This stuff never comes off.
Posted on 07/29/2005 1:25:32 PM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
This isn't some guy mixing the stuff up in his backyard. The guys who make the foam are high-powered research chemists, and it's a pretty good bet they wrote down how to mix up the foam. The reason it was stopped was that it took freon to make it, and the greenies didn't like that.
As to whether it needed the President or not, Clinton seemed to think so, since he wrote the order to switch formulations.
On top of that, I know this is NASA, but I highly doubt that they were as imprecise with their design specifications as you say:
"Thus they made something that worked, may not have understood it fully, and so when they couldn't make it anymore they accepted that the new process would also work. When it did not, they may have tweeked it a little, but since it is also up to the subjective technique of the applier, they probably considered the process to be variable and you get what you get."
Who do you think these guys are? A bunch of carpenters who do rocketry in their spare time? "Yep, clem, this latest batch of goop oughta spread on that there tank better than the last stuff did. Won't turn yer hands green, neither."
Sheesh.
I think this has been an ongoing problem and Columbia brought it to everyones attention.
You'll have to back to 1840 and ask them.
You hire an large number of chimps to type captions at CNN. When you find one with some scientific knowledge, you shoot him so he can't spread it.
The foam was always orange. Before the early launches the foam and tank were painted white, but that added about a ton of weight which was better used for payload.
I don't know if painting the foam would make it hold together better.
The one that the enviro-wackos were opposed to?
Oh yeah, one other thing, the woman who was in charge of the tile repair project was more of a camera hog than a project manager. Then when she argued with some engineer at the place that made the goo, I just had to laugh. I've had PM's that were that lame. That's why it's always better to be you're own PM for your own project assignments.
I've always wondered why the Shuttle didn't have headlights....If they turned on the headlights, they'd crash into the light beams.....
I never knew that. Thx
Some reasons---The inside contains lots of cabling, struts, electronics, etc. The skin is only about 1/16" thick and the salt air would corroded the aluminum in no time flat.
Reminds me of a mechanic that told me to buy cheap cans of rust proofing if I had a problem.
Also, I read a computer article about a guy modding his pc, probably for overclocking. He didn't like the noise and
used that spray foam caulk to try to insulate the fan noise. I think he went through a couple of iterations, one that
bent the case outwards from the foam expansion, and the other was touching the foam to "form" it into place.
Touching it collasped the bubbles, and made it hard as a rock, requiring something just short of a jackhammer to
remove (since no bubbles, no voids, great sound transmission).
The moral of the story is to use the appropriate material for the requirements of the application.
This stuff never comes off.
You are Correct, return to the Freon Based foam that worked Excellently. This is not the time to be Environmentally Correct, the Original Foam worked Perfectly because it was and is less brittle.This new stuff they have been trying to make work since 1998 a product of the Clinton/Gore dogma.Lets have it changed back to the original specifications NOW!
Yeah, but they're not going THAT fast (3.348 million miles per second)! How about 18 times the speed of my ex-wife in school zones.
Man, is that CNN Headline Correct???????or a photoshop??
Hope it is correct, then it shows how dumb CNN is!!Shuttle traveling 18 times faster than the speed of LIGHT!!!!!
Sorta blows Einstein and all We know outa the water.CNN was to dumb to know the difference between the speed of Sound and the speed of Light. WOW!
Thanks, where I worked in LMT the mixing and stirring and even the exact amounts were kept to loose tolerances so they did not have to throw out a close mix. But sometimes this led to vastly different properties from one day to the next and one tech to the next. Using a robot mixer is a good idea providing the temperature, humitity, and quantities and lots and age of materials are also controlled. Using composites, or resins or anything that required all these things be controlled was usually just too much for our guys.
There was a young lady named bright,
Who traveled much faster than light.
She started one day
in a relative way,
and returned on the previous night.
Internal NASA reports obtained by The Associated Press describe damage during some of the earlier shuttle missions, caused by foam from the bipod area. Columbia suffered damage to three insulating tiles during a June 1992 liftoff when a large chunk of foam from the bipod _ 26-by-10 inches _ fell off.
After the mission, NASA determined that the shuttle fleet had suffered an unprecedented amount of serious tile damage over 18 preceding flights.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.