The Space Shuttle's Lessons For The Future

Aviation Week and Space Technology ^ | 12/4/2010 | Frank Morring Jr

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

The second flight of the space shuttle Atlantis was almost its last.

What was then NASA’s newest orbiter sustained severe damage to its fragile thermal protection system when it lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B on Dec. 2, 1988. But through a combination of military secrecy and plain old human misunderstanding, the problem went unaddressed until Atlantis returned to Earth four days later.

The STS-27 mission was the second shuttle flight after the fatal Challenger mission, an urgent “black” mission to orbit the Lacrosse-1 radar-reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (AW&ST July 9, 2007, p. 28). The military space program was backing away from the shuttle as fast as it could in the wake of the accident (see p. 59), but it had built payloads like the first of the billion-dollar Lacrosse satellites that could only be launched on the shuttle.

Liftoff seemed normal to the crew and the launch team, but engineers at Johnson Space Center reviewing imagery of the ascent later saw something break away from the nose of the right-hand solid rocket booster and hit the orbiter. As a precaution, the Atlantis crew unlimbered the robotic arm and used its video camera to inspect the fragile tiles in the apparent impact zone on the starboard side.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Great article. Thanks for posting. From page 2...

A similar issue arose with the solid rocket boosters in 1996, when managers decided to destack STS-79 and replace its boosters because post-recovery inspection of the boosters from the previous flight showed hot gas had penetrated the field joints in an ominous echo of the failure that had destroyed Challenger a decade earlier.

The problem, says Deputy Shuttle Program Manager Steve Cash, was traced to a new water-based adhesive used to meet environmental regulations. The new adhesive had worked well in a hot-fire motor test in Utah, but the higher humidity in Florida changed its chemical characteristics. A divided management team decided to opt for caution and replace the boosters, says Cash, who was working the solid-fuel booster project at the time. The project switched back to the old adhesive under an Environmental Protection Agency waiver.

The enviro-nuts work overtime to kill us and reduce our standard of living. Worse, why didn't NASA and the booster contractor think in advance about the performance characteristics of the adhesive in a dry climate vs. a humid climate? Seems like a "Duh" to me (as an engineer).

[struwwelpeter]

It was a risky mission, but we had a big problem back then: most of the space recon assets (the "non-airbreathers") had been designed for horizontal launch from the SST cargo bay. Vertical launching from Delta and such just wasn't an option, and it takes years to get a system from the drafting board to the launchpad.

Because of degradation of existing assets - low orbits are short orbits, and early Keyholes needed servicing - we were getting some dangerous holes in coverage of the nation that once stated: "we will bury you".

We managed to bury them instead, at least for awhile, but the national security considerations made the possible sacrifice of a shuttle crew almost thinkable.

Thank God things went well.

[sionnsar]

The problem, says Deputy Shuttle Program Manager Steve Cash, was traced to a new water-based adhesive used to meet environmental regulations.

Same issue with the insulation. A working formula replaced by one more "green."

[Captain Beyond]

space ping

Thanks for the ping ESB. :)

[Robe]

For Later

[ari-freedom]

“The enviro-nuts work overtime to kill us and reduce our standard of living.”

and they actually think they are pro-science

[brityank]

Good writeup, thanks.

(Click pic for full size --->)

The EPA outlawed the Freon solvents used by Michaud, and I believe it to be the root cause of the Columbia ice damage and resultant destruction. There was a great thread of Observation on TPS damage on Orbiter by bonesmccoy that has lost nearly all of the diagrams and artwork as it tracked and dug through the details.

One of the strengths of FR, (the wide range of FReeper knowledge) - that also shows one of its weaknesses (the loss of detail in documentation).

[brityank]

Ping.