I’ve just heard that a train carrying cargo only described as a "NASA load" crashed when a bridge it was on collapsed. This story was on a news site in Alabama, and I have not seen any other sources yet. I’ll post more when I find more, and if this continues I’ll post on my Twitter page as well.
Update: From Central Florida Channel 13: The train was carrying solid rocket boosters segments. Five people were injured.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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May 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 am
>>> I’ve just heard that a train carrying cargo only
>>> described as a “***NASA load***” crashed
George Deutsch was on the train?
[applause]
Thank you! I’ll be here all week!
[crickets]
Hmm.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:44 am
I just hope that it doesn’t delay an upcoming shuttle launch.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
CNN says 2, channel 13 says 5, MSNBC says 6… I wonder who has the right injury count.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:48 am
Some people were airlifted to a hospital. That doesn’t sound good.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Your Badness,
Thanks for the twitter update. Good to read that there were no parts for the next flight involved.
BTW, the space image that you chose for your twitter page makes it look like you are waving the “cosmic finger” at everyone. That is truly Bad!
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Just to show what a total bastard I am:
My first thought: Any word on the solid rocket sections? are they ok?
Much later: Oh I hope the people aren’t badly hurt either.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Drbuzz…that doesn’t make you a bastard, it makes you a geek. Like the rest of us.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I’m such a space nut I could care less about the people I was worried that DAWN might have been the cargo.
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:34 pm
My first thought: I can already see the urban legend going up on snopes about the train engineer trying to break the bullet train speed record by strapping solid rocket boosters to his train.
At least nobody was killed.
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:16 am
Hey Squid, good idea. You finish that story and get it circulating, I’ll finish mine about the connection between Diet Coke and mass shootings, we’ll see which one takes off.
This is a really sad event on two fronts for my boys: they both love trains and are both nuts about the Shuttle and rockets in general. To see both of their first loves damaged in this way kinda sucks. Good thing we don’t let them watch the news with us yet.
May 3rd, 2007 at 6:39 am
I read 6 injured, one critically.
They were hauling (10)solid boosters, which are now on their way back to the manufacturer to be checked for damage.
One nice thing about those boosters, they’re really tough devices.
Gary 7