Brazilian rocket explodes on pad,killing workers (20 reported)

http://www.msnbc.com/news/955524.asp?0cm=c20

A Brazilian rocket due to blast off in coming days exploded at its jungle launch site Friday, reportedly killing about 20 people. The tragedy struck Brazil’s third attempt to fulfill its long-held dream of sending its own rocket into space.

A BRAZILIAN Space Agency spokeswoman confirmed that an explosion occurred and that “the rocket is destroyed.” She said that information received from the space base indicated that about 20 people were killed, but further details were not immediately available.

There also was no immediate explanation of how the accident happened. Officials emphasized that the accident did not happen in conjunction with an attempted launch.

The $6.5 million, 65-foot (20-meter) rocket was to have placed two satellites into orbit. It was sitting in a large structure on the launch pad at Brazil’s tropical Alcantara space base, situated on a jungle peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil’s Amazon region, when the accident happened at 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET).

I hope they do not give up. Even in the U.S. we have had our share of tragedy. Frontiers don't give up easily, and space will be no exception.

Lula said his country was staying in for the longterm. It is a serious setback for the Brazilian space program. The human toll is tragic. The knowledge and experience lost is irreplaceable.

The Soviets experienced a terrible launch pad accident in 1960, during the ICBM race. They lost almost 100 people, mostly military, including several of their top space scientists.



A LIVING HELL: As the first flash of fire burst into the air over Site 41,
a cameraman of the film and photo lab in Tyuratam started rolling the film in his movie camera.
A still frame from this film shows survivors of the inferno
running toward the edge of the launch pad with their cloth burning.
Traces of smoke on the ground mark places where burning bodies fell.

Copyright © 2001 by Anatoly Zak

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/r16_disaster.html

Brazil and Argentina figured prominently in Iraq's ballistic missile development program. With the full knowledge and complicity of the US and other Western powers, of course.

It's incredibly difficult.

The civil rocket programs of Egypt/Iraq/Brazil/Argentina were thinly veiled ballistic missile projects. Iraq's various nonconventional programs, once tacitly approved by the UK, among others, suffered sudden reversals of fortune once it was decided they were no longer in the interests of Western powers.

A 6 September 1989 memo to trade minister Lord Trefgarne says:

The Learfan issue in July demonstrated the lengths to which the Iraqis are prepared to go in order to obtain sensitive technology and materials and the consequent need to undermine their procurement activities (my emphasis).

Author Mark Phythian notes:

In December the Astra (PRB) Kaulille plant was the scene of an explosion; in March 1990 the (nuclear trigger) capacitors sting occurred, and (Gerald) Bull was murdered; and in April the supergun barrels were seized as the last sections were about to be delivered. (Phythian, Arming Iraq, p 255, note 58)

If we assume that these events were not coincidental, it would be entirely in keeping with covert nonproliferation policy to engineer an "accident" in a nation on the verge of acquiring an indigenous nonconventional weapons capacity. Ballistic missile technology clearly fits in the nonconventional weapons category.

Can there EVER be an event that someone here doesn't blame on a conspiracy by " them ".

Shooting from the hip all the time leads to horrible marksmanship.

after all, it's not our 'black' budget that's unlimited!
back in olden days, i recall reading in rolling stone or crawdaddy (?) the statement that in the future only the paranoid will have any understanding of what's really going on....
i mean, c'mon, ronald reagan was actually elected more'n a generation ago!

n/t

It's sad when people die in a mission of war, but it seems even worse when people die in a mission of understanding.