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."