Word: boosterism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...exploration. The Soviets' Mir (Peace) space station, manned on March 13, is operational, while the U.S. is not yet fully committed to developing such a permanent space platform. The Soviets, long ahead of the U.S. in the lift capability of its superrockets, will soon have a new SL-W booster that can push 220,000 lbs. into orbit, about 3 1/2 times as much as the U.S. shuttle. The Soviets have, of course, one huge advantage: their authoritarian government provides long-term planning and consistently high funding for its priorities. "The Soviets worship only certain things," observes George Jeffs, president...
...plentiful that it masked rather than exposed the problems. The Rogers report is expected to detail the extraordinary tale of the now famous O rings, the synthetic-rubber circles, .28 in. thick and 37.5 ft. in circumference, designed to make certain that the superhot gases generated within each solid booster could not escape through the joints of the rocket's segments. When flames did penetrate a rocket joint on Challenger, they ignited the shuttle's external liquid-fuel tank, causing the explosion. The commission will cite the O-ring history not only as the cause of the catastrophe but also...
Whether the space accidents were merely coincidental or shared some human failing was not clear. A poorly designed joint in the shuttle's boosters, coupled with the refusal of officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the rockets were developed, to heed engineers' warnings about the cold weather at launch time, presumably will be cited by a presidential commission as contributing to that catastrophe. The commission disclosed last week that just five days before the disaster, the Marshall managers had virtually dismissed the recurring flaws in the joint, deciding in an unsigned internal memo that "this...
...suspect in the April 18 Titan failure is also a booster rocket. But a burn-through caused by faulty insulation seems the likeliest explanation. As for the Delta failure, two unexplained surges of high current in the main engine's electrical circuits apparently lowered battery voltage, leading to the premature shutdown. This possibility had been detected in 1974. Some corrections were made then, but not to the circuit that failed...
...underwater search operation in history. Costing some $20 million, the search also retrieved enough of the shuttle's parts to substantiate the findings of NASA investigators and a presidential commission looking into the disaster. The probers have concluded that a joint between two segments of the shuttle's right booster failed, letting superhot gases escape and rapidly ignite liquid fuel from the external tank, causing an explosion 73 seconds into the flight...