Word: rocketeers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Suspect Rocket...
Other entrants were less realistic, predicting such things as rocket-propelled "space-hotels" and helicopter house-trailers. TWA President Richard Pearson said one entrant predicted that only monkeys would inhabit the world in 1985 and that air travel would be useless...
...hours before Challenger was launched, and on the right booster, which had clearly failed. Less than half a second after booster ignition, just as the shuttle began to lift, first a white and then a black puff of smoke gushed from a joint between two of the 149-ft. rocket's four segments. At 59.8 seconds, high in the sky, flame burst through the booster's steel casing, apparently at the same aft joint. In another 13 seconds, the external tank that fueled the orbiter's three main engines exploded in a catastrophic, fatal fireball...
...most rocket experts, the telltale black smoke meant that right from the start, at least one of the two synthetic rubber O rings that were meant to 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...
...launch had been blowing across the cold surface of the tank toward the right booster. As one NASA engineer explained, "Even a slight breeze, wafting over the external tank full of those cryogens (supercold fluids) may have been enough to produce lower temperatures on the right-hand solid rocket booster than on the left...