{"id":593,"date":"2011-04-18T10:21:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T10:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=593"},"modified":"2011-04-18T10:21:09","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T10:21:09","slug":"blowups-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/blowups-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Blowups Happen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having nothing to do with the short story of the same name, and with apologies therefore to Robert A. Heinlein …<\/em><\/p>\n

Twenty-five years ago today — April 18, 1986 — Titan-34D-9 blew up during launch at Vandenberg AFB.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Titan-34D-9 exploding. USAF image from the linked Space Review article.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nThis Space Review article<\/a> shows several close-up images of the explosion, including the one above, while this Photobucket page<\/a> shows several photos taken from farther away.<\/p>\n

I found it interesting to peruse the accident investigation report<\/a>. I recognized several names of people on the investigation board.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that should make the space history files, except for this personal connection: as a direct result of this mishap, the Air Force chose to conduct a full-scale nozzle-down test firing of a Titan-34D solid rocket motor at the AF Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards AFB. My first assignment was to the AFRPL as a bioenvironmental engineer, and that test program — the “return to flight” for the Titan-34D — was one of the biggest projects I worked on while I was there.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having nothing to do with the short story of the same name, and with apologies therefore to Robert A. Heinlein … Twenty-five years ago today — April 18, 1986 — Titan-34D-9 blew up during launch at Vandenberg AFB. (Titan-34D-9 exploding. USAF image from the linked Space Review article.) This Space \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16,11,24,123,17],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","tag-edwards","tag-space-history","tag-titan","tag-usaf","tag-vandenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}