Alcantara

Hi,

Did anyone heard of conclusions about alcantara explosion last
August?



--
"Die Naturwissenschaft ohne Religion ist lahm, die Religion ohne Naturwissenschaft ist blind. "
Einstein

Cyril Meynier wrote:

Hi,

Did anyone heard of conclusions about alcantara explosion last
August?

The investigation hasn't finished yet, they request 60 days do finish the
report (that means that a report will be released soon, maybe this week or
the next). They know that a eletrical discharge, in one of the first
stage's rockets, happened but they couldn't find the reason for that. The
first hypotheses were bad pad structure eletrical grounding (it's been
painted recently, they used sand "jets" to get the old paint out (!)) or a
malfunciotioning launcher's circuit (they had to exchange a circuit board
some days before the incident). But last week (IIRC) they cogitated about
human mistake. There were many people in the launch pad when the accident
happened, more than twenty. Some were testing circuits (in the launcher
"botton"), others installing a camera in the nose.

They say that it will be very difficult to discover the exact reason for the
accident. The launcher's telemetry wasn't being recorded at the momment and
not much lasted from the accident
(http://www.magsilva.dynalias.net/~ma...ois/foto07.jpg,
for example).


--
Marco Aurélio Graciotto Silva
LABES/SCE/ICMC/USP