Posted on 08/04/2005 6:26:28 PM PDT by SamuraiScot
The space shuttle Discovery, now in orbit, lost part of its heat-shield as it took off from Cape Canaveral on July 26. Ominously, so did the doomed shuttle Columbia. With Discovery's insulation compromised — as Columbia's was — no one knows whether Discovery will catch fire and explode on its return trip to earth, as Columbia did in 2003.
For some reason, the space shuttle's insulation-shedding problem has not been successfully corrected more than two years after Columbia's destruction, which killed all seven members of its crew in temperatures that reached more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The ultimate cause of the Columbia crew's death may prove to have been environmentalism.
Environmentalism? Back in 1997, a report on shuttle wear and maintenance by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., stated that insulating tiles were suddenly flaking off our space shuttles in flight. The engineers suggested that it was because the formula for making them had been changed. For the sake of environmental "friendliness," NASA had stopped using Freon in the production of the tiles. This was in deference to a poltically correct but factually unproven theory that aerosol cans on earth were depleting the protective layer of ozone above the earth. The propellant in the cans contained Freon, which reacts with ozone.
After the Columbia disaster in 2003, Robert Culp, a "space debris and re-entry expert" at the University of Colorado told space.com, "Taking the Freon out made that stuff more brittle and created what became known as the 'popcorn effect,' with pieces of the insulation popping off and knocking chunks out of the tiles. They did not have problems with that insulation before they made that change," Prof. Culp said.
According to engineers, the insulation made without Freon peels off the shuttle at a rate about 11-times greater than the Freon-based insulation. At the time, even such environmentalist stalwarts as The New York Times made the same point. But for some reason, NASA has not put Freon back into its tile formula, and has not even mentioned the "F-word" since Discovery was found to have lost insulation over its fuel tank last week.
The old U.S. Space Program, fighting a war against the Soviets for the high frontier, would not have troubled itself over Freon ethics. The military ethos is actually more respecting of human life than the civic-minded one, because at least it is about life: saving the people in your own civilization against invaders. At today’s civilian NASA, you would think being Environmentally Correct were more important than the lives of the crew.
And environmentalism is not the only ideology to make its way into NASA and compromise its military ethos. Feminism came from the civilian sector claiming to be supremely sensitive and human, but always seems to produce a crass result: The commander of the Discovery on this flight is Eileen Collins (USAF), who has a husband and two young children waiting on the ground. Since the days of the late New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, it seems that an essential part of the shuttle program has been to give young mothers the opportunity to sit on top of a stack of explosive rocket propellant while we as a nation gallantly light the fuse.
Like the goal of proving that the sexes are the same, protecting the environment is not a legitimate military mission. The only excuse for the risk inherent in military operations is that a soldier "lays down his life for his friend."
The expression "Greater love hath no man" is not about making the ultimate sacrifice for the ozone layer.
"We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the earth and replace the resources that have been used."
(http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050804/2005-08-04T141203Z_01_N04115231_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SPACE-SHUTTLE-DC.html)
Does that mean she plans to replace thousands of gallons of rocket fuel after they land (God willing) this coming Monday? From where? Pray for these people's safety. I think they'll need it.
I quite reading at this point. Maybe I'll go back, but to get it so wrong at this early stage doesn't bode well.
Wrong from the very first sentence.
The space shuttle Discovery, now in orbit, lost part of its heat-shield as it took off from Cape Canaveral on July 26.
Sorry, but this guy is confused, there are thermal TILES on the orbiter, and there is foam insulation on the external tank. NOT the same thing. Therefore, this entire article is, um, Freon-free Fecal Matter.
Yep. As in the ridiculous ban on DDT, environmentalism causes death.
The same is true of the WTC on 9/11. Both the planes hit the buildings ABOVE the floors where asbestos insulation was used. After the ban they had to use another insulation that, as we saw, didn't quite protect.
Let's pray the EPA stays Earthbound.
Including anti-enviroweenieism does not excuse the sexism and other sins in the article. It is probably racist, fascist, and Darwinian as well.
> ... lost part of its heat-shield as it took off ...
No, it didn't, apart from one minor chip of a tile.
The external tank lost part of it's insulation. That
insulation isn't a "heat shield", part of the thermal
protection system, but is designed to keep the liquid
fuel cold, and prevent condensation and ice on the tank.
The loss of the foam was irrelevant to the ET after
ignition, but did present a potential debris hazard.
Does NASA still have problem with STS? Sure.
But the article is uninformed prattle.
The documentary I saw on the building led me to believe asbestos WAS used on the support beams and on those latticing between the floors.
I saw another program about how they came down that implied the same. But they also said that it would only have extended the time before they fell. Still enough to have gotten more people out.
The Freon issue is real as far as the tank insulation, but he loses his point in mangling his references.
The architects had designed for a Boeing 707 to collide with one tower. But not at 560 mph.
That's odd. I've seen documentaries showing that they didn't. But the area that needed to be insulated wasn't the vertical beams (though it would help). It was the horizontal connecting beams that 'unzipped' to cause the buildings destruction. When the horizontal beams became stressed, they detached from the vertical beams holding the building up. This put more stress on the remaining beams on the floor which rapidly failed. While the vertical beams may have been insulated, I very much doubt that the horizontal beams were.
You are right... and wrong. The thrust of the article was that PC environmentalism may be to blame for the destruction of Discovery. This guy has his facts a bit garbled but the basic thesis is sound. In 1997, environmentalists forced the elimination of exterior fuel tank foam that had been made with freon as part of the manufacturing process. The freon made foam did not slough off the tank in large chunks... the replacement "environmentally friendly" foam does!
aside from the "catch fire and explode" error, the author is constantly confusing the foam insulation on the external tank with the ceramic heat-shield tiles on the orbiter.
while it is true that Challenger was lost and Discovery is in peril due to Greenie interference, it helps NO ONE to so badly misrepresent the facts.
The author is confused but correct.
The foam was changed for precisely the reason given. The foam now fails at a higher rate than previous for precisely the reason given.
The author went too far with his "no one knows" drama - and confuses the tiles with the foam, thus damaging his credibility. But the core facts are the facts - the foam was redesigned to be more environmentally friendly, with a resultant loss in performance which directly leads to this condition.
Diva's Husband
crap... COLUMBIA was destroyed on re-entry in 2003.
Challenger was the O-ring burnthrough on launch.
need... more... coffee
Halfway through the construction of the first tower, environmental concerns did indeed force the builder to change the specifications of the sprayed on structural member insullation to something not including asbestos. The second tower was built with no asbestos spray at all, using the replacement. Failure Analysis shows that the CHANGE in insullation coating did have an effect... but had it not been changed it would have only extended the time a couple of hours... and you're right... more people would have been saved...
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