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NASA Finds 4-5" Crack in Shuttle Insulation
PresidentKang writes "Spaceflight Now is reporting that a large crack has been found in an external tank foam of Space Shuttle Discovery on the launch pad. According to the article: "Engineers inspecting the shuttle Discovery's external tank following Sunday's launch scrub found a crack in the tank's foam insulation near a bracket holding a 17-inch oxygen feed line in place. Some engineers believe the crack must be repaired but senior managers say a variety of options are on the table, from fly as is to making repairs.""
"...but senior managers say a variety of options are on the table, from fly as is to making repairs."
I wonder what those managers would say if they had to fly the shuttle.
Meta will eat itself
Did they get posession charges or was there enough crack that they got booked for traffiking?
So now the real question becomes, which will launch first, DNF, Windows Vista, or the Shuttle? I say the Shuttle, it's cracks aren't nearly as big as Vista's (an M$ product) will be.
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Surely they should just get the thing working before they add extra features like that?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I know the shuttle is at the end of life, but the follow on will still need insulated tanks. The early Atlas had no insulation and needed to be fueled in the final minutes of the countdown. Clearly a problem. But any means of making the insulation crack free, thus flexable, and still able to withstand the launch, thus stiff, would require significent added mass. Mayby an outer shell of carbon composite.
Does anybody at NASA have a working memory? Don't they remember the results of the Challenger inquest, wherein plenty of evidence of engineers saying "DON'T LAUNCH! BAAAAD!" was ignored?
I fear we may very well get a "fourth to remember", and NOT in a good way! It is all very well for a bottlerocket to explode in flight, NOT A MANNED SHIP!
I fear that NASA is going to launch, come hell or high water, and damned be the consequences.
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If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe its time to go home and crawl back under your bed. It's not safe out here. The galaxy is wonderous -- with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross -- but it's not for the timid..."
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On the one hand, shuttles flew forever shedding foam and it only became a real problem when a large enough piece tore off to actually damage the shuttle in flight significantly. Engineers accepted the risks with many reservations, because damage was never really that severe. Of course hindsight is 20-20 and this problem could have been rectified if the foam was located interior to the tank as opposed to externally. I think they were worried that if they tried that, there would be voids in the insulation that would allow heat to enter and cause problems, but that was a manufacturing issue which probably could have been resolved with a little ingenuity.
On the other hand, a 4-5 inch crack is nothing to sneeze at and with the aerodynamic forces that batter a shuttle on its way into LEO, any number of things could cause that crack to widen and eventually spilt, teraing off a really large section of foam. It has to be repaired; I don't see how NASA management can ignore this. If they do, and the shuttle is damaged or heaven forbid, destroyed, that's the end of the space program. And probably rightly so. Like to many things, NASA was created due to Cold War concerns, namely that the Russians were going to grab the "high ground" of space and show us up in technical endeavors, weakening our position on the world stage. Like other Cold War relics, it too either needs to change or be dismantled.
I'm a NASA booster (forgive the pun) -- my dream from childhood was to walk on the Moon. But I can say that I find it hard to trust the NASA I see now; it has become hamstrung by indecision, beaureaucracy, and lack of imaginative leadership (with apologies to Dan Goldin, Sean O'Keffe, and Mike Griffin). I wanted John Young to become NASA Administrator -- tough talking, smart, no-nonsense, and imaginative. He might have (and still could if he wanted the job) lit a fire under NASA and got them thinking straight. The problem is, NASA was not prepared for life after Apollo and it shows. The STS was a compromise (no engineer in the early 70's thought solid rocket boosters were a good idea) and a poor one at that.
I think a) NASA needs to be saved from itself and b) the American people have to learn what a truly great resource they have in their space program. Barring either of those, it will be up to private industry to carry the torch.
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Well they've fueled the Shuttle twice already, Tuesday will be the third. Thermal stress was indicted as a contributing factor in foam detaching. Everything probably would have been fine if they had launched the first time, I suspect their cloud distance tolerances are too tight these days compared to thermal stress from fuel cycling on the parts for later lift off.
I'm not saying NASA should have launched the first time, but with only a 30% chance of launch due to weather, why did they even fuel the bird up? Weather should have a least an 80% chance window I would think think to decrease the likelihood of one fueled up scrub after another leading to excessive thermal stress on tank components.
Also while many may see July 4th as a feel-good day to launch (National pride and all that) if anything goes wrong there are religious types both Christian and Muslim that will see it as a sign validating whatever their view of the world is.
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When I was studying at Fermilab, Osheroff [link to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_D._Osherof f] gave a lecture about the Space Shuttle Columbia. He was selected to head up the review panel, and I'm pretty sure that I remember hearing that the foam was almost certainly the cause of the explosion.
Seems like an unwise decision to let it run without repairing it even if it is unlikely that anything will happen, no?
Mission control: "Astronaut this is mission contol. We have a problem. Over."
Astronaut: "Mission control this is Astronaut. What is the problem. Over."
Mission control: "Astronaut we're looking at the live biosigns from your transmitter and have come across a concern. Did your mother drop you as a child? Over."
Astronaut: "I don't believe so. Why? Over."
Mission control: "Because..."
*general snickering from mission control*
Mission control: "Because there's a big crack in your butt! Over and out."
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
NASA commited itself to solving the foam problem but when it turned out to be difficult they decided they didn't have to solve it. So they found evidence that the problem wasn't solved. How could this be in any way surprising?
Because in Florida (I live here) it doesn't matter what the weather report says, there's always a 50% chance of rain. I gave up listening to the weather reports long ago.
The only time they are right is when they say 'It's raining right now' or 'It's sunny outside.' We don't even need dark clouds for rain, lightning, or both. Sunny showers are not that uncommon.
In short, 30% is just as good as 80% here.
Oh, and btw, if the weather report says 'in 12 hours, a hurricane will hit your town' you can safely sit at home and eat popcorn. It's not going to hit you.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I remember some anecdote about Gandhi. Someone asked him how come his stance on something is now the exact opposite of what it was last week. Gandhi said something like, "because this week I know better."
Now I'm no Gandhi, but I can think of a lot of situations when learning something new made me reverse my stance on something. In fact, I consider it to be what every sane human does all the time. Only zealots have one absolute truth and stick to it for ever, no matter what. A scientist (either theoretical or engineer) should have no such things by definition. If you learn some new fact, or do another calculation, or run another simulation, or whatever, and it contradicts what you previously believed, yes, as an engineer I'd _expect_ you to be ready and willing to change your mind about it. Maybe you'll run some extra tests, do more calculations or whatever first, that's ok, but you shouldn't ever have the last week's stance as something set in stone and unchangeable for any reason.
So, well, I won't argue a your point B for lack of enough data, but point A leaves me scratching my head in disbelief. So someone decided that those engineers aren't trustworthy... because they changed their mind? Seems like a pretty weird attitude. I definitely expected that at NASA even management would be a bit more open-minded than that. They're pretty much one continuous experiment and using experimental equipment, so it's exactly the kind of thing that should be _expected_.
We're not talking stuff like designing a bike, where you can just do it all by the book and know the same today as you knew last week. We're talking crazy experimental stuff that noone else has done before, and a lot of it is tried for the first time. Someone calculated that this valve should be perfectly safe, or that foam can't break this time, but essentially it's the first time anyone actually put that valve or that new foam on a rocket and blast it into space. There's a lot of stuff that could act differently than in the simulation, or than in whatever lab tests were done.
So, yes, stuff like someone doing some new calculations and deciding, "teh oops, this thing is gonna blow up" are the kind of thing I'd _expect_.
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Here are the slides and video from the talk. It was one of the good ones.