MY first thought as another average joe, is like wow, man,
My second thought is like lets reverse the image and say a light metal of structure left the shuttle and formed its own purplish colored ion trail because it had something like Strontium in its make-up,and went whizzing off on a distorted course as it slowed
Sig
.To continue the sheer speculation we love to do here, I would pay attention the the forward attach point of the Shuttle to the booster ( which is laying on the ocean floor as it is not recovered although the solid boosters are)
because that appears to be near the area of the possible damage on launch. Typically the shuttle woud be
released from there thru the use of explosive bolts which may have malfuntioned in some way..
This also is a reason NASA is reluctant to jump to any conclusions as to the prime cause of the accident - many possibilities must be looked at first
There is a magnificent description of all these Shuttle affairs on the Web site for those who have time to look into
into it .
As far a safety of a vehicle like this, there 3 engimes in the rear of the shuttle Each has a dual turbo-pump
for feeding fluids to the engine, They turn at 28,000 rpm and generate nearly 60,000 HP with output pressure of
7000 or 8000 psi.
They are using 180,000 HP just to start the main engines . For comparison, the Qween Mary was 80,000 tons and had 200,000 hp, and made 32 knots. |
