal temperature had been 53 degrees (although the air had warmed to 66 degrees by the time of launch). When the spent boosters were recovered from that flight, what Boisjoly described as black soot "just like coal" was found behind a primary ring in one booster, indicating that gases had blown past the first ring. Although erosion had also been found after flights in warmer temperatures, 51-C had been exposed to overnight lows...
Incredible as it may seem, Shuttle Director Moore also had been one of the officials who were never told of the heated opposition to the launch by Thiokol engineers or the discovery of the booster's cold spots. Asked by the Senate subcommittee what he would have done if he had known about the cold spots, Moore replied, "I would have asked more questions about what the readings indicated." Said Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore Jr.: "The record calls into question the way alarm bells are rung and heard" at NASA...
While investigators probed the possibility of human error, the search for evidence of the technical failure that caused the Challenger explosion continued off Cape Canaveral. A flotilla of four undersea craft and ten surface ships had located and photographed parts of the right booster, scattered on the ocean floor under about 1,200 ft. of water...