It looks like the third stage uses LH2/LOX. Wikipedia has a picture at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Second_stage_of_a_Delta_IV_Medium_rocket .jpg> I would suspect the failure mechanism to be overpressure. Perhaps the relief valves had some problem? It seems that an overpressure would be more likely to occur further away from shutdown than closer to it (i.e. 81 minutes after the burn more likely than 16 minutes). Perhaps there was some thermal soak back from the engine into the LOX tank? Just speculating. Bill Bard ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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