[FPSPACE] Location of Proton crash this morning

[Jim Oberg]

Here's the specified coordinates of the crash site.

I forget -- does the 'Proton' have a destruct system, or would the fuelled
stages fall to the ground intact and make a mega-crater like Dnepr's
last summer, only a LOT bigger?




Wind Carries Rocket Fuel Vapors Away From Kazakh Communities-source

Moscow ITAR-TASS in English 0928 GMT 06 Sep 07

   ALMATY, September 6 (Itar-Tass) -- According to Kazakhstan' s weather watching service Kazgidromet, toxic vapors of rocket fuel from the site where the Russian rocket Proton crashed on Thursday morning have been carried away from communities by the wind.
   "At 06:00 Astana time (04:00 Moscow time) eastern and northeastern winds ranging five to thirteen meters per second prevailed in the western part of the Karaganda Region," the weather watcher on duty Olga Filatova told Itar-Tass.
   According to Kazakhstan's national space agency Kazkosmos chief Talgat Musabayev, the rocket crashed at 47 degrees 32 minutes North and 67 degrees 19 minutes East.
   At the moment there were over 218 tonnes of toxic rocket fuel heptil (or geptil) in its tanks.
   "We have a rather large amount of toxic substances either on the ground or in the air space of our country. The wind situation has not been reported to us and we have no knowledge at this point where heptil vapors may have been traveling after the rocket hit the ground," Musabayev told a news conference in Astana.