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NASA Probes Shuttle Oxygen Leak
Cherita Chen writes "NASA is investigating the possibility of a gaseous oxygen leak, posing a serious fire risk, during the launch of the space shuttle Discovery in July. From the article: 'Engineers uncovered possible evidence of high concentrations of the gas in the rear engine compartment about two minutes after lift-off. A leak could lead to a fire or even an explosion in flight.'"
They'd better not let all of that dangerous oxygen escape into the atmosphere!!
...can really make you unpopular with the rest of the crew.
What is the significance of the 500 parts per million figure in the article? What is the rest of the gas made up of? As a reminder, normal air is 20% oxygen, or 200,000 parts per million.
=P
Keep your eyes to the sky.
See DHMO.org for more info.
High concentrations of oxygen won't combust, it's the lower-middle concentrations (especially mixed with certain other chemicals) you have to watch for.
I believe you're confusing oxygen with a fuel. Oxygen won't combust at all. But putting a solid or liquid fuel in contact with pure oxygen and an ignition source is a recipe for disaster. It's true that if the oxygen concentration were to reach such a high level that all other flammable gasses present were below their LFL the mixture wouldn't burn, but that wouldn't make the situation safe because a more concentrated fuel source could be introduced and you'd have a huge fireball on your hands.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
The shuttle program has run its course, it's too complicated to maintain and operate, unreliable and countless times, astronauts, engineers have said it that it would have been more cost effective and safer to just use re-usable expendable rockets. The irony is Nasa probably had hints about this back in the 80's and only now 20+ year's later are the heading to the drawing board to come up with a replacemnet. NASA lost it's forward thinking ability after the moon landings... We need maybe one or two smaller versions with forward thinking individuals..
Historically, there have been many space flights with very few fatal malfunctions (Challenger and Columbia). There were even more test flights of the shuttle craft. Out of curiosity, has it always been a possibility that an "explosion could happen during flight" but with probability on their side, it didn't?
What I'm trying to say is that you're trying to put a rocket into space with (almost) a piece of the sun on its backside. Aren't there always possibilities of explosions when what's powering you is, essentially, a controlled explosion?
My work here is dung.
So they found out about a potential serious problem 2 minutes after liftoff and they said nothing until 5 months later? Seems to me that NASA is trying to save face and not doing a good job at it. I've always been a strong supporter of NASA, but enough is enough, they just keep dumping billions of dollars into the space shuttle program and nothing constructive is happening.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned that we have had astronauts killed from this combination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
Maybe we should stop forcing people to be astronauts...oh wait.
Seriously is there any astronaut who doesn't know and accept that their job is dangerous?
If you mess with oxygen levels the chances of fire go up quite a bit, one of the reasons why people are paranoid about static electricity some high oxygen environments like operating theatres and decompression chambers.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
As I just happened to read today... http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman12132005.html ...an in-flight explosion could be quite serious if that shuttle happens to be carrying large quantities of plutonium.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Lesse, we have a heat engine turning hundreds of gallons per second of cryogenic liquids into heat, then into a bazillion horsepower, a fair percentage of which gets turned into vibration. What are the chances of a bolted flange working loose, or a pipe fracturing, or a short temperature imbalance warping a pipe, valve, seal, or flange? What are the chances some piece of paper or other material was left in a hot zone, and the oxygen is just being boiled off the object? 500ppm is miniscule-- you can't get a flame or explosion until the fraction gets 100's of times higher. And a lot of the compartments are filled with inert gases, so it's even harder to start a fire.