Word: exhaustively
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Garlits and his competitors build and drive a class of dragster known as the top fueler--rail thin, about 20 ft. long, with big, sticky rear wheels and a high wing in back. Behind the driver, the engine throws flame from its exhaust headers and makes a noise that starts like a garbage truck under heavy gunfire and increases rapidly to an apocalyptic roar. "It'll blow your nose for you," one fan declares...
...seal the joint between the rocket's segments had begun to burn. Roughly a quarter-inch thick and 37.5 ft. in circumference, the large O rings rest in grooves at the three joints. Like the washers that prevent faucets from leaking, they are designed to keep the rocket's exhaust gases from escaping through any gaps in the joints. These are especially vulnerable under the immense forces generated at lift-off (the entire shuttle bends momentarily in what engineers call "the twang," and the nearly half-inch-thick steel casing of the boosters balloons slightly above and below each joint...
...seas last week hampered their certain identification and recovery. While both rockets had been reported blown up by radio signals within 30 seconds of the accident, NASA belatedly explained that only the nose cones and nozzles were detonated. With the boosters thus opened at both ends, they lost their exhaust thrust and fell to the water...
...with the fuel, but with the cold affecting the O rings that seal the rocket joints. After these talks, Lovingood told the commission, "Thiokol recommended to proceed" with the flight. Privately, experts explained that gaps in the seals or cracks in the fuel mixture could allow the hot exhaust gases within the booster to reach the rocket's outer steel casing and burn through it. Another possibility was that the flame-retarding material between the booster sections could have loosened under the wide variations in temperature, providing another route for a burnthrough. Most analysts assume that once the flame sliced...
Snaking wildly out of control, the two boosters emerged from the conflagration, both clearly intact. They veered widely apart, leaving yellow- orange exhaust glows and gleaming white trails behind them. The configuration resembled a giant monster in the sky, its two claws reaching frantically forward...