Word: seales
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...ring failure. Last week Engineer Roger Boisjoly, Thiokol's top expert on the rings, testified that he had sent a similar memo to his superiors only days after Cook sent his. On any one flight, his memo warned, it was "a jump ball" as to whether the seal would hold, and if it did not, "the result would be a catastrophe of the highest order--loss of human life." One month later, yet another Thiokol engineer, Arnold Thompson, urged his company to ask NASA to suspend all flights until the seal problem was fixed. Thiokol management apparently did not convey...
Back in Utah, preparations for the pivotal teleconference were rushed. Lund ordered all data collected on any correlation between temperature and the amount of erosion experienced in the O rings on previous flights. Boisjoly worried in particular about Shuttle Mission 51-C in January 1985, in which the seal temperature had been 53 degrees (although the air had warmed to 66 degrees by the time of launch). When the spent boosters were recovered from that flight, what Boisjoly described as black soot "just like coal" was found behind a primary ring in one booster, indicating that gases had blown past...
...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...
Although the Crimson itself is long out of the Ivy race, it has the chance to influence league standings, as a victory over the second-place Bruins would seal the Ivy crown for Cornell...
...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 of launch. If the rings are not resilient, ! they may not seat properly in their grooves, leaving gaps through which the hot gases can escape. Thus, Feynman asked, would the low temperature (38 degrees F) at Challenger's lift-off have increased the chance...