Word: feynman
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...starboard booster had caused Challenger's external liquid-fuel tank to explode. Then, NASA released pictures showing a mysterious puff of black smoke apparently emerging from the booster at lift- off. The 13-member panel, which includes former Secretary of State William Rogers, Nobel Laureate Physicist Richard Feynman and Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, seemed to have its hands full just keeping up with the new information...
What might have caused an O ring in the right booster to fail? Panelist Feynman demonstrated one possibility at the public hearing by conducting a simple experiment in front of the TV cameras. He placed a small section of a ring in a C-clamp and submerged it in a cup of ice water. Then, removing the section and releasing it from the clamp, he concluded, "The resilience is very much reduced when the temperature is reduced." That fact may be significant, because the booster joints that the O rings are supposed to seal shift under the enormous stresses...
...Richard Feynman, a physicist on the presidential commission, said he does not believe the low temperature readings were caused by a cold hydrogen leak. In Wednesday's editions of the Washington Post, he said the readings could have been a result of breezes blowing past the cold external fuel tank onto the booster rocket...
...faces seemed out of a distant past. William Rogers, the New York City lawyer and former Secretary of State who had lost Washington turf battles to Henry Kissinger in the Nixon Administration. Neil Armstrong, who had taken "one giant leap for mankind" on the moon in 1969. Richard Feynman, the Caltech physicist who won his Nobel Prize 20 years ago. Others were fresher, including Astronaut Sally Ride, who in 1983 became the first American woman in space. They and nine other experts were appointed last week to a presidential commission charged with finding out why the space shuttle Challenger...
...Feynman witnessed the first atomic test blast through the windshield of a truck parked 20 miles from ground zero. He claims to be perhaps the only person not wearing dark glasses to look directly at the explosion, "this white light changing into yellow and then into orange." A chain reaction is not a bad analogy for Feynman's life. From a critical mass of gray matter it goes off in all directions, producing both heat and light...