ICfreely wrote:
Neither can I. How a pressurized soccer ball can somehow survive the Challenger explosion, magically float about for 30 years simultaneously managing not to explode due to (lack of) air pressure or getting torn to shreds by "space debris" is beyond me.
Aha - but remember, my friend...the Challenger never made it all the way up into the vacuum of space.
Take a closer look :
(silly photo montage by Simon Shack)
(Sorry, folks - I couldn't resist.
)
**********************
And since we're into trivia anyway, let me share with you these two old 1986 nooz headlines which I bumped into today.
That's right: the Challenger (with its crew of 7) allegedly exploded at
9 miles of altitude...
74 seconds after liftoff.
...and as the debris came raining down, we were told that:
"It kept rescue teams from reaching the area where the craft would have fallen into the sea, about 18 miles offshore".
(see above New York Times front page article)
Now, you may wonder - WHEN exactly did the Challenger (supposedly) take off?
"The liftoff, originally scheduled for 9:38 A. M., was delayed two hours by problems on the ground caused first by a failed fire-protection device and then by ice on the shuttle's ground support structure."
(...)
"At 11:38 A. M. the shuttle rose gracefully off the launching pad, heading in to the sky."
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general ... /0128.html
From the same NY Times article linked above - we learn that...
"As the explosion occurred, Stephen A. Nesbitt of Mission Control in Houston, apparently looking at his notes and not the explosion on his television monitor, noted that the shuttle's velocity was "2,900 feet per second, altitude 9 nautical miles, downrange distance 7 nautical miles."
The exploded debris - we are told - continued to rise ... up to an altitude of "11 miles (18km)":
"It continued, for a time, on an upward trajectory on a ballistic arc that reached a maximum altitude of around 11 miles (18 km)"
http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/spac ... hallenger/
Good grief. As much as I dislike to keep pointing out their pathetic "magick-numbers-obsession", I can't help myself from doing so - and it certainly isn't MY obsession!