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Shuttle Cameras Yield Excellent Footage
Jivecat writes "All those extra cameras NASA has added to the Space Shuttle to watch for debris impacts have yielded what may be the coolest Shuttle launch footage ever. The forward-facing view from the right-hand SRB shows, at about the 2:58 mark, booster separation and Discovery zooming away. Other views are available at the main mission site."
Whoa, calm down. I was simply saying that SRB seperation happens over the ocean so they'll splash down and not come to an explosive thud in Morocco (about where they would go if they were released later). Spain is the trans-Atlantic landing site, so if we needed to abort and land there, the SRBs would be ejected so that they would still splash down and NOT hit Morocco or something.
Go easy on the "all Americans are racist idiots who think any country with sand is an enemy" juice.
And yes, I knew of the long history between the US and Morocco. It's one of the more interesting parts of American history that one of our first military acts (post-independence) was in the Mediterranean (we've never been able to leave the area alone for long), with, among others, the newly completed USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides") fighting pirates of Tripoli (thus "...to the shores of Tripoli..."), Algiers, Tunis, and, yes, Morocco. Morocco wasn't really involved in the war, it seems, and is just mentioned because of some alleged support of the pirates and the three other city-states. Much (if not all) of the action was against Tripoli. Morocco remained friendly to the US, albeit strained, through the conflict.