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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.'"
How, exactly, to you go from discussing the technical aspect of space fuel tank construction, to starting a debate on friggin intelligent design?
Orlando Sentinel = troll.
...in the case of the shuttle.
From my perspective, this is possibly the best news here. Hubble actually generates science whereas the ISS seems to do less interesting things.
- AlanH
Q: What about the foam.
A: We'll see how the changes work.
Q: But what if there's more foam.
A: That would be bad and we'll have to figure it out.
Q: But what if the foam destroys the space program!
A: I don't want to talk about it.
Q: But what about THE FOAM?!
A: NNNNgggghhhh....
Q: What if the foam makes another Challenger happen?
A: The Challenger was a sad accident.
Q: How do you think you've changed things? (Like with the foam?)
A: NNNNnnnnnggghhh!
Q: Do you think foam is intelligently designed?
That pretty much sums it up.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe they should use Tempurpedic mattress foam. Instead of damaging the shuttle, it would just conform to the shape of the portion it struck, resulting in a night of wonderful sleep for all of Mission Command.
There were no operational failures. How's that for a quick statistical comparison?
There were also only 13 flights. The Space Shuttle also experienced zero operational failures within the first 13 flights. (It was the 25th flight, I believe, when the Challenger was lost.)
I'm not really saying that the Saturn V would have seen as much failure (it certainly wasn't as sophisticated of a design as the Space Shuttle), but it certainly wasn't flown for as long or as often. If you take the Apollo capsules into account as part of the complete space vehicle, it actually has a much poorer track record.
The truth is that the Space Shuttle is a marvel of engineering. The problem is that it was supposed to be a very focused piece of equipment (a shuttle to get people up and down) and ended up having to fill the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none role. Thanks Nixon.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
A micro crack occurs.
Atmosphere fills the voids.
The atmosphere liquifies inside the voids.
When the LH is removed, the liquified atmospheric gases are returned to gaseous form.
The change in pressure blows out the foam from the inside, because the liquid air is gasified within the foam crack and has nowhere to go.
Result: sporatic delamination.
Where I come from we have to deal with this all the time. They are called pot-holes!
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Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
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.
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
http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_bio.h tml
He's not only the author of the book I'm currently using for my undergraduate Spacecraft Systems course, but he's also got way more degrees than anyone should have. From the bio:
"Griffin received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Aerospace Science from Catholic University of America; a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland; a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California; a master's degree in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Business Administration from Loyola College; and a master's degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University."
I still wouldn't say he's overqualified for the job. The NASA admin -should- be one of the country's smart people.
Recently, he said that the shuttle and ISS were mistakes, and that the trick will be to re-make the space program without causing too much damage (like irritating the ISS partner nations).
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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!
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
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).
Soyuz has had two launch accidents - in the first (a fire on the pad) the was not engaged, which meant the crew had to beg the ground to activate it - which they finally did with less than a second between activation and the launch vehicle exploding. In the second, the first stage failed to seperate - and again, the automatic system failed, requiring manual intervention, and again - almost too late.
You don't remember correctly.Let's see - Soyuz re-entry accidents; six that I can think of offhand, two of which were fatal - and the remaining four only missed being so by sheer luck. (Out of 87 flights, and not mentioning at least five landing accidents.) Shuttle - one reentry accident, fatal. (Out of 114 flights, with only one landing accident.)
Which vehicle has the worse record? The bald fact is that Soyuz, in 87 flights, has racked up a worse record in every single category you can name when you compare it to the Shuttle's record in 114 flights.
"Griffin may have an engineering degree..."
Three, actually, plus Physics, Applied Physics, Aerospace Science and an MBA, just for the hell of it.
"...but he's a cold-hearted politician."
And if he weren't, and didn't deal with the organizational and political situation as it is and triage NASA priorities, NASA would actually achieve less. If he were king and could do anything he wanted and had an unlimited budget, then yeah, you'd be right, but the fact is NASA does not turn on a dime, in fact it is a deeply screwed up organization.
Technically, he needs to be more cold-hearted and admit that manned space exploration demands expecting and bugeting for astronaut deaths and not trying to make everything perfectly safe. Treat astronauts as hundred-million dollar pieces of equipment for purposes of deciding how much to spend in paperwork and engineering on extra safety. The politics is totally on the soft-hearted side on this issue. Over 5,000 miners died in China last year -- how many of those to feed factories that make stuff we buy but don't even need? Big projects that push the limits of the species always cost lives, and not that many by conparison.
Another issue on which M.G. could do some good is: costing out the opportunity costs of not having rapid development cycles in launch vehicles and associated systems. This is where the waste is. The failure to take risks, to have multiple production craft, to have a development pipeline of craft that will have a good chance of actually getting built, to change the insanely expensive way things are currently done in contracting and to set rapidly improving $/kg/reliability targets are the reasons why NASA has made essentially no progress in Earth to orbit capability in forty years.
For the $600,000,000+ that it costs to lauch the Shuttle once, a lean private firm could create a fully realized new launch vehicle, and with a few iterations it would be intrinsically safer than anything built with the traditional approach of attempting to manage rather than engineer risks away. Once the price to orbit comes down, the payloads become much cheaper, too, the demand goes up, expanding the industry, thus leading to far more science payloads.
The problem is, with limited resources and with the Shuttle still eating cash, to achieve long-term goals some stuff has to go now and that is going to be painful for the people affected, butiven the situation as it is, I don't think anyone else could do more than Michael Griffin to get maximum NASA improvement.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry