Apr 232009
 

On occasion, ATK-Thiokol burns off large quantities of scrap/excess solid rocket propellant. This is often propellant left over from casting operations, or propellant that has been trimmed out of cast motors, or old test samples, whatever. They can fire off thousands of pounds of the stuff at a time. It basically just sits there blazing white hot and emitting vast clouds of smoke, which ranges from dirty-orange to pure white, depending on what’s being burned and the sunlight conditions. The clouds of smoke, largely composed of aluminum oxide, water vapor, carbon dioxide and some interesting things like hydrochloric acid, typically floats up into the sky and dissipates at high altitude. And sometimes they screw it up.

Returning today from Ogden, at 5:03 PM I noticed the clouds of smoke starting to rise over the hills (I noted the time because it seemed very late for a major rocket test… the RSRMs, for example, are typically scheduled for 1PM on Thursdays, then I remembered that propellant burns are typically done after normal working hours so that most of the employees are gone). It looked pretty normal at first. But as I got closer, it became clear that whoever was in charge of making sure that the weather would co-operate was apparently a little off. The cloud of acidic smoke drifted *downwards* through Faust Valley (a bit appropriate, that), and then continued down into the farms below. It continued to hug along the ground heading northwest past Thatcher and Bothwell, crossing Interstate 84. I drove to a few locations where I could get halfway decent photos of it; and even though I only skirted the edge of the fume, I got one *hell* of a headache. I shudder to imagine the poor schmoes who got the full force of it. It seemed to take five to ten minutes to blow past any one location.

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 Posted by at 7:38 pm

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