Wednesday 3 September 2008

Anomaly Revisited



"Anomaly" really is the word you least want to hear at launch.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'd call that a big OOPS! It's pretty impressive watching all that rocket fuil rain down on the area!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

No pain - no gain. It happens.

But the recording is quite impressive.

Lori D said...

Well at least no one was hurt. Since I watched the Challenger disaster explode live, these are painful reminders of that dreaded day.

mythusmage said...

Actually, the very worst thing you will hear at a launch is, "Oops." It's so much more effective than a mere "anomaly".

"Anomaly" sounds friendly, "anomaly" sounds cute. An anomaly is a minor mix-up, an "oops" means something has gone real bad, and all you can do is wait in dread anticipation until how bad makes itself known. An anomaly is a six toed cat. An "oops" is that same six toed cat dragging home a pissed off Australian eastern brown to give to mommy as a gift. As amberdarlene said, that was an "oops".

Zoe Brain said...

Listen to mission control.

At 0:41 you hear the "Oh!" from the crowd as the stack explosively disassembles.

At 0:49 mission control says "Er..We've just had an anomaly of the Delta-II launch vehicle..."

Anonymous said...

"Obviously a major malfunction..."

mythusmage said...

Zoe,

That was understatement.