NASA's Michael Griffin Interviewed

richvan writes "NASA administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel about his first nine months on the job. He covers topics such as foam, Challenger, Mars, the budget, the astronaut corps and intelligent design. Describing the reasons for the foam loss, he states 'Cycling of the tanks with cryogenic propellants - in fact, [super-cold] liquid hydrogen, because we don't see this problem with liquid oxygen - causes or exacerbates voids in the bond between the foam insulation and the tank and produces cracks in the foam. If and when those cracks propagate to the surface, with a crack connecting a void to the surface, then you have a mechanism for cryopumping. When the tank is cold, air is ingested. It liquefies and goes into the voids. Then as the tank empties and the [air] warms up and evaporates, the resulting pressure blows the foam off.'"

Comments

Hubble mission still a possiblity!

[alanh]

Orlando Sentinel: Whats the status of a Hubble [Space Telescope] servicing mission on the shuttle?

Griffin: If the shuttle performs as we expect in May, we will have the data that we need to go forward now with completion of the station. And as Ive said, if all that turns out positively, we will do a Hubble mission.

From my perspective, this is possibly the best news here. Hubble actually generates science whereas the ISS seems to do less interesting things.