Why Hydrogen Leaks Continue to Be a Major Headache for NASA Launches

Gizmodo ^ | 09/06/2022 | ByGeorge Dvorsky

[JoSixChip]

If hydrogen (H2) is like helium, it will leak out of everything, even a steel tank.

You all are talking like the problem is a small leak. That is not the case, they can accept and deal with a small leak. This is a big leak, the size of the molecule has nothing to do with it. Incompetence due to wokeness is the problem.

[PROCON]

The Engineers who designed/built the Apollo rockets did it with sliderules.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

They should fuel the rockets with helium instead of hydrogen. Much safer.

[khelus]

valuing diversity over merit

[nascarnation]

Designed with slide rules
Drawn on vellum with pencil
Fabricated by high school graduates on manually operated machine tools

Good Lord, how did they ever do it /sarc

[TexasGator]

“60 years later and we’re still using rockets”

What do you suggest?

[Steely Tom]

I guess diversity teams...never mind.

Don't say it.

[D Rider]

There is no connections for hydrogen that are 100% free of leakage. So what does SpaceX do?

[NorthMountain]

NASA handled LH2 just fine for Saturn V upper stages.
NASA handled LH2 just fine for STS.
Euros handle LH2 just fine for Ariane 5 and Ariane 6
ULA handles LH2 just fine for Delta IV and Delta IV heavy
ULA handles LH2 just fine for Atlas V upper stage

It’s not like LH2 is some kind of new, untested fuel that nobody is really familiar with ...

[nascarnation]

I wonder how much continuity there is in organizations like this. Do “lessons learned” have to be re-learned decades later?

[WMarshal]

Hydrogen is racist!

[NorthMountain]

SpaceX uses RP1/LOX in Falcon 9 rocket and CH4/LOX in the Starship rocket.

[BenLurkin]

Quite possibly the stupidest comment ever.

[D Rider]

Exactly, safer and easier to handle.

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Lemme guess - gaskets and / or sealant materials must be green / earth friendly

[NorthMountain]

There should have been continuity from STS to SLS ... in fact, continuity is one of the reasons they're using shuttle components in SLS. Supposedly. There's a lot of bureaucratic and congressional meddling in the SLS design. I see two reasons the system is AFU. 1) Congress getting too involved in the design. 2) Diversity, Inclusion, Equity.

As an engineer, I really want to see the system work ... too many good people have put too much work into it ... OTOH, it really is a mess ... a worse mess than the STS ... and needs to be scrapped/replaced ASAP. And NASA should publish performance specs and let industry design and build the thing. Sort of like they did with the 1960s space program.

Maybe then it would actually work.

Back when this fiasco got started, they had a team study the old F-1 engine and design a new "F-1B" engine that would have had better performance, while being compatible with the US industrial base ca 2013. Congress nixed it in favor of reusing Shuttle stuff. ARGGH!

[DannyTN]

They need a rocket scientist to deal with that.

[Jim Noble]

The Saturn V was fueled by kerosene and liquid oxygen.

LH2 blew up the Challenger.

This is going to prove to be a diversity-fueled fiasco that we will be lucky to ever fly. When I saw they had incorporated SRBs I almost threw up.

[NorthMountain]

See #29 ... LH2 is a fine fuel, widely used for decades without any real trouble. The problem isn’t LH2, the problem is a fxxxed up culture at NASA and a fxxxed up culture in Congress.

[Texas Fossil]

Monomethylhydrazine (not simple hydrogen) and nitrogen tetroxide (powerful oxidizer) are the normal rocket fuels.