The Space Shuttle Catastrophe Off Cape Canaveral
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To anyone involved in the business of rockets, the space shuttle catastrophe came as little surprise. I make that statement not from the wisdom of hindsight, but from personal experience.
Those in the know in the aerospace industry--the designers, engineers, builders and experimenters--have, for many years, referred to the space shuttle as “the Flying Bomb.” It is a logical epithet.
Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen make up the most volatile rocket propellant combination we know of, second only to hydrogen/flourine. And the space shuttle crew sits just a few feet away from more than 500,000 gallons of the stuff. That, together with hundreds of thousands of pounds of solid propellant in the boosters plus miscellaneous on-board chemical propulsion systems can make for one big incendiary.
Hopefully, the general public will now have what the scientists and engineers on this project have always had: a sober and realistic view of what we’re dealing with.
GEORGE MORGAN
Oxnard
Morgan is president of the Pacific Rocket Society.
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