O-ring (October)

Hundreds of white tiles will sail into a thousand sunrises, double delta wings fold in time out of mind. Solid rocket boosters flower power an hour. The orbiter engines, equilateral through streams of cloud, must expire. But it’s this loophole in the law of thermodynamics, this gap in the management’s well-wrought plan brought it all undone. It wasn’t the payload. Brittle rings that warm October might still be kind to disintegrated in icy January once the heat applied. It was the know-how. How lift-off dependent on every last rivet fell Icarus-like but for a few zero-fittings, like a parabolic parable.