Word: boosterism
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...fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger was an accident waiting to happen if estimates of solid rocket booster failure in a 1983 Air Force report are true, says Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass...
...seven crew members of the Challenger were killed when it exploded shortly after lift-off Jan. 28, and a possible leak in the right booster is considered a possible cause...
...potentially hazardous failures that could lead to a catastrophic loss of a shuttle, failure of a solid rocket booster was the most likely to occur, according to the Air Force report...
Still, the way the boosters continued flying after the explosion prompted some experts to reject the likelihood of a burnthrough in either one. Hurled away from the exploding external tank, both rockets appeared to be moving rather stably, producing the awesome Y-shaped pattern that millions of Americans will never forget. A burnthrough on the side of the casing, several rocket specialists say, would have sent the booster cartwheeling wildly through space. Bob Truax, a retired engineer who directed the Thor missile program in the 1950s, agrees. "After the explosion, they were continuing on a fairly normal trajectory," he says...
...week's end the New York Times reported that NASA technicians had found evidence amid the reams of telemetry that seemed to support the burnthrough theory. According to the unnamed source, the data show that the right solid- fuel booster had a pressure drop of nearly 30 lbs. per sq. in. and a loss of 100,000 lbs., or about 4%, of normal thrust about 10 sec. before the explosion --the kind of decrease a burnthrough would have caused. Later the same day, NASA released new pictures and a videotape showing what it called "an unusual plume" of flame streaking...