rjnoe@riccb.UUCP (Roger J. Noe) (02/12/86)
dec-viking!fleischer wrote: > . . . McAuliffe was in reality as much a mission specialist as the > (Hughes?) engineer on that flight. Right, and that's not at all. Gregory Jarvis, working for Hughes Communications, was a payload specialist on that flight. McAuliffe was the Space Flight Participant selected. Her training was of course unique, but approximated the training all payload specialists get from NASA. -- More than one person has suggested that a replacement shuttle (if made) should be named Phoenix. I also thought at first that this would be a good name, since it's a "fabulous bird reborn from its ashes." But then I remembered that Wally Schirra tried to name the Apollo 7 command module Phoenix but NASA turned down that idea in favor of (not sure at all) Gumdrop, I think. (Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission actually flown, thus it was the first manned space flight after the flash fire that killed Grissom, White, and Chaffee.) If they wouldn't let Schirra name a single-use command module Phoenix, there's no way they're going use that name for a shuttle orbiter that may fly 100 times. I like Intrepid and Endeavor (note: in the United States there's no letter U in "Endeavor"). I think you can be pretty sure that NASA will name any and all shuttles which might follow after famous naval vessels. -- Thinking back to that episode I remembered another bit of trivia about the crewed space program that has some bearing on the 51-L incident. Remember all those reports about how Nitrogen Tetroxide would kill people who come into contact with it in about two seconds? That's far from true. It's caustic, to be sure, but not nearly that lethal. The U.S. contingent of the Apollo-Soyuz mission (Brand, Stafford, and Slayton, I believe) got gassed with N2O4 right around splashdown, maybe a little before. In fact, the commander (Vance Brand) was unconscious! But NASA said they suffered no permanent damage from it. -- Does it really matter exactly how the range safety system works on the SRBs and the ET? Those charges don't seem to have anything to do with the incident. The SRBs were intentionally destroyed a little after the ET/orbiter explosion. And nearly all of the ET explosives have been recovered undetonated. One interesting observation from watching replays of the explosion: after the hydrogen begins to burn, you can see the ET oxygen tank explode all at once in a nearly circular, almost greenish (depends on your tape machine and TV, mainly) ball of flame. What does this mean? You speculate if you want to. But please, not over the net. At least not without labeling speculations as such. -- Roger Noe ihnp4!riccb!rjnoe