New Shuttle Fuel Tanks Ready

confusion writes "NASA has completed the redesigned fuel tanks for the Shuttle scheduled to for launch in May or June of this year. "On the new tank, NASA has reconfigured the struts and fittings where foam was prone to peeling off, and installed heaters to prevent ice from forming. The new tank has cameras that will allow ground workers to monitor for damage as the shuttle ascends.""

Comments

Shuttle

[spac3manspiff]

So when are they going to redesign the shuttle though?

Re:Shuttle

[RockClimbingFool]

You improve the design as much as you can up to a certain point. You could design new winshields to withstand impacts from concrete bricks or you could just make sure the shuttle doesn't fly through bricks. I know that sounds extremely oversimplified, but over and over and over again decisions and compromises must be made between capability and the expected environement. If you don't, the vehicle will never get off the ground.

Re:Shuttle

[Rei]

I'll second this. The basic design of the tanks is still the same, which is a problem. The shuttle mounts low on the side of the tanks. This is a Bad Thing(tm), and is generally viewed as such in retrospect. Even on a non-cryogenic fuelled rocket, side-mounting puts you at greater risk for debris impact, especially further down the side you're mounted.

The shuttle got its budget slashed in development, so I don't blame them. The original shuttle designs were a lot more "sane" - a smaller craft, no SRBs, a titanium frame (i.e., no extreme difficulty in trying to keep the heat down), mounted near the top of the carrier, etc. The list goes on. The original design was really impressive; with what we know now factored in, I'm sure our next major reusable will be great. But we need to stop using this half-developmentally-funded 1st-generation flying experiment. What's wrong with giving Russia an 8 year contract or whatnot for Soyuz use so that they can ramp up production while we work on our next generation craft?

BTW, before anyone says "Private industry should make it, not NASA!", private industry *does* make spacecraft. Boeing, Lockheed, etc, are prime contractors for NASA, and do most of the work. If you want *small* private industry, well, they first need to actually develop real spacecraft. They're working on it, but they're still far away.

Real fix, or just bandaid?

[Theovon]

Is it just me, or does this seem more like a patch than a real fix? Rather than realizing that the foam is problematic and designing something that won't come off, they resort to finding ways of preventing the old stuff from coming off. Well, if it works, great, but it just feels unsatisfying.

Perhaps this is just a case of extending the life of aging spacecraft a little longer for the least expense so that more funds can be routed towards newer technology that doesn't have the same inherent problems. (Perhaps different ones. *g*)

Re:They're still not solving the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit you know nothing about the shuttle.

those tiles are not "crushable" in your hand. i have one here on my desk and after almost 10 years of abuse it has on my besk it still looks quite nice.

expensiv? yes compared to what is in your oven. Expensive compared to the job they do? nope. they are miuch cheaper than an ablative heat shield.
they also are VERY good, moron... why do you think they use them? because they work.. the guys at nasa are not idiots.

I suggest you actually learn about what you are talking about before you make shit up and try to post it as fact.

Re:Apollo had better heat sheilds

[Rei]

That's SLA-561V. A variant, SLA-561S, is already used on the shuttle's external tank for shielding during liftoff (it's what gives it its orange color). It's not good enough, however, for reentry; plus, there are some technical problems due to its relatively low strength.

There's always this wierd assumption around Slashdot that NASA is a bunch of idiots, and that they don't know more than a bunch of random people on the internet when it comes to (insert topic here). The number of different types of heat shielding that have been experimented with by Nasa is huge; it's not something that they take lightly. Depending on the mission, they look at what is avaialble, what they have budget for, and use what is best, just like what any reasonable person on Earth would do.