Slashdot Mirror
Bad Testing Doomed NASA's Hypersonic X-43A
RobertB-DC writes "Space.com got hold of NASA's yet-to-be-released report on the June 2001 failure of the air-breathing X-43A hypersonic research vehicle, and it doesn't look good for 'Faster, Better, Cheaper'. The report refuses to single out any one contributing factor, but it cites ground testing 'inaccuracies' and 'misinterpretation' of wind tunnel data -- in particular, failure to retest the vehicle after additional heat protection was added. As noted in the original Slashdot article, the craft went out of control when the fins broke off just seconds into flight."
You know, stuff like this really inspires me. I'm in the middle of reading Kings of the High Frontier, which was first published in the mid-nineties. A major plot point is a wealthy industrialist offering a half-billion dollar prize similar to the X-Prize. Even a few years ago, I never thought we'd be seeing so many groups trying for their own cheap launch. It should have been done years ago.
Some people complain that the X-Prize doesn't really get anywhere---that tossing yourself a hundred kilometers above sea level is a far cry from low earth orbit. This is true. Maybe the X-Prize will be the first in a series of cash prizes to spur even more invention. First single-stage to orbit, first real space station, first craft assembled in space... I don't know what the next milestones will be, but we'll get there faster if there's cash money incentive.
Oh, and would wetsuits work as space suits? There's no way the heat would really bleed off, and if you could lead-line them for heat shielding...
The quote from KOTHF is "Space suits for NASA cost a million bucks a shot and are about as comfortable as wearing pork barrels. I found this research report from the nineteen-sixties by a team that ought to have won the contract bid, except that their suits only cost a thousand dollars each and could be done by any seamstress. NASA probably figured that would have looked cheap, so for three decades astronauts have been lugging around thirty layers of cloth and a refrigerator when they could have been dressed in Spandex tights." [...] "The difference between down here and up there is only one measly atmosphere of pressure. Our skin is strong enough to withstand that gradient. It has quite a bit of tensile strength. The only problem is that it stretches too well. That means we swell up, which drops the pressure in our bloodstream, so our blood outgasses and vapor-locks our hearts. With just this second skin to keep our body volume constant, we don't expand. So we don't boil." (From ch. 11.)
Can anyone with a background in anything relating to that confirm or deny?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not an expert, but have read on this elsewhere:
Wetsuits (probably reinforced with kevlar or something, why not) would probably be fine; actually, filling any small internal gaps with water would be a good trick to insure a perfect fit (any gaps in the suit and you get Giant Space Hickeys, and we don't want that!). You'ld need a fishbowl helmet, of course.
Heat might be tricky. Space is cold, but there's no air, so shedding heat is surprisingly hard. I'm not sure if overheating or freezing would be the main problem for humans in moderately insulated suits.
Why is it that nasa has the philosophy of faster better cheaper? Although it has had some success the philosophy leads to more failure. Its obvious that the public seems to want more space based research, trips to mars, etc. So why does nasa feel that it needs to drop a project at any hint of failure?
-=You might be a geek if your computer is worth more than your car=-
I personally don't see this governmental fiddling with space lasting much longer, seeing how commercial interests and private (albeit wealthy) citizens are starting to push the cold, dark envelope of space travel. If I could make an outlandish prediction, I'd guess that by 2020, we'll have a ship or two with no real flag-bearing duties on the Moon. I personally hope we find a complete replacement for manned vehicles altogether, but exploration has demands for the flexible, so humans will probably still be risked as a result.
Remember, you don't fly in a "Wright" airplane, it's a Boeing... let commercial interests take over where purist experimentation leaves off.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
There have been consistent stories in the press about a certain slack in attention to detail at NASA of late. And, as an Air Force guy, I wonder how they could design a wing leading edge that can't take a hit from some hard foam, we get bird-strike all the time! Even a C-17 can take a 30 pound goose at 400 knots...
NASA has some damn smart people working there. NASA does really nice basic research. NASA sucks ass at applying it.
Look at the various inventions that fell out of the space program as little extras. Look at all the technology that was invented. That's what NASA does well.
Now look at the Shuttle, which didn't meet a single one of its design parameters---it's technically not even reusable, it's salvageable. Look at the criminally high cost of launching mass into LEO. Look at NASA's inability to really deliver on the applied end of things. That's what NASA can't do.
I suggest Kings of the High Frontier as required reading for anyone interested in learning how NASA has failed to deliver on its promise of space access due to its fetishization of research-heavy boondoggles. The book is fiction, but extensively researched. (The discussion on unpressurized spacesuits fell out of an off-the-cuff reference the author made.)
Leave it to the X-Prize competitors, and their successors. The Space Shuttle is at the very limit of complexity that's possible to construct, which is why NASA has been unable to replace it. (Did you know there are literally hundreds of "Criticality One" components in the shuttle, the failure of any one of which could cause the shuttle's destruction?)
Okay, this seems like a rant about the Shuttle. But it's really about NASA, and the way in which they do things. It's not an indictment against the people who work there; the scientists and engineers of NASA are without equal. Their efforts are being squandered. The future does not belong to NASA, and it hasn't since they cancelled Apollo.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Agree completely. But look at what happened in the 60's - they had the President in public state "We will put a man on the moon by the end of this decade". They had a *clearly* defined goal to work towards, and were resourced to do it.
What are they working on now? Do they have such a strong, defined, focused goal? Such strong executive leadership? No wonder they are floundering.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
do you really think having a Ph.D means that a person is very smart or capable of making the right decisions ? I'm sure this can be construed as flamebait, but unless the person has done something interesting in Ph.D and come out with some good publications, it doesn't mean much. there are some "good" universities where a person can get a Ph.D without as much as publishing a single paper. Please don't confuse having a Ph.D. with ability.
But I bet your rocket didn't even come close to the speeds of the X43A. Probably didn't even come close to 1x the speed of sound. And even if you weren't an engineer and simply lived in hurricane country, you would know that the wind forces on a surface grow quadratic with linear speed increase.
Additionally, I would not be surprised if at supersonic speeds, the air behavioural model is a lot more complicated than at 'ground speeds' or 'model rocket speeds'... I'm thinking of different wave propagation at supersonic speeds (weird turbulence), heat effects (!), and maybe even charging/discharging effects due to friction...
So, what ghetto engineering? If a race car hits the concrete barrier, you're also not accusing the driver of being drunk, but you assume the crash was a result of the high speed and a result of being on the limit of possibilities... The X43A was that too.
Remind's me of the allegedly true story going the rounds BAE systems in the UK developed a new test rig for testing plane windsceens , a chicken was fired at high velocity at the screen by a giant compressed air gun An american company involved in high speed train developement asked if they could use the design, three weeks later a frantic Email arrived at BAE saying the chicken went through the screen, through the bulkhead and embedded itself in the rear wall of the carriage, what should they do to improve their windsceen, the guy at BAE sent a one line email to them 'DEFOST THE CHICKEN' I tend to think its true as something similar happened to me, I was involved in developing rat poisons, new novel chemicals/drugs are often sent off for evaluation as anti-cancer drugs or in this case to combat strokes (it was an anti-coagulent) the center replied that it was not effective as all the rats died at their standard testing dose DOH RTFM
Actually, if you stop and think about you'll realize that the way NASA put men on the moon was very much in line with the FBC philosophy. Rather than investing a huge amount of money in something complex and "high-tech" like the X-20 DynaSoar and taking forever to develop the missions NASA operated on a fixed, very tight schedule (land and return before the decade is out), and opted for simple, rugged solutions. Sounds a lot like the mandated "3 years from 0 to launch" policy and deliberate selection of less complex solutions to me that APL used for NEAR and other FBC missions. Sure, the NASA lunar program to develop a lot of new technology, but the underlying philosophy very much FBC. FBC doesn't mean spending less money, and it doesn't mean doing a bad job. It means thinking about what you are doing, and trying to maximize the value for the money you are spending.
We don't need a good return on investment -- we need more investment. NASA's annual budget is less than we are spending every two months occupying Iraq. In the mid-60's, NASA received about 5% of the total federal budget. Now it gets less than 1/2%. We need a President like Kennedy again -- one who values space exploration more than oil exploitation.
Presidential politics have very little to do with it. While I agree that Kennedy was extremely inspiring, I think he was dealing with a very different environment than we face today. What we really need is for the federal government to get its nose out of space, and to back off on the various regulations that mke it hard for commercial interests to do anything in space. The American public (as a whole) apparently doesn't care about space. If they did, it would be a great campaign platform, and someone would use it as such. The "public" doesn't want to spend the money, they have no tolerance for failure, and all they are interested in is spectacular firsts. This attitude is not conducive to a healthy space program. When you add in the fact that NASA is now a bloated bureaucracy, riddled with incompetent engineers and managers, drowning in unwanted congressional pork, and essentially wedded by politics to a launch system that is clearly over-priced and broken, it's no surprise that our space program is a mess.
Captain Loser, you have to remember that NASA is a bureaucratic organization. The purpose of a bureaucratic organization is to extract money from the taxpayers to hire more bureaucrats... And they know that the Shuttle should be replaced by something that does not require an army to operate, but they'd be out of a job.
SysKoll, do you actually know any NASA bureaucrats? Well, my father is one of them. And ever since the Columbia accident he's been working 70-hour workweeks (with no overtime pay, I think). And every day he talks to me about all the discussions at work he's having about how to phase out the shuttle. And all of the other "bureaucrats" he works with are hard-working, honest folks who are neither conspirators nor thieves of taxpayer money.
I'm sorry if this seems a little harsh, but I am really FED UP with people who bash NASA just to bash NASA.
P.S. In response to your "Each time the crazy engineers rock the boat and create a potential cheaper competitor for the Shuttle, it magically gets killed" I would point out that none of NASA's X-vehicles were competitors for the shuttle. They were technology demonstrators. I agree that NASA mismanaged them, but if they had flown, we would be no closer to a shuttle replacement.
P.P.S. An by the way, there is hope for the future of private space flight, which I think is our only hope for CATS. It's called the X-Prize (www.xprize.org); I think you would enjoy learning about it.
What we really need is for the federal government to get its nose out of space, and to back off on the various regulations that mke it hard for commercial interests to do anything in space.
Businesses want profits and the profits just aren't there for pure science research in space. Universities won't be funding space exploration -- it's often tough for them to find enough money in the budget for facilities maintenance. Boeing is not going to land a man on Mars in the hopes that they will be able to turn a profit from the mission. Lockheed is not going to fund the launch of a next-generation space telescope with the expectation of making money from the venture.
I just don't believe that it would further our knowledge, increase our enthusiasm, or make us proud to be Americans if some private firm launched Lance Bass (of 'N Sync), Dennis Tito, and other multi-millionaire space-tourist-wannabes into orbit.
The private sector will continue to fund and launch communications satellites -- and will do little else. Nothing else having to do with space has been shown to have any real promise of generating a positive cash flow.
The American public (as a whole) apparently doesn't care about space. If they did, it would be a great campaign platform, and someone would use it as such. The "public" doesn't want to spend the money, they have no tolerance for failure, and all they are interested in is spectacular firsts.
Most of the public doesn't care about physical fitness either, but that does not mean that the The Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports should be eliminated. Sometimes it's important for leaders to lead, to set goals, and to energize the public to achieve those goals. That's what Kennedy did and that's what we need now. There is more to being a leader than creating budgets and priorities based on opinion polls and focus groups. A President's job is to look out for the good of the country, not pander to trailer park inbreds who think that astrology and astronomy are the same thing.