Word: tankful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Round and round the sea turtles paddle. They have lived in a tank in London's Regent's Park Zoo for 30 years. Considering that sad history, their cramped conditions and their vast life expectancies, it would be easy to see them --especially in a bad movie--as symbols of futility...
...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...
...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 its hands...
...week's most tantalizing story, in Aviation Week, reported that the jet of flame from the side of Challenger's right booster had either melted or wrenched loose the struts that held the booster to the lower end of the external tank. The booster then pivoted on its still intact upper-attachment fitting and crashed its nose into the tank wall. The escaping liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen ignited, causing the fatal explosion. At week's end NASA had not commented on the report...
...NASA photographs and videotape lends support to theories that an O ring was at fault. According to a flight "time-line" compiled by NASA and released at week's end the smoke first appeared .445 seconds after booster ignition. It swirled between the rocket and the external tank, near where the fatal burnthrough seems to have occurred. One solid-rocket specialist noted that because the puff was dark, it probably did not result from combustion of the booster's solid fuel, which produces light-colored smoke. More likely, it came from the burning O ring or the putty placed inside...