Here’s a bittorrent I created of the space shuttle solid rocket booster video from the STS-114 mission I mentioned yesterday. It was shown on NASA TV Saturday.
I learned from this excellent Wikipedia article that the SRBs ascend to about 42 miles before they begin their tumble back to earth. Thus in five minutes, the boosters thunder back to earth from an altitude of 220,000 feet. Its impressive to think that these boosters go through such incredible stresses during launch and recovery and then get reused again. Watching the video gives me a new appreciation for the ingenuity of our space program.