Missiles of October - Part Deux

Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Sun, 3 Oct 1999 18:17:51 -0700 (PDT)


The rainbow stuff is called silver clouds and (rarely) sometimes
occurs naturally in the stratosphere. Beautiful sight.

As to the launch, I almost pissed my pants, waiting for more launches
to come within the next half an hour.

Gregory Alan Bolcer writes:
> They just put the rainbow colors in for the peaceniks. EJW actually
> used to work at Raytheon. They didn't tell you that the ICBM actually
> blew up because the XML parser overran it's allocation boundaries
> and that harmful goto.
>
> Greg
>
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/national/100399/missile.sml
>
> > A Raytheon-built Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, a
> > 55-inch-long, 120-pound device sent skyward on
> > a booster rocket, was launched from the Marshall
> > Islands and then intercepted, collided with and
> > destroyed a modified, unarmed intercontinental
> > ballistic missile that had been fired 20 minutes
> > earlier from California, 4,300 miles away.
> >
> > Observers said the resultant explosion 140 miles
> > over the Pacific Ocean caused a vapor cloud of
> > rainbow colors that could be seen for hundreds of
> > miles. Inside the military observation room, it
> > created a flurry of celebration.
>