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NASA's Michael Griffin Interviewed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the still-a-long-way-to-go dept.

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.'"

13 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Fix foam again? Start anew? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I followed the documentary some time ago as they outlined the new procedures in applying the foam since the Columbia disaster in 2003. I witnessed as they applied new layering techniques for the foam and implemented space walk tile recovery and repair technologies. Quite frankly, I wasn't convinced then and am even more skeptical now with foam separations occurring from recent launches.

    Has anyone heard or read of any new technologies to replace the current foam application completely? Does anyone have any percentage or statistical data illustrating the success to failure ratio of past Shuttle deployments to (say) Saturn rockets (or past similar systems)? It would be a nice graph comparing the ~20 years of shuttle incident vs. ~20 years of Saturn incidents (or similar). Surely, those studies have occurred somewhere.

    1. Re:Fix foam again? Start anew? by kfg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      20 years of Saturn incidents

      There were no operational failures. How's that for a quick statistical comparison?

      KFG

    2. Re:Fix foam again? Start anew? by cyclone96 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Engineers salaries:management salaries is probably higher on NASA programs than about anywhere.

      While working level engineers who work directly for NASA are paid fairly competitively, government rules cap salaries of management. Everything is defined by the federal payscales, available here

      An engineer with 10 years of experience is typically a GS-13. In Houston, for example, he's making somewhere around $90,000/year. His immediate manager is probably a GS-14 making around $105k, and that guy's boss is probably a GS-15 who makes around $130k. The numbers vary depending on years in service. Most astronauts are falling into these ranges as well.

      Griffin, as the head of NASA, is paid on the SES (Senior Executive Service) scale, which caps out at $162,000. That's here.

      Contractor management is a little better (the CEOs of the likes of Boeing and Lockheed can pull in over $10 million annually with bonuses and stock), but it's very unusual to run into a NASA contractor (manager or otherwise) making more than $200,000/year.

      --
      Worst...sig...ever!
  2. New Foam Idea by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hey, I know, put the foam insulation on the inside.

    BTM

    --
    That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    1. Re:New Foam Idea by Syberghost · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Insulation on the inside means you have to make the tank larger to hold more fuel.

      Larger tank means more metal. More metal means more weight. More weight means more fuel. More fuel means more cold. Tricky balance there. Remember, this is the tank where they stopped painting the foam because the paint added too much weight.

      Also, it'll be hard to find a porous material that doesn't absorb hydrogen, the smallest atoms in existence.

  3. What about Propellant Cycling ? by DumbSwede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It wasn't mentioned, but does the cycling of propellants due to aborted launch attempts add significant additional strain to the foam?

    Were there any launch aborts before the final Columbia mission?

    --
    Letter To Iran
  4. Re:Hubble mission still a possiblity! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Griffin said the risks involved in a Hubble mission are the same as an ISS mission. Further proof that O'Keefe, the previous administrator, is a tool. I never liked O'Keefe from the beginning.

  5. Re:Hubble mission still a possiblity! by helioquake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The ISS cannot do anything until the station is staffed with adequate number of astroengineers and researchers.

    To make that happen, it has to have a capacity of evacuating the entire staff in case of emergency.

    To make that happen, it has to have a vehicle(s) capable of carrying back 10+ humans to the Earth. Also it requires more ports to hitch vehicles.

    Since we have no vehicle capable of doing such in a foreseeable future, you can imagine the fate of the ISS in the next decade or so.

  6. 13 Years to go the Moon?!? by iamlucky13 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It really bugs me when people complain about how the first time we went to the moon it took less than 10 years from Kennedy's speech and now it takes us 13 years, or worse, that it's taking us half a century to return to the moon. Well read his answer and shutup!

    People keep asking me 'Why are you taking until 2018 or whatever it takes us to get back to the moon when we did it in eight years the first time?' The reason is that we're not being given the kind of money necessary to do that in eight years, but we are being given the kind of money necessary to do that in 12, 13, 14 years.
    1. Re:13 Years to go the Moon?!? by hackstraw · · Score: 1, Interesting
      really bugs me when people complain about how the first time we went to the moon it took less than 10 years from Kennedy's speech and now it takes us 13 years, or worse, that it's taking us half a century to return to the moon. Well read his answer and shutup!
      People keep asking me 'Why are you taking until 2018 or whatever it takes us to get back to the moon when we did it in eight years the first time?' The reason is that we're not being given the kind of money necessary to do that in eight years, but we are being given the kind of money necessary to do that in 12, 13, 14 years.
      I still call bullshit. You mean to tell me that since 1969 we have learned nothing about rockets, material science, or space flight? I would bet that the extra 13+ years of salaries of all of the NASA engineers costs more than the materials to just do it today with what we know.

      In the eyes of the layman, science has been dead for quite some time. I'm not saying we can't still use the scientific method. I certainly will, its the best way of learning and doing things that I know of (science has not ended dangling prepositions:). But we know absolute zero, the speed of light, how to put a man on the moon, how to land on Mars, how to go beyond our solar system and still receive communications. What more is there to really do? Bare with me, I know I'm burning my karma on a few nerds here.

      There is little that is new or interesting that a layman can talk about science today. The only frontier is really science to make better entertainment for people to include CSI kinda stuff. "Normal" people simply don't care about particle physics. Sorry. Normal people got bored with going to the moon back in the 70s. Normal people stopped caring about the space shuttle after the 2nd or 3rd launch, and only gained interest when they started blowing up (car wreck phenomenon).

      Seriously, what is really new to discover? A list of one or more things would be suffice to justify my flamebait mods.

  7. What about using a net? by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems to me one wway to prevent the foam from faling off in chunks is to embed a net over the foam. Make a fishnet out of Kevlar or Spectra fiber. Put the net over the foam. These fibers are strong. in the worst case the foam still comes off but not after being forced through the holes in the net and in the process being cut into many very small pieces. These fibers are stronger then stainless steel of the same size and much lighter. Of couse the other option is to re-design the tank so that the insilation is _inside_ the aluminum skin but then that adds weight

  8. Re:Old freon based foam was best. by ferrety · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You could not be more wrong.

    The foam had been causing problems since mid eighties.

    The NASA was given exempt on the freon ban (of 1997?), and even thought they did change the formula, the pieces of foam believed to have caused the Columbia disaster were using the old formula (with freon).

  9. Major NASA cock up by Oldsmobile · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My impression on the text is, that the shuttle (and thus the ISS) is bleeding NASA dry. They should logically cut and run as far as the shuttle goes, but then they lose the ISS which they have spent alot of money on.

    This could of course happen anyway, if the economy crashes and there is more war and NASA gets slashed, but even so, science and the other stuff that is really very good and cost-effective, like space probes, hubble and satellites will get less money.

    I still think exploring other ways of saving the ISS should be explored, though I'm not sure its possible. The Russians do have a heavy lift rocket, it might be possible to use that and would save money, for sure.

    I say NASA has painted itself into a corner with the shuttle, the reason being lack of vision and the inability to stop using the shuttle when they should have.

    --
    Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig