I originally started this as a post in the smash hit thread "Norway Spiral Case reopened- The anatomy of an event" by tauristercus on page 7. (A
wonderfully laid out thread, by the way), but I think this is worthy of it's own thread, and it seemed no one wanted to touch it there. hmmmm
Now I put this in the weaponry board since that is the going accepted story. I am not sure what is the cause really is, as no one really does. The
"official" story does not jive with me. So we will have to build on what we got. We can only speculate. Though it does seem to add up to a ICBM. The
expansion rate of the explosion does not add up for a solid fuel ICBM, more like a nuclear detonation. So you trig guy's explain the expansion rate
we see. That said, what really happened?
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This is my own research into this and I am no way an ICBM expert
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Original post:
I do not buy the third stage failure. The third stage is a single engine, I'm not sure about altitude control thrusters, cannot find a good diagram.
But if it was the altitude control thrusters there would be three or more sources of fuel ejection right? If it was the main engine nozzle jamming it
would only be a single source?
A failure of flight control computers, attitude control thrusters or jamming of the main propulsion system's nozzle in a wrong position could
all lead to the tumbling of the the missile in flight.
Russian Space Web
Now on the following diagram the Bulava M is the on on the far left. If that is the altitude control thrusters or the spin gas generators on the top
that would make 5 sources of ejection.
The entire space vehicle itself can be spun up to stabilize the orientation of a single vehicle axis. This method is widely used to stabilize the
final stage of a launch vehicle. The entire spacecraft and an attached solid rocket motor are spun up about the rocket's thrust axis, on a "spin
table" oriented by the attitude control system of the lower stage on which the spin table is mounted.
Wikipedia
Does the Bulava utilize the above?
I am not sure how the Bulava design differs from the Minuteman III, but the Minuteman does not have spin gas generators initiated until the Reentry
Vehicle is ready to descend.
If you watch the following video it shows all stages of the Minuteman from beginning to end. It is a video made by the USAF 341st Space Wing. It is a
bit long but trust me it is worth the time.
Now lastly, if an explosion happens in the vacuum of space, the fireball would not look like it did not like the "black hole" in the Norway video,
there was no fireball, and the black hole should have kept moving at the velocity as the spiral.
Unless it was a live nuke then the fireball would
expand in milliseconds, like it appeared to. Also it would vaporize any debris. This might explain why we see no debris. This raises a whole other
question. If it was a live nuke, WHAT were they shooting at?
For a nuclear explosion, the fireball would radiate mainly in the x-ray and ultraviolet, which are not visible to the eye, although the visible
part of the radiation would produce a blue-white flash. The expansion speed would be many hundreds or thousands of times faster than for a chemical
explosion, so that the time scale would be less than a millisecond. All the material near the source would be vaporized, so there would be no
fragments.
Mad Scientist: Explosions in Space
Now look at the example below of 2007 explosion of the Russian Proton/Breeze M rocket. The outer globe traveling around what's left of the rocket is
the expanding fireball. Fireball and Debris! In Space.........
Any way that's my 2c.
[edit on 2-2-2010 by timewalker]