Word: fatally
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...either melted or wrenched loose the struts that held the booster to the lower end of the external tank. The booster then pivoted on its still intact upper-attachment fitting and crashed its nose into the tank wall. The escaping liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen ignited, causing the fatal explosion. At week's end NASA had not commented on the report...
...videotape lends support to theories that an O ring was at fault. According to a flight "time-line" compiled by NASA and released at week's end the smoke first appeared .445 seconds after booster ignition. It swirled between the rocket and the external tank, near where the fatal burnthrough seems to have occurred. One solid-rocket specialist noted that because the puff was dark, it probably did not result from combustion of the booster's solid fuel, which produces light-colored smoke. More likely, it came from the burning O ring or the putty placed inside the rings...
...however, Quicksilver's title may not be inappropriate: like mercury, it may be fatal if swallowed...
...that seemingly fatal plume developed on the booster's side? The panelists kept asking about the unusually cold weather at the launch site. The temperature had dropped to 24 degrees F early that morning and had risen to only 38 degrees at the 11:38 a.m. lift-off. Buffeted by overnight winds of up to 35 m.p.h., the shuttle had gone through what meteorologists call a "cold soak," conditions more severe than those at any of the previous 24 shuttle launches. NASA manuals say that the solid fuel in a booster should be ignited only when the rubber-like mixture...
...music for the 1948 movie Scott of the Antarctic, and a few years later was transformed into a five-movement work. However suspect its origins as a film score, the "Antartica" is a rumbling, frightening opus, summoning up the terror and wonder that the explorer experienced on his fatal adventure. Haitink, who has a strong affinity for British music, admirably realizes the score's sense of impending, dispassionate, impersonal doom...