Posted on 07/27/2005 3:25:59 PM PDT by MindBender26
NASA realizes debris that fell of external fuel tank yesterday came close to causing irrepairable damage to shuttle now in orbit.
Fleet GROUNDED. More later
Chances to return to flight again, no better than 50/50.
"The real problem is using manned missions to send cargo up into low earth orbit."
Very true. If we can fly UAVs from halfway around the planet we can certainly launch and dock cargo without an onboard pilot.
Thx!
That's worth posting as part of the thread:
Thank fussy "environmentalists" from the Clinton administration for the substandard but politically correct foam that NASA thinks caused the Columbia disaster.
"NASA engineers have known for at least five years that insulating foam could peel off the space shuttle's external fuel tanks and damage the vital heat-protecting tiles that the space agency says were the likely 'root cause' of Saturday's shuttle disaster," the left-of-center Philadelphia Inquirer noted today in an article by Knight Ridder News Service.
So why was such a crummy substance used in such a crucial capacity, with the lives of seven astronauts at stake? Because "environmentalists" fretting about their theory of human-caused "global warming" wanted to use it.
In a 1997 report, NASA mechanical systems engineer Greg Katnik "noted that the 1997 mission, STS-87, was the first to use a new method of 'foaming' the tanks, one designed to address NASA's goal of using environmentally friendly products. The shift came as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was ordering many industries to phase out the use of Freon, an aerosol propellant linked to ozone depletion and global warming," Knight Ridder reported.
Insulation is sprayed on the shuttle's tanks to keep the super-cooled hydrogen and oxygen fuels at the correct temperature.
Before the P.C. new insulation was used, about 40 of the spacecraft's 26,000 ceramic tiles would sustain damage in missions. However, Katnik reported that NASA engineers found 308 "hits" to Columbia after a 1997 flight.
A "massive material loss on the side of the external tank" caused much of the damage, Katnik wrote in an article in Space Team Online.
He called the damage "significant." One hundred thirty-two hits were bigger than 1 inch in diameter, and some slashes were as long as 15 inches.
Most frighteningly, some slashes cut three-quarters of the way into the 2-inch-deep tiles, near the ship's aluminum skin, which burns at only 350 degrees. More than 100 tiles had to be replaced - 11 times more than in a previous mission that had used foam made with politically incorrect Freon.
"As recently as last September, a retired engineering manager for Lockheed Martin, the contractor that assembles the tanks, told a conference in New Orleans that developing a new foam to meet environmental standards had 'been much more difficult than anticipated,'" Knight-Ridder wrote.
The engineer, who helped design the thermal protection system, said that switching from the Freon foam "resulted in unanticipated program impacts, such as foam loss during flight."
All they need to do is get some Herculiner spray on Bed Liner. Then it won't peel, chip, or flake! Here is some more information from the website. This is a unique, advanced-formula, do-it-yourself, any color you want protective coating for truck beds and SPACE SHUTTLES. This ready-to-use, textured polyurethane coating looks great and protects your vehicle. Skid resistant textured surface won't peel, chip, or flake! Bonds and seals all surfaces to prevent rust, resist gasoline, oil, solvents, and chemicals. Easy to apply: just clean and prepare the surface, brush or roll on the ready-to-use coating, and allow to dry!
I imagine this one will be in the Breaking News leaders for a while, but you may want to ping the usual gang.
Thank you for posting that long article. It covered very nearly everything.
Well done.
Man, I wish I could have what they were smokin' when they thought that!
OK, sorry, I misunderestimated your first statement. I didn't realize that your reference to "the next generation shuttle" was for a vehicle radically different than the present model.
Nail. Head.
Yep.
It's one thing to risk lives in cutting edge technology - that's the price of innovation. It's quite another thing when you have a ship that's a quarter century old with known problems - that's a blasted waste of lives and money for no good purpose.
Damn enviro wackos.
I've got the solution! Sell the whole Shuttle program (and NASA) to the Chinese. They can use all the environmentally nasty stuff since they are a developing nation and they can do whatever the hell they please (the Kyoto clause). Then we can buy the Shuttles from them for about half the price we makes them. And, since they have no value for human life, we can hire Chinese crew to fly the thing for us. They can even plant the first American flag on Mars for us and we can sit back and watch it on our Chinese wide screen HDTVs.
Nuclear power plants, too. Heck, even nuclear powered rockets.
correct. It is amazing that the wimps at NASA didn't stand up say "F**K this ozone scare. We are building the tanks like before." But nooooooo, everyone has the insane bureaucratic mentality. I wonder if anyone at all somewhere in the government "pushed" to have the foam applied the old way instead of the liberal-pc way?
An organizational restructuring at NASA is imperative at this time. Whether or not I would support additional funding is dependent on the quality of post-restructuring processes, initiatives, competencies, etc.
Doesn't work that way. Orbital mechanics dictates your velocity against your height above the Earth. As the system is designed, velocity is traded off for heat and friction once you come in contact with the atmosphere during the re-entry phase.
The "a href=" inside angle brackets contains the URL the person clicking will be directed to. The "/a" in angle brackets contains the visible text in the reader's browser.
You might check out the HTML sandbox thread too, for more examples. When posting an article, there is a space to just type in the URL, without the "a href", "/a" or angle bracket stuff.
Wow. Excellent. And... sticky rice is a whole bunch cheaper than the foodstuffs we're using :o)
BU&&SH!+!!! You don't send 7 people up (one is a Japanese guestronaut for cryin' out loud) on a test flight!
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