Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!pacbell!att!ihlpl!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Discovery's launch: Am I imagining things?
Summary: me too, but not to worry
Message-ID: <6978@ihlpl.ATT.COM>
Date: 30 Sep 88 16:39:37 GMT
References: <1104@cfa237.cfa250.harvard.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 16

Yes, I saw those extra flames licking around as soon as they
switched camera angles after throttle up (and right where
you-know-what blew up).  I was very tense watching that.

These flames were mentioned on last nite's news, and one of the
morning papers said lots of knowledgeable people called NASA
about it.  But official word is that these flames are just
some normal rocket exhaust caught in the vortex caused
by "reverse flow separation."  I guess the assumption is that
having these reverse eddies of hot gases around the bottom of
the ET is not going to hurt anything.  Too bad we can't
recover the ET and look at its surface.  I wonder.

Anyway, you can bet the joints on the SRBs
will be looked at really closely when they're back on land.
They would have been in any case, I suspect.