Word: rocketted
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...fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger was an accident waiting to happen if estimates of solid rocket booster failure in a 1983 Air Force report are true, says Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass...
...Force report estimated that one of the solid rocket boosters on board the space shuttle would fail in every 35 shuttle launches, The Boston Globe reported today...
Still, the way the boosters continued flying after the explosion prompted some experts to reject the likelihood of a burnthrough in either one. Hurled away from the exploding external tank, both rockets appeared to be moving rather stably, producing the awesome Y-shaped pattern that millions of Americans will never forget. A burnthrough on the side of the casing, several rocket specialists say, would have sent the booster cartwheeling wildly through space. Bob Truax, a retired engineer who directed the Thor missile program in the 1950s, agrees. "After the explosion, they were continuing on a fairly normal trajectory," he says...
...conduct an all-out effort to catch up. "Know thine enemy" became the slogan of the day, and schools began offering courses in Russian. The race to conquer the heavens predated even the cold war; when Soviet and American troops entered Germany, they scanned their lists of prisoners for rocket scientists they could trundle home. But Sputnik launched the race right into the heart of the superpower rivalry, where it has remained ever since...
John Hagen, the gentle astronomer who was heading the American space probe, Project Vanguard, puffed his pipe in his dingy corner of the Naval Research Laboratory and foresaw the coming competition. But his soul was geared to an earlier age, and his rocket remained rooted to its Cape Canaveral pad. Hagen's men were perfectionists; they were searching for data, not power. And that's where they erred. By then, politics was taking over. The Vanguard was hurried, and when its engine was finally ignited in December 1957, the slender missile lurched and exploded. John Hagen's kindly eyes wept...