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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
The X-43A MIB report underscores the fact that the Hyper-X launch vehicle contract was developed under the faster, better, cheaper philosophy
the rules clearly state that you may only choose 2 of the above!!
they didn't train enough!
Banaaaana!
Proud patriot and republican voter.
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=-
Damn it, Bobby Ted! That JB Weld was supposed to hold them goldang fins on tight....lemme check that thar tube. You dumb ass! It says that it holds in temperatures up to 200 degrees F not 2000! Get that antenna out of your ass!
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
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
You know, I'm not sure that the whole slashdot crowd understands how hard it is to test these sort of things. I mean my university has been doing subcontracting for NASA and I have to say, these people there are really smart. I'm not talking business major to business major, I mean EE to Ph.D EE - these guys are dumb so please don't refer to them as such. Imagine though, any huge project, no matter how well constructed, basically comes down to a single person decieding or desidgning something (the so called single point failure). Do you think you could be that person?
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 as a forward looking organization died in 69. Ever since then its been a zombie a shadow of its former self. Its been almost continuous decline in the post apollo era. Take a look at the programs that followed.
Skylab vs ISS Alpha
Direct easy and done safely v.s. Pointless
X-15 vs X29, X43 and the other spaceplane projects
The only significant manned space vehicle since the apollo program is the shuttle. While it is one thing for hero's to lose their lives in the conquest of a new frontier, its another to lose life because a congressional district in utah needed make work or nasa's beuracracy wouldn't listen to outsiders.
If there is any hope of man in space, it will come from private entrepeneurs and perhaps other countries.
Wow, I've heard of ghetto engineering ... but the fins just flat fell off a second into the flight?! C'mon, I expect much better of NASA. Hell, even I can manage to launch a rocket whose fins will stay fully attached until the parachute burns through and the entire assemblage smacks into the ground, sending fin particles everywhere. But that's MANY seconds after launch, not only a few.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
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
I worked for one of the companies involved in this program, although not directly on the program itself.
Let's see, we've got a scramjet test aircraft, which will be boosted to hypersonic speeds by a modified Pegasus rocket, which will be dropped from a B-52. So, besides developing the scramjet test aircraft, an interface system between the Pegasus and the X-43A needs to be designed and the whole system tested.
That didn't bother me too much. What really got me was what the point of the program was in the first place. The goal was to test the ability of a scramjet engine to propel an aircraft at hypersonic speeds. The Pegasus booster was supposed to accelerate the test aircraft to hypersonic speeds, then detach, at which point the scramjet would be started and the instrumentation would transmit 10 seconds of data. Besides the limited amount of data, if I recall correctly, the scramjet was not supposed to even maintain the aircraft's speed, which calls into question the value of the technology as a means of propulsion, in my opinion.
If I recall, the contract value was $33 million, and was significantly overrun. Your tax dollars at work (if you're American).
They'll get my encryption algorithm when they pry it from my cold, dead hard drive.
It's the reason why NASA deceived Congress and underestimated the cost and reliability of the Shuttle. Not a concious conspiracy, just your regular bureaucratic tendency.
Nowadays, the Shuttle is keeping tens of thousands of plushy jobs at NASA. Many of them aren't paper pushers, there are really good engineers working on this program. However, the real top dogs are the 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.
Each time the crazy engineers rock the boat and create a potential cheaper competitor for the Shuttle, it magically gets killed. Look at the X-33. Look at the DC-X: This demonstrator was taking off and landing on its jet, vertically. It was perfectly working when it was given to NASA, and somehow, NASA killed it on its first NASA flight. And somehow, the budget to build a new DC-X was consumed by, why, the Shuttle of course. So this perfectly good project was dropped.
See how it works? Tons of examples can be found in the history of the various X-projects that got mysteriously mismanaged and killed since the Shuttle program started.
NASA outlived its utility and became the worst enemy of cheap space access.
You want space access? You want to get to Mars before the Chinese? Keep the JPL and the researchers, get rid of the rest of NASA.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Something has to be done about NASA. They are clearly far too inadequate to do their job properly.
They ignored their engineers in '86. Astronauts died.
They cant convert units, expensive Mars rovers are lost.
They didnt follow proper safety procedures this year, astronauts died.
They lose prototype planes because they decide not to test added elements. They lose this, and that, and lose billions of dollars doing it.
I dunno about all you other readers, but it seems to me that NASA needs some *serious* restructuring.
This better, faster, cheaper thing has turned out to be broken, slow, and expensive. It's bad enough we lose prototype planes worth billions to their errors, let alone the 14 astronauts sacrificed in the name of saving costs to keep a complex bureaucracy well paid.
Fuck NASA. We need something new.
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Based upon my experience at Goddard, I will say that most of the people at NASA are honest, upstanding individuals intent on doing the best job they can.
Unfortunately, I don't think the management culture they inhabit works the same way. Yes, there are honest people in management. Too often, though, they must fight against pressures forcing dishonesty and abuse.
Some people are quitting the field because of dishonesty and abuse. Donna Shirley, the woman who led the team that designed and built the successful Mars rover of 1997, has quit, citing the "lack of honesty and openness" in the field.
When I was at Goddard, some high level managers in my company were caught defrauding the government out of millions of dollars. As a part of being allowed to continue doing business with the government, the company signed an agreement that forced all employees to receive annual "ethics" training. The training was a joke, emphasizing things like not using government e-mail for personal use. Teaching employees how to recognize major corruption on the part of mid and high level executives? Why, we "worker bees" need not worry our pretty little heads about that sort of thing...
Personally, I think the kind of dishonesty reported in these articles will persist until NASA embraces honesty, openness and democracy in its culture.
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
As someone who has worked on satellite software development and testing, I can tell you that system complexity is one of the biggest enemies of the 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' philosophy. As the complexity of a spacecraft increases, so does the testing. If you put 10,000 telemetry points into the downlink, then you have to test all 10,000 of them in such a way as to assure that they are fully functional. The same holds true for mechanical complexity and system interaction. When a project is behind schedule and over budget, one of the first things looked at for chopping is the testing.
This is not news to software engineers, but it seems to be something that the general public fails to grasp. NASA needs to revert to the slower, more reliable, more expensive philosophy that brought so much success throughout the sixties and seventies. We need to accept that space exploration is complex and expensive and attempts to shortcut will just result in horrible failures and even the loss of life. Diverting a little money from Bush's "War Against Imaginary Weapons" to NASA would be a good start.
Apollo wasn't as expensive as you might think. According to this NASA page, total funding for the Apollo program was less than 20 billion dollars (which would equal about 100 billion of today's dollars).
In contrast to that, last year's US GDP was about USD 10 trillion. It's just a matter of will - the state's administration doesn't really have an interest in space exploration.
Don't whistle while you're pissing.
Donald Rumsfeld (always) and NASA management will want you to believe that NASA employees are all to blame for failures. We always find out later that the Government civilian worker-bees and pack-mules did all the right things, but management and office (government) politics in the government workplaces did all the wrong things ... too include point the finger at the group that many like to use as an excuse, but they (civilian worker-bees and pack-mules) make no decisions and can only seek permission. Incompetent decisions that sometimes are made by unaccredited university degreed (diploma mill) managers, Bosses, and politicians are the typical today. ... don't cause bank/CU failures, business bankruptcies, criminal fraud and theft in business the majority of failures in our economy/business are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees. ... failures are due to failures in leadership and delusional denial by management. Credit Unions (CU), Global Crossings, World Com, Enron, ... failures, and Delta and other companies CEOs and staff steeling (lack of a better word) from worker-bees and pack-mules pension funds, reductions in pay, benefits, and health insurance to fund the CEOs' and staffs' ever increasing pay and benefits increases, and then put CEOs' and staffs' retirements in protected trust. .... ...), financial responsibility is a thing of the past, and social security is always secure, because the government can maintain benefits for the wealthy today, and increase the social security retirement age until the right number of US Citizens die and never collect any benefits (old folks don't have many dependents). US, EU, and UN Citizens are becoming the whores of the wealthy fucked now, beaten later, and screwed to death.
/. Readers and US Citizens. Try to get a politician, CEO, holy-man, or manager to admit they made a mistake, like in this X-43A case.
Failures in business and government projects are due to piss poor performance by management and Bosses not the worker-bees and pack-mules employees. Ecology, business, and tax laws, pension and health benefits,
2001/09/11 NSA, CIA, and FBI failures were not because of the field agents. Two Shuttle disasters, Hubble Telescope, X-43A,
Politicians of the Capitalist Republic applaud CEOs' and staffs' performance in saving the economy by getting the worker-bees and pack-mules (US Citizens) to pay for the bad global economy. The President after 2001/09/11 called for all good US Citizens to spend our money and support the USA. The CEOs', staffs', and politicians (have a different agenda) are setting up more corporate and wealthy tax welfare programs for the oil and construction companies in Iraq and national parks, pharmaceutical companies in Africa,
US Citizens will pay in the future (our children, grandchildren,
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Yea, I know, I did stray a little from topic, but I beg forgiveness from
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The total cost of the Apollo program was $19.4b.
This is the total program cost starting from 1965 (or was it 1964?) to 1972. Let's assume that the year 1969 was the year with the highest spending, say one quarter of the total sum, ie $4.9b.
The nominal GDP of the USA in the year 1969 was 3928.7b.
Therefore, at its peak, Apollo consumed approximately 0.12% of the GDP of the US.
I think you might be referring to the nuclear program during and after that World War II. That was expensive! (I've got no numbers though)