Posted on 10/30/2020 12:45:32 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The capsule is scheduled to send up four astronauts no earlier than 7:49 p.m. Eastern time on November — a mission dubbed "Crew-1." It will be the first non-test, crewed mission since the successful crewed test flight in May 2020.
But ahead of the big launch, SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann explained in a NASA briefing this week that a problem with a "nail polish"-like substance discovered during a previous launch threatened to derail the grand plans. The problem already caused NASA to delay the Crew-1 flight earlier this month.
The problem dramatically came to light during the GPS-III SV04 launch earlier this month, Koenigsmann said, when SpaceX stopped the October 2 launch with just two seconds till lift off.
The issue? Two of the engines attempted to start early. To find out what happened, the team removed the engines and took them to the McGregor test facility in Texas for further testing.
They found a component inside the gas generator – "basically like a little rocket engine" — that feeds propellant into the main chamber. The tests found a masking lacquer, left over from the build process, had blocked a vent hole.
The lacquer is used to mask components during the surface treatment. Koenigsmann speculated that some went into the vent during the washing or cleaning process.
Upon closer inspection, the team found the same issue on two of the Crew-1 booster's engines. The same problem also affects one engine for the booster to be used in the Sentinel 6 mission, which is scheduled to launch a satellite on November 10.
(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...
True enough.
I never imagined that cadmium contact would do that.
Richard Feynman was on the Challenger investigation team.
He had a lot to say about it.
http://www.feynman.com/science/the-challenger-disaster/
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-feynman-file
Apparently chlorine in pentel pen ink caused problems too.
Chlorine activity is rarely surprising.
LOL. Reads like a Dilbert adventure.
LOL. That’s an old joke where I used to work. That was many years ago.
For the sake of a few shreds of decorum, I studiously avoided any mention of embedded device engineer...
Hans Koenigsmann explained in a NASA briefing this week that a problem with a "nail polish"-like substance discovered during a previous launch threatened to derail the grand plans... a masking lacquer, left over from the build process, had blocked a vent hole.
No problem. Go to Dollar Tree and get a bottle of polish remover.
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