Реферат: Apollo 4 Essay Research Paper Apollo 4Introduction

space craft. There was a lot of motion, Propst explained, as White seemed to

fumble with something and then quickly pull his arms back, then reach out again.

Another pair of arms came into view from the left, Grissom’s, as the flames

spread from the far left-hand corner of the spacecraft toward the porthole

(Murray 192). The crew struggled for about 30 seconds after their suits failed,

and then died of asphyxiation, not the heat. To get out of the capsule

astronauts had to remove three separate hatches, atleast 90 seconds was required

to open all three hatches.

The IB Saturn rocket contained no fuel, so no chance of fire was really

thought of, so there were no fire crews or doctors standing by. Many people

were listening to the crew’s radio channel, and would have responded, but were

caught off guard and the first mention of fire was not clearly heard by anyone.

Challenger

On January 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger was ready to launch.

The lead up to the launch had not been without its share of problems. The talk

of cold weather, icicles, and brittle and faulty o-rings were the main problems.

It was revealed that deep doubts of some engineers had not been passed on by

their superiors to the shuttle director, Mr. Moore.

Something was unusual about that morning in Florida: it was uncommonly

cold. The night before, the temperature had dropped to twenty-two degrees

fahrenheit. Icicles hung from the launch pad, it was said that the icicles

could have broken off and damaged the space shuttle’s heat tiles. It had been

the coldest day on which a shuttle launch had ever been attempted.

Cold weather had made the rubber O-ring seals so brittle that they no

longer sealed the joint properly. People feared a reduction in the efficiency

of the O-ring seals on the solid rocket boosters. Level 1 authorities at NASA

had received enough information about faulty O-rings by August 1985 that they

should have ordered discontinuation of flights.

The shuttle rocketed away from the icicle laden launch pad, carrying a