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February 22, 2008
Redstone Arsenal Rocket Goes Bada Boom, Scares 5 Counties
Something blew the fuck up late last night. I mistook it for thunder or my lead-footed upstairs neighbor. It seems, I was wrong on both counts.
Around 11 p.m. a loud boom was reported in southeast Huntsville, east Limestone, Morgan and Marshall counties.
Across 5 counties this was heard. I heard and *felt* it. Rattled the building, it did. If you follow the link you see that the typical Huntsville geek, named Opticron, has taken it upon himself to be Super Geektastic (not in a good way) and track the latitude and longitude of the origin.
Who is the bigger geek, him for tracking or me for bothering to Google Map it, I'll let you decide. I just want to know what blew the hell up. (Looking at you, Redstone Arsenal.)
(via me)
EDIT: The reigning theory is a sonic boom from an aircraft. I'm cool with that, although I've no idea why you would test aircraft here. I wasn't even sure military jets bothered to land here. It's mostly helicopters and rockets round these parts.
UPDATE: And so the Arsenal admits to blowing up half a million dollar rocket late into the night.
Around 11 p.m. a loud boom was reported in southeast Huntsville, Limestone, Morgan, Marshall, Lawrence and DeKalb counties.The slow cook-off test involves placing a rocket engine in a stove-like piece of equipment and heating it until the engine blows. Normally the tests are scheduled to explode in the afternoons, but this one ran later - much later.
The low clouds helped carry the sound to at least five surrounding counties.
Before the Arsenal released a statement, The Andalusia Star News had speculations.
Posted by Groonk at February 22, 2008 08:38 AM | Ministry of Alabama, Google-fied, Weird
