Word: liquid-fuel
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...documents had long ago warned about problems with the crucial O rings, the two giant synthetic-rubber washers that seal each joint between the booster-rocket segments. Next, an article in Aviation Week & Space Technology spelled out in extraordinary detail how the 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...
...space vehicle. Although NASA's acting administrator, William Graham, said the flame's location had not been pinpointed, it appeared to be about 36 ft. above the bottom of the rocket's nozzle, near an attachment ring where the lower part of the booster was connected to the external liquid-fuel tank. This ring, in turn, was just above one of the three special joints coupling the rocket's stacked solid-fuel segments. Externally, 177 high-strength steel pins held these joints together. Internally the joints were sealed with two large rubber O rings...
...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 through the rocket casing, it reached the liquid-fuel tank, burning through either the tank's wall or the connecting fuel lines, touching off the massive explosion...
Hannah, 60, a wealthy Houston land developer and space buff, had failed on his first try: a year ago, near the same Matagorda launching pad, SSI's inaugural rocket, built for $1.2 million by a young self-taught engineer, blew up during a test of its liquid-fuel engine. Chastened, Hannah got serious. He hired an experienced California contractor who had built 22 rockets for the Government, got a solid-fuel Minuteman motor from the National Aeronautics and Space Ad ministration (cost: $365,000), and hired Slayton and seven other full-time employees to help...
Built by a French-dominated consortium of European companies, Ariane is a liquid-fuel rocket reminiscent of the U.S. Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle. In its first test, in 1979, the rocket reached orbit, but the second Ariane burned up shortly after liftoff, in 1980, because of engine failure. Thus Ariane's latest launch attempt -the next-to-last trial before the rocket is scheduled to go into regular commercial service-was regarded as something of a make-or-break proposition, like Columbia's flight last April...