June 7, 2008: Flying Bricks
 

You may or may not have seen the news story , about the June 2nd launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, doing "unprecedented damage" to the launch pad.

This picture was supposedly taken by an amateur photographer/tourist, but it looks like it was taken from a position a lot closer than they allow tourists, to me.

Anyway, it clearly shows the debris (pieces of brick and concrete), from the flame trench, raining down on the water.
http://cellar.org/2008/flame trench bricks.jpg

photo credit ~ Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now

thats why people arent allowed near there. isnt that why?

That's not a normal occurrence. People aren't allowed closer in case the sumbitch blows up on the pad.

If bricks could fly . . .
 

. . . they'd be brickbats.
Must be the site's June theme.

Recipe for cauliflower cheese anyone?

Telephoto lens?

Your standard 2,000,000,000,000mm lens.

I wonder if they'll think to finance the repairs by selling the bricks on eBay.

That actually would work. But the government is not really allowed to do that. You people out there would buy them.

Why aren't they allowed to do that? Government surplus auction.

I saw an Authentic Piece of the Berlin Wall in a small box at a garage sale recently. Tempted but resisted. For all I know, it was actually one of the concrete kibbles from the NASA photo.

Probably, but not terribly long, there is not so much compression of the image as you'd expect w/ a telephoto.

Boat?

That could be, if the pads are those circles out near the open water.
http://cellar.org/2008/kennedyspace.jpg

Damn, Bruce gets all the best classified photos!

Alternate caption for the thread pic:
"You deserve a brick today."

What's that? Looks like the bricks hit an endangered manatee...