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Foam Shot Causes Damage to Shuttle Mockup
DoraLives writes "The New York Times is running a story describing the effects caused by a piece of foam fired at a fiberglass mock up of the Space Shuttle's wing. Although fiberglass is stronger than the RCC material on Columbia's wing, "The impact produced a 22-inch-long gap." Not good."
To summarise the article: nobody really thinks this is news until they test it on the actual substance (carbon-carbon) that the wing is made out of.
Nerf guns
I mean, I've seen some cool nerf guns, but check this out (from the article):
... at about 530 miles per hour"
"Researchers shot a 1.67-pound chunk of foam from a gas cannon
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
How is this "not good" exactly? The shuttle was destroyed, that fact cannot be changed. How could finding the cause of that destruction possibly be considered "not good"?
Let's all say this together - "We don't need no stinkin' registration for the majority of news!"
Use Google News to find it elsewhere, and reported better as often as not.
Shuttle Wing Foam Collision Tests
And a direct Reuters link which is pretty much what all the other articles say for those who are too lazy to click twice.
-Adam
Why did NASA choose the shuttle design anyway? They took a perfectly good spaceship and added wings, control surfaces, tail, landing gear, etc... just so it could fly home like a plane. Lot's of heavy stuff just to switch from an inherently-safe re-entry method (ballistic with heat shield&chute) to a much more risky one (landing like a plane). I don't see how the "plane" part of the design is worth it... Just cuz it's sexy?
DRYDEN F-15B SUPPORTS SHUTTLE EXTERNAL TANK INSULATION TESTS
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewsReleases/19
Published in 1999
fourth paragraph:
The EPA required Nasa to continue using a foam that was not as safe as the older tank foam. The EPA has a direct responsiblity for this disaster.
What about other rockets that use cryo-fuel? Do they have thermo insulator as an outer layer? I can't be positive, I've never touched a rocket, but they seem to have metal skins...
- Q.: Did something just touch the shuttle?
- A.: Yes
- Conclusion/response 1...we have a problem that needs to be dealt with accordingly.
- Conclusion/response 2...yes, but we don't that it's an issue. We'll get back to you after we run some tests.
- Conclusion/response 3...we're not sure. Anyone have additional data?
#2 & #3? How did they get in there?Foreign object impact testing (beyond acknowledgement of that 'rule'), that leads to suspicion of trouble, seems academic.
Let's find out why that rule wasn't followed, and work to make sure it receives proper prioritization in the future.
You got karma for being funny, but the truth is that this figure is extremely telling - they had to shoot the foam at a completely unrealistic number to get the results they "forced". The foam wasn't falling from very high, and as foam would have an extremely low terminal velocity even if it did. The rocket was just taking off and so wasn't moving very fast, and the foam was moving up at the same speed until it fell.
So why do an experiment with such an insanely high speed for the foam? Sure, they might have been able to damage their mock-up that way, but even a straw can pierce a tree if it has a tornado pushing it. Looks like NASA is up to more of it's old tricks again.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I remember a British-produced show once where they had a special machine that lauched dead chickens at airplanes to test the impact of in-flight birds on the planes. I wonder if they used the chicken launchers for the shuttle tests?
One anecdote given was that one morning during a standard chicken test the chicken went several feet into the plane body and created a unnervingly loud explosion. It turned out that the operator forgot to unthaw the chicken before launching it.
Table-ized A.I.
No. you can have a big humungous capsule with the ability to carry as much cargo FROM space as the shuttle. There is nothing in the concept of capsules that makes them inferior to a plane for reentry. And they can be made reusable too.
Even if spaceplanes were an inherently better way to retrieve items from space, the space shittle is not able to reach the vast majority of objects that one might be interested in retrieving. Not only is it limited to Low Earth Orbit, but it is also limited to an eastward bound east-west orbit because it requires the extra 1000mph that the earth's rotation gives it to reach orbit. It can not travel westward, northward or southward.
I am suprised they had the foresight to launch the Hubble into an orbit reachable by the shuttle. That is the only true shuttle success story, though I wonder how much it would have cost to just launch the copy of the hubble that probably exists somewhere. ( NASA ususally builds two or three of everything for spare parts / redundancy since the major cost is not in materials but design and testing ) I wonder if readying and launching the copy would cost less than the 500 million dollars the repair mission cost.
In the end, rockets can not be the way to get into space because although they are much 10 times less expensive than shuttle launches ( even non-reusable rockets ) and are probably safer they are still very expensive.
As has been said many times before, the shuttle program should be scrapped, and the money should go to researching cheaper ways to get into space though they may be unproven and risky. Things like lightcraft ( there's a good sciam.com article search for sciam.com and lightcraft if this link does not work ) http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005873 1-ED4B-1CB8-B4A8809EC588EEDF and space elevators seem the most promising to me I applaud NASA's investigation into the Podkletnov effect though he seems to be a crackpot. High risk research with high probability of failure is the only way to truly advance space travel. There are very few incremental improvements to rocket technology that can be made. Even scramjets do not hold the promise of making a trip to space as routine as a trip accross the ocean which should be the ultimate goal of advancing space flight.
We would know if either of the approaches had promise in a couple of years if they could split the current funding of the space shuttle between them. If one did turn out to be possible, we'd be using it regularly in ten years for routine business with continued funding. Much of the shuttle's
current funding should go into pure research in areas of science that hold promise for making cheap space travel possible.
Commercialization of space should be a high priority. Telecommunications and weather sattelites are fine and dandy but do not even scratch the tip the potential wealth of space should getting there become cheap.
The ISS should also be scrapped and it's funds redirected toward both space exploration via telescopes and probes, and towards researching cheap ways to get into space. We know that zero G is bad for people. We know in general how to get around it - i.e. by having a space station that spins. Such a space station is too expensive and useless to exist unless getting to space is cheap. There is no need for a space hotel/gas station if there is no traffic on the road to space! All the zero G experiments that were worth the money to perform have been performed, and while there is value in repeating the results of experiments it is not worth billions of dollars.
Lets put zero G experiments on hold until they are cheap enough to be practical. Let's make access to space cheap so the private sector can figure out how to build a spinning space station that does not wobble. Let's let mining companies explore the moon/asteroids for resources.
Then NASA can work on breaking the lightspeed barrier...
Eat at Joe's.