"ae2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

From The Associated Press (national wire); January 25, 1985

WASH IN GTO N-President Ronald Reagan today ordered that the
remaining NASA space shuttle, Discovery, be temporarily grounded, fol-
lowing last Tuesday's explosion of the shuttle Chollenger. ,
The order was made public by White House spokesman Larry Speaks,
in a brief statement issued to the press, "Until we know exactly what
destroyed Cholienger, we cannot allow Discovery to remain in service,"
Speaks said.
The Executive Order follows preliminary reports by NASA accident
investigators which indicate that Chollenger was destroyed by a malfunc-
tioning solid-rocket booster. Although Navy divers are still probing the
wreckage of the shuttle off the Florida coast, analysis of film footage of
its launch shows that flames erupted from part of the right SRB seconds
before the explosion occurred,
The investigators theorize that the fire from the SRB might have
burned through the shuttle's external fuel tank, thereby igniting its volatile
hydrogen-oxygen fuel.
Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster, which occur-red during
Challenger's third test-flight. Chol/enger was the first vehicle in NASA's
new shuttle fleet. They were intended to eventually replace the Atlas-C
space ferries, which have been in continuous use since 1965.
NASA spokesman Hugh MacDonald said that the Atlas ferries will
continue to be launched from Cape Canaveral. "It's an older class of
vessel, but it has a superb safety record," MacDonald said. "For the time
being, we will be using the Atlases as the main wori orbital operations, until Discovery is ludged to be completely reliable."
However, Speaks left little room for Discovery to be returned to ser-
vice any time soon. "Until key safety issues are resolved, the President
believes that we must act prudently to prevent a recurrence of this trag-
edy," he said.






F-O-U-R-T-E-E-N

2/17/9S - 1407 GMT

I
here were a fleeting few sec-
onds after he pushed open the outer airlock hatch and before
he attached the tether of his suit's lifeline to the catwalk rail-
ing, when Parnell felt an old, atavistic fear.
Oh my God, I'm falling ...
And indeed, so he was. But so was Conestoga itself, and
even if by some strange accident he was cast away from the

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115