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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.""
So when are they going to redesign the shuttle though?
"The new tank has cameras that will allow ground workers to monitor for damage as the shuttle ascends."
Not much of a reassurance to the crew though, are they?
Ground worker #1: "Looks like she's breakin' apart."
Ground worker #2: "Mm-hmm."
Ground worker #1: "We install brakes?"
Ground worker #2: "Nope."
Ground worker #1: "Ejection seats?"
Ground worker #2: "Nope."
Ground worker #1: "... So, how about them Cubs?"
Are they going to send one of the astronauts on an EVA walkaround inspection before re-entering this time? Truckers check their brakes before a big hill, why don't astronauts check the heat shield?
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*)
Not only that, but if you apply this bearproofing technology to the shuttle program, you are ready to go for the Ursa Major mission.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Troy Hurtubise, the Canadian who did the famous bear-proof suit documented in the movie Project grizzly, spent 18 years researching how to make a flameproof material, and finally has it. It's far more heat-resistant than the space shuttle tiles, far more durable, and far cheaper.
It should be mentioned that not only are his new tiles flameproof, but they're bear-proof as well. This is very beneficial for the shuttle during re-entry, where it has to survive not only the intense heat of re-entry, but the occasional high-altitude bear attack as well.
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.
They're so soft you could problably crush a piece with your hands, which means they're easily damaged during flight (and we've seen the fatal results of that) Errr...it was an impact against the leading edge of the wing -- which is covered by reinforced carbon-carbon -- not the ceramic thermal tiles.
The very last call I took at the IBM PC Help Center [which, I gather, is in peril of being relocated from the RTP to the PRC] was with the guy who administered the laptops that the astronauts took on the shuttle. Could only see about 100 of the 300 servers on his network, so we figured it was a networking problem [I was in networking, not laptops], and I spent three hours with him before we finally realized that it was the drivers for the PCMCIA bridge that were killing the ethernet stack. Updated the drivers and la voila - everything worked perfectly.
ANYWAY, this was early 1997, and he told me that the shuttle was filled with 8-bit processors dating from its design in the 1970s, and it was cheaper for them to have the astronauts carry light weight IBM laptops onboard as a form of an upgrade rather than ripping the beast apart at the seams and upgrading all those 8-bit processors to 32-bits [which I suppose nowadays would be 64-bits].
Wonder who they'll use for such sensitive equipment now that Big Blue has jumped in bed with Big Red?
We have put nuclear reactors into orbit before. On one of the missions, the rocket even blew up. The net gain in radioactivity? ZERO. The casing around the material was designed to be able to tolerate a rocket explosion. They recovered the material (every last gram) and reused it on a later mission. The problem is not garunteeing a 100% success rate, the problem is making sure that if something does occur, that the material doesn't get spewed all over the contry side. And that is orders of magnitude easier.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
That's funny, because I seem to remember the most likely theory on the disaster was the foam hit and punctured the leading edge of the wing which is made of reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC), and not the heat resistant tiles (which are designed so a few can be lost during normal flights anyway).
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.
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."