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From: gwh@volcano.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Blowing up the Shuttle
Summary: Range Safety acted a bit later...
Message-ID: <1990Apr6.234715.22061@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 6 Apr 90 23:47:15 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Reply-To: gwh@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 29

In article <10884@portia.Stanford.EDU> mdbomber@portia.Stanford.EDU (Matt Bartley) writes:
>>>   This HAS been done.  The Range Safety Officer, upon gaining 
>>>   information on Challanger, realized that the shuttle was
>>>   unrecoverable and uncontrollerable and detonated charges in the
>>>   ET and SRB's. 
>>
>>Well, he pushed his button all right, which blows everything -- there
>>is no capability to blow just the SRBs or just the ET -- but the ET was
>>already in pieces and so were its destruct systems.  They were recovered
>>unexploded.  The SRB destruct system functioned as planned.
>
>I thought after the explosion the SRB`s went flying away like bottle rockets.
>When I first saw what happened I thought they were burning pieces of the
>shuttle, but I later saw they were the engines.  Doesn't sound like
>the destruct worked there.

The RSO waited until it was clear what was happening.  In particular, when the 
SRB's were determined to be headed back towards land [quite a bit after the 
intial explosion] the RSO detonated the charges. 


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George William Herbert     JOAT For Hire: Anything, Anywhere: My Price
UCB Naval Architecture undergrad: Engineering with a Bouyant Attitude :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu <= prefered [also gwh@soda.berk.. and maniac@garnet.berk..]
	Give me a billion dollars and two years and I'll build you a space 
	station you'll never forget.
"Pull up!   NO, NOT THAT UP!" CRUNCH