If These Walls Could Talk, They'd Say 'Save Me!'
by Robert Pearlman
Discovery Channel

Lets not throw away History !
This seems to me to be a very worthy cause. ken

link here:
http://dsc.discovery.com/space/my-take/nas...t-pearlman.html

first few paragraphs:

The scoop: The scorched bricks beneath Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center have witnessed decades of spaceflight history. But after a recent space shuttle launch blew thousands of them from the pad, NASA intends to throw these pieces of history away.

If the brick walls beneath Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A could talk, they might recount the stories of some of NASA's most historic missions over the past 50 years. But part of them may soon be lost forever.

Thirty-nine years ago this July, a Saturn V rocket blasted off from Pad 39A, sending a crew of three men on their way toward the first manned lunar landing.

The powerful exhaust from the 363-foot booster had to be tamed or else risk destroying the pad. So in 1965, when NASA engineers designed 39A, they built the aptly titled "flame trench" -- a 500-foot-long-by-60-foot-wide-by-four-story-deep tunnel to safely deflect the searing flames and smoke away from launch vehicle and the pad. .....

Must be some pretty sturdy bricks.

I would imagine most ordinary bricks being blasted 1/2 a mile at Mach 2 would be pulverized. NASA footage showed many chunks and apparently intact ones too.

Not sure what would have been worse about standing there. The 4000 degree searing blast, or getting clocked in the face with a brick.


(Note: I have always been fascinated with material science, and these bricks are interesting. Think of the HCl damage from the SRBs these things have been thru in addition to the shockwaves!)

I've seen this brought up elsewhere and it was shot down pretty quickly. Apparently they are full of/coated with all kinds of stuff that you wouldn't want to be next to. I've heard talk of asbestos too, though I'm not sure that's accurate.

If they contain hazmat, then it's game over for them for sure. Federal agencies don't play around even a little with that stuff these days...too much potential legal liability.

Quite - the sub-headline should be " If these walls could talk, they'd say 'Aluminum Perchlorate' "

With what those walls went through, somehow I imagine a better title would have been "If These Walls Could Scream..."