Here's some good smokin' pictures....

[BrianG]

It depends what you define as a short. To me, a short it touching the + and - terminals together with a solid connection. And no, that's not good. However, when something happens to an ESC that "shorts" the leads, there are a number of resistances to consider; connectors, length of wires, PCB traces, FET internals, etc, which all limit current to some degree. So, it really is not a direct short. And when something does go wrong with the ESC where something burns up, the connection causing the short opens quickly so the short is no longer there anymore. ESC fireworks can seem to be really bad, but they are not designed to dissipate anything over ~30W. When an ESC shorts a battery, it is forced to dissipate over 1000W.

Besides, our setups can pull well over 200A+ of instantaneous currents for a very brief moment. That is pretty darn close to a "short circuit" in my book if you want to get technical.