🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <44695@donald.WichitaKS.NCR.COM> msjohnso@donald.WichitaKS.NCR.COM (Mark Johnson) writes:
>>The reason they were practical is that the Titan II's hypergolic fuels
>>would ignite on contact, eliminating the possibility of the fuels mixing
>>and then exploding.  The reduced potential for a massive explosion...
>
>I've heard this cited many times; I wonder if anyone ever re-thought the 
>decision to go without an escape tower in light of the Titan II accident
>in Arkansas a few years back...due to a massive leak, the missile blew hard
>enough to send the (rather heavy) Mark VI re-entry vehicle several hundred
>yards out into the Arkansas brush...

Note that I said "reduced", not "eliminated".  A Titan II can still produce
a pretty respectable blast, especially if confined inside a tube, but it
would be neither as big nor as violent as the worst-case Atlas explosion.
-- 
There is nothing wrong with making      | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
mistakes, but... make *new* ones. -D.Sim|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry