links for 2007-01-31

Comments

  1. Tom Jackson says:

    The collapsing-rocket problem, IIRC, is fairly common in catastrophic launch failures. When you apply 1.6 million pounds of thrust to the bottom of a rocket, hoping to accelerate the payload at the top of the rocket, all that force has to be transmitted from engine to payload by the _middle_ of the rocket.
    Often this is more force than the midsection can take, with the result seen here.