Livermore Unit of the National Association of Rocketry

Volume 8, Number 3

The Crash of the Galactic Apple

William Orvis, LUNAR #309

Those of you who were at the fall night launch were witness to the loss of the flagship of Apple Intergalactic Spacelines; the Galactic Apple. The ship went down with all hands aboard and auguring into a soccer field near Livermore, California. After weeks of careful investigation, we believe we know the sequence of events that lead up to this devastating crash.

Approximately three seconds after launch, the Galactic Apple suffered a catastrophic failure of the forward bulkhead. The forward bulkhead sits at the front of the passenger cabin and separates it from the main power room. Failure of the bulkhead allowed the main power cells to drop down into the passenger cabin, knocking the princess off her feet and smashing through the first row of passenger seats. Amazingly, it missed Bubba the Princess’ dog.

While extremely damaging in itself, the shifting of the main power cells down into the passenger cabin had the unfortunate effect of moving the center of gravity of the spacecraft, destroying its flight stability. Unable to remain in stable flight, the Galactic Apple immediately went into an uncontrolled tumble.

The pilots activated the emergency parachute ejection system in the hopes of saving the craft but the ship plowed into the soccer field before the system could completely activate. At this point, hope still existed for most of the passengers and crew. Unfortunately, when the craft hit the soccer field, the rear ejection parachute container was jammed shut. When the emergency ejection system activated, it over-pressurized the back of the craft instead of ejecting the parachute.

When the overpressure increased beyond the design tolerances, the door in the rear bulkhead failed. The rear bulkhead is at the back of the passenger cabin and the flight attendant was standing immediately in front of the door. When the bulkhead door failed, the flight attendant lost her legs and rode the bulkhead door all the way to the front of the passenger cabin, taking out any seats or passengers that happened to get in the way.

As the front bulkhead had already failed, the blast wave moved into the main power room and from there into the flight deck causing the flight deck to separate from the rest of the craft and ejecting one of the pilots.

The blast wave also blew out most of the windows in the passenger cabin, allowing several small and very ugly alien creatures to crawl into the craft from the lawn. We think they carried off one of the passengers as he is missing and has not been heard from since. We can only speculate as to what they are doing to him in their dungeons of doom.

The main engine room and the engineer survived the crash. The engineer had to be forcefully removed from the engine room as he instead on continuing to kick the engine and mutter, “Hold on, I know I can get it started. Hold on…” After being removed from the engine room, he took a look at the ship, turned to his rescuers and said, “The darn thing is busted!” He then ran away into the night saying something about going after the stupid designer of this machine.

We are happy to inform you that the Galactic Apple will fly again. It is currently being repaired at the main hanger of Apple Intergalactic Spacelines. The passengers and crew have, with one exception, have all been taken care of and are ready to resume the flight. The flight attendant has had her legs reattached. We couldn’t find one foot, so she now sports a peg leg but seems to get along just fine on it. The only passenger who has not been taken care of is the one that the bugs carried off and who has not seen since the crash. The designer has supplied updated plans with strengthened bulkheads though he remains in hiding from the engineer who is still on the loose. The men in white coats expect to have the engineer back to work running the engines of the new Galactic Apple as soon as they can track him down.

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