https://priceonomics.com/the-space-shuttle-challenger-explosion-and-the-o/
Posted on 10/22/2022 12:37:26 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The incident happened on October 5 at around 10:25 a.m. ET, as a SpaceX pad crew was preparing Crew Dragon Endurance for launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket. With the four Crew-5 astronauts already inside the capsule and the hatch closed, an attentive eye spotted a single human hair in the latch seal.
The countdown clock had just ticked past T-90 minutes, so time was of the essence. The pad crew calmly reopened Endurance’s hatch and removed the offending strand. They performed another inspection, thoroughly re-cleaned the seal area, and closed the hatch for the second and final time. A subsequent pressure check confirmed a tight seal.
The entire affair took only a few minutes, and the launch wasn’t affected. Blast off of the Falcon 9 happened at noon as scheduled, with the Crew-5 astronauts—Nicole Aunapu Mann, Josh Cassada, Koichi Wakata, and Anna Kikina—successfully reaching the International Space Station on the following day.
FOD is defined as any object that doesn’t belong at a specific location, whether that location is a hatch seal, an engine, a cockpit, or the runway. Debris in the wrong place can damage equipment, facilitate the suboptimal performance of systems, and trigger outright malfunctions.
The human hair found inside the hatch seal may or may not have caused a problem during the Crew-5 flight, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is safety and the elimination of anything that could put human lives at risk. Engineers will continue to seek out FOD, regardless of the inconvenience it may cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
FOD Walkdown!
Was the hair a pubic hair?
I better vacuum all the cat hair in my car
I’m positive is was a personal hair. Not from the general pubic. 🤪
https://priceonomics.com/the-space-shuttle-challenger-explosion-and-the-o/
Thank goodness it wasn’t on a coke can.
Your point is correct, but it was one BIG O-Ring all the way around the booster circumference.
Did Anita Hill become an astronaut?
I stand corrected.
The O rings were 12’ in diameter.
Not tiny, the diameter of the SRB.
Thank God I was in ICBM's so I never had to do a FOD walk. We did have to ensure there was nothing at the bottom of the Launch Duct/Tube (nomenclature different for the different weapon systems).
The funniest foreign object was when I was still enlisted on Titan II Missile Combat Crew. The end of the huge Daly Shift Verification Checklist we were at the bottom of the Silo Equipment Area and had to open the launch Duct Access Door at the lowest level to not only inspect the bottom of our Titan II ICBM but to check for water/debris at the bottom. One time there was a live Rattle Snake down there so we went up a few levels a got a Hot Stick and squeegee and I hooked that thing with the Hot Stick. We went back to the Control Center to show the Commander and Deputy and our Deputy freaked out. Dumped it topside.
The crew we relieved played the joke on us and snagged that puppy topside and put it in the Launch Duct.
Afronaut
Which color is critical.
Thank goodness they are as careful about vaccines.
It was a combination of 3 things:
1) cold weather
2) a design flaw which placed an SRB seal right next to a latching point to the external fuel tank
3) bad management
The O ring seal itself performed as designed.
“The crew we relieved played the joke on us...”
Oh...it woulda been game on then. Hope you got even.
That’s why real astronauts vs tourists cut third hair very short!
Exactly so. Red would not have presented as much of a problem, since as we know, the official measure of a "negligibly small distance" is defined as the diameter of an "RCH" (red c hair).
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