Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!belmonte
From: belmonte@sleepy (Matthew Belmonte)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: other causes of the Challenger disaster?
Message-ID: <17870@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 31 May 88 15:02:38 GMT
Sender: daemon@cornell.UUCP
Reply-To: belmonte@sleepy.cs.cornell.edu (Matthew Belmonte)
Followup-To: sci.space.shuttle
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
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Mailed-Date: Tue, 31 May 88 11:02:21 EDT
News-Relay: @wrath.cs.cornell.edu

References: <247@ncar.ucar.edu> <3330004@hpindda.HP.COM> <2951@polyslo.UUCP>

In article <2951@polyslo.UUCP> jmckerna@polyslo.UUCP (John L McKernan) writes:
>In article <3330004@hpindda.HP.COM> mears@hpindda.HP.COM (David B. Mears) write
>disaster. That seems a little strange to me because I thought the causes were
>well understood. What I understood from the media was that the seal of one of
>the solid rocket booster segments failed, allowing a jet of burning rocket fuel
>to escape at the joint. This jet of rocket fuel then ruptured the external tank
>causing the explosion which caused the vehicle to break up.

It was my understanding that the jet melted through a connecting strut which
fastened the SRB to the ET.  The torque about the upper connecting point then
caused the SRB to rotate, its nose rupturing the ET at or near the intertank
portion.