Starship Asterisk*

neufer wrote:A pool of water. Of that size. Close to Ponte Vedra, Florida, Sure.....

komic wrote:Nice, but what is this red dot?!?

• -------------------------------
  George: What is that? Is that cashmere?
  
  Jerry: Yeah. She would love cashmere.
  
  George: Who doesn't like cashmere? Find me one person in the world that doesn't like cashmere. It's too expensive.
  
  Jerry: Look at this. It's 85 dollars marked down from 600.
  
  George: Wow. Excuse me, Miss?
  
  Woman: Yes?
  
  George: How come this sweater is only 85 dollars?
  
  Woman: (showing the dot) Oh, here. This is why.
  
  George: What? I don't see anything.
  
  Woman: See this red dot?
  
  George: Oh yeah.
  
  Jerry: Oh it's damaged. (grabbing the sweater)
  
  George: (grabbing the sweater back) Well it's not really damaged. 85 dollars huh?
  
  Woman: There's no exchanges on this.
  
  George: You think she would care about the red dot?
  
  Jerry: It's hard to say.
  
  George: I don't even think she'd notice it. Can you see it?
  
  Jerry: Well I can see it.
  
  George: Yeah, but you know where it is.
  
  Jerry: Well what do you want me to do? Not look at it?
  
  George: Pretend you didn't know it was there. Can you see it?
  
  Jerry: It's hard to pretend because I know where it is.
  
  George: Well just take an overview. Can't you just take an overview?
  
  Jerry: You want me to take an overview?
  
  George: Please.
  
  Jerry: I see a very cheap man holding a sweater trying to get away with something. That's my overview.
  -------------------------------

natronics wrote:You know what really bothered me is the brightening in the flight path around 2/3rds of the way up. I kept thinking it must be the throttle up, but it happens much to late. In fact it is after SRB separation. Any idea exactly why it get brighter after SRB separation?

neufer wrote:115 miles of tropospheric air & dust scattering can produce a lot of dimming.

emc wrote:Can the flare in discussion be a byproduct of the ozone layer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion wrote:
<<The basic physical and chemical processes that lead to the formation of an ozone layer in the Earth's stratosphere were discovered by Sydney Chapman in 1930. Briefly, short-wavelength UV radiation splits an oxygen (O₂) molecule into two oxygen (O) atoms, which then combine with other oxygen molecules to form ozone. Ozone is removed when an oxygen atom and an ozone molecule "recombine" to form two oxygen molecules, i.e. O + O₃ → 2O₂. In the 1950s, David Bates and Marcel Nicolet presented evidence that various free radicals, in particular hydroxyl (OH) and nitric oxide (NO), could catalyze this recombination reaction, reducing the overall amount of ozone. These free radicals were known to be present in the stratosphere, and so were regarded as part of the natural balance – it was estimated that in their absence, the ozone layer would be about twice as thick as it currently is.

In 1970 Prof. Paul Crutzen pointed out that emissions of nitrous oxide (N₂O), a stable, long-lived gas produced by soil bacteria, from the Earth's surface could affect the amount of nitric oxide (NO) in the stratosphere. Crutzen showed that nitrous oxide lives long enough to reach the stratosphere, where it is converted into NO. Crutzen then noted that increasing use of fertilizers might have led to an increase in nitrous oxide emissions over the natural background, which would in turn result in an increase in the amount of NO in the stratosphere. Thus human activity could have an impact on the stratospheric ozone layer. In the following year, Crutzen and (independently) Harold Johnston suggested that NO emissions from supersonic aircraft, which fly in the lower stratosphere, could also deplete the ozone layer.

[In 1973] Richard Stolarski and Ralph Cicerone at the University of Michigan had shown that Cl is even more efficient than NO at catalyzing the destruction of ozone. Similar conclusions were reached by Michael McElroy and Steven Wofsy at Harvard University. Neither group, however, had realized that CFC's were a potentially large source of stratospheric chlorine — instead, they had been investigating the possible effects of HCl emissions from the Space Shuttle, which are very much smaller.

In 1974 Frank Sherwood Rowland, Chemistry Professor at the University of California at Irvine, and his postdoctoral associate Mario J. Molina suggested that long-lived organic halogen compounds, such as CFCs, might behave in a similar fashion as Crutzen had proposed for nitrous oxide. James Lovelock (most popularly known as the creator of the Gaia hypothesis) had recently discovered, during a cruise in the South Atlantic in 1971, that almost all of the CFC compounds manufactured since their invention in 1930 were still present in the atmosphere. Molina and Rowland concluded that, like N₂O, the CFCs would reach the stratosphere where they would be dissociated by UV light, releasing Cl atoms.>>

There are four booster separation motors on each end of each SRB. The BSMs separate the SRBs from the external tank. The solid rocket motors in each cluster of four are ignited by firing redundant NSD pressure cartridges into redundant confined detonating fuse manifolds.