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Shuttle Launch Pad Damaged During Discovery's Launch
pumpkinpuss writes "Launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center suffered unusual damage during the shuttle Discovery's blastoff Saturday. Pictures from a NASA source show buckled concrete and numerous concrete blocks or bricks, presumably from the flame trench, littering a road behind the pad."
Anyone know how many times launch pad 39A has been used for previous shuttle/rocket launches?
This guy's the limit!
how can the damage occur after the shuttle is "well off the pad"?
the rockets are causing the damage, so the damage occurs while the rockets are nearby, right?
so debris is flying thru the air while the shuttle is nearby right?
would this indicate anything odd happening on the shuttle, or just wear and tear on the pad itself over the years?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
GD! NASA! GTH!
RTFA?
The shuttle shit a brick?
It is amazing that they hold up as well as they do. The amount of energy released by a shuttle at take off is astounding. How far away does a human being need to be from the pad and remain uninjured?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
LC39A was used the first time almost 41 years ago by Apollo 4. It was used for more than 80 launches since then. Maybe it's time to replace it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center_Launch_Complex_39
Given how scary space travel is, it's no surprise that the astronauts left behind a trail of bricks all over the pad.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
38A continues to beat on the ceiling with a broom and indicate that NASA should "[K]nock off that unholy racket!"
Obviously the work of terrorists attempting to sabotage the shuttle. We must give up more civil liberties immediately to protect ourselves from this Threat.
Making things hot and cold in rapid succession can cause fatigue due to the materials expanding and contracting. Things exposed to the elements, such as this, also have to deal with moisture.
I don't know what these bricks are made of (CNN says they are special bricks but TFA says they are concrete), but I bet water was trapped in between the cracks and crevices of these bricks and then suddenly boiled when it was heated by rocket exhaust. The steam rapidly escapes from the bricks and makes the cracks a little bigger. This occurs over and over again, each time the cracks get a little bigger. Finally, the cracks become big enough that the bricks can't stand the stress anymore. They get heated one more time and explode. It only takes one brick to explode to cause a chain reaction, and wipe out a bunch of them.
This is of course, the simplest explanation. I would hope NASA would have thought of this before. It happens all of the time with the freeze and thaw cycles in highways and bridges. However, sometimes the simplest explanation is the best.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Disregard the age of the pad; This mission was the heaviest for the shuttle. It was taken all the way to the max. Basically, this one took longer to take off, chewing away at the pad that was designed and built LONG ago to handle such loads.
Looks like the ISS occupants got their new toilet parts just in the nick of time.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Do they know if any of the concrete or bricks blasted off during takeoff rebounded and struck the Shuttle? Brick or concrete would really hurt things.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
This was obviously the site of a UFO landing and takeoff...
.... that'll buff right out.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
STS-124 is carrying Kibo, making it a rather heavy liftoff. It would have taken Discovery a little longer than usual to get away from the pad, subjecting it to a longer duration acoustic/vibration environment.
Also, it wasn't that far off the pad when the bricks were flying off according to this image. (Same photo as TFA, but a little farther out)
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
It looks to me like the inner walls may have eroded/cracked and let exhaust gases into the structure and those gases blew out the external wall sections on the slope.
Ref: http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts124/080601pad/damage.html
There are better pictures now at the original source for that story: http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/current.html. Scroll down to "11:30 PM, 6/1/08, Update: Shuttle launch pad damaged during liftoff (UPDATED at 12 p.m. 6/2 with additional pictures)." "Photo 2" seems to show a large section of a wall in the pit that had the brick veneer blown off.
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. (Ambrose Bierce)
I heard that the departing Clinton administration stole all the "W" keys from White House ("hite House"?) keyboards. But wrecking the Shuttle launch pad on Bush's way out is really vindictive, especially considering all the damage Bush's regime already did to the Shuttle program.
--
make install -not war
...clearly the pilot rode the clutch and revved too hard.
IANARS, but my first thoughts when seeing the pictures was it looks like there was erosion under parts of the platform that created a hollow spot for a cave in of some blocks which opened up a tunnel/cavity that pressure was able to build up in under the platform, and then when the source of the pressure was removed (the shuttle had lifted off) the pressure above the platform was lower than the pressure that had build up beneath it and so chunks of stuff were pushed out from beneath.
"Shuttle Launch Pad Damaged During Disco..."
cheered me up no end.
Damage to the pad isn't good, obviously, but I'd rather damage happen to the pad than the shuttle. Damage to the landing pad can be fixed a LOT easier than damage to the shuttle, and there's little to no risk to human life. NASA can inspect the pad to its heart's content (and the public's too) to make sure there's no risk. I wonder if the testing platforms at Stennis Space Center, or others, have any similar damage, since they've vested (supposedly) every engine that eventually goes into space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Stennis_Space_Center http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine_test_facility
My friends own a commercial concrete contractor, and current concretes are WAY more advanced than I'd ever have thought.
These days, concrete is like any other advanced man-made composite. The knowledge about cement, water, sand and aggregate types and mixes have been refined to the nth-degree. Then start add-mixing plasticizers, hardners, cure retarders / accelerators, humidity control agents, etc.
The really advanced stuff is like epoxy. Normal concrete is ~3,000psi. My friend was pouring 12,000+ psi concrete for a large structural member in a sub-foundation. The form blew out, and concrete flowed out the hole and setup - within a few hours, even jackhammers became ineffective - it was like drilling steel. They wound up bringing in heavy demo equipment to get out what should have only taken a few men.
Go to http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
and listen to the conference about the launch pad.
Since I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, this NASA article talks about the refactory materials and specifications of the flame tunnel...
Obligatory quote:
here are some closeup photos of the pad damage.
The photos show the debris field, holes blown through the security fence by flying debris and the bricks on the walls of the flame trench ripped away. Interesting stuff.
H.A.A.R.P.!!!
Scary! I looked at my Pyrex measuring cup. Its a hefty thing with lots of mass and lots of glass. I would seriously not want to make that thing mad. I am glad your wife is OK. Jim
Interesting theory.
Given that Florida has been in its worst drought in a very long time, you'd think that perhaps that the pad might've dried out.
However, since NASA uses copious amounts of (presumeably, fresh, not salt) water to cool the pad during the launch, I suppose some water might've been trapped in unexpected ways and places.
Perhaps the latter has been exacerbated by the drought?
Maybe the pad has finally reached EOL and has developed some problems?
(Yes, the blog is named after the flame trench at the pad)
Yes the damage is unusual.
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=5064da92e6c8480c8704375ba20ac620&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a5064da92e6c8480c8704375ba20ac620Post%3a9456250e-7da5-4cbe-89e9-c43a238970f1&sid=sitelife.floridatoday.com
Heh - thanks. I'd be pretty upset too if my butt was on a 700 (?) degree burner too, I guess.
:-)
Oddly, of all the things in the kitchen that make me think "be careful with this thing" -- knives, the stove, garbage disposal -- "measuring cup" was never really on the list until that day.
That said, it'd probably be kinda fun to do in a controlled environment in a MythBusters blowing stuff up kind of way.
Fun with blowing things up in THIS FRAIDY CAT SOCIETY? Fun you say? Fun??? I think not young man. Homeland Security is on its way, and will be knocking on your door any time now. Or not.
Jim
From the scary-but-true dept. I don't know if you read Fark, but they had a guy on there who was barred from entering a plane because he was wearing a Transformers shirt.
On the offending shirt, the transformer's arm was a gun (drawn, completely cartoon-ey), but that was enough for Security to bar him from entering the plane unless he changed his shirt.
Read it and weep for our world:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1234193.ece
Dave
I don't know if anyone has said this yet or if this will get any special attention, but...
The shuttle is an OLD piece of space equipment. Sure, it's great for nostalgic value, but we need a new "shuttle," something more up to date in terms of physical structure.
At the moment, in my opinion, the lack of strength in the hull is what's causing many of the current problems with the shuttle.
-Aegis Runestone-
This damage is a mere nothing compared to what Baikonur-Tyuratam has seen with the first launch of Energija. That was a massive soviet booster, slightly more powerful than the Saturn-V. It only flew twice due to costs.
On the first flight in 1987 it was to carry Polyus, a 80-ton automatized battle spacestation prototype with 16 propaganda leaflet filled dummy nuclear bomb mines and a recoil-less autocannon onboard. It was to counter the american use of military STS flights and Reagan's SDI "Star Wars" in general, so you can consider it the soviet "Death Star". (In fact the Polyus payload was painted pitch black for radar absorb and visual camouflage, emphasizing its allegiance with the Dark Side.)
Anyhow, the soviets deprived an entire city of 100,000 of running water for one week to fill the vast blast control pond of the N1 launch pad, yet it was not enough. On ignition, one of the support locks failed to open and the rocket tilted 20 degree before tearing itself free. The flight control computer kicked in and the booster righted itself, but the exhaust burned up most tubes and wirings on the lauch tower and melted some of the steel structure.
Eventually the Polyus launch was a failure, as the battle station backfired at 160km altitude due to reversed data from a faulty gyro. The Baikonur launch complex needed one year of rebuild before Energija could fly again, this time hauling the space shuttlesky "Buran", also unmanned. That was a big success, but the USSR soon went bankrupt due to the 20 billion rubles cost of the gigantic booster space programme and many other reasons.
BTW, the Polyus then fell into the southern pacific ocean. In the early 2000s the japanese tried to make a copycat of the CIA's Glomar Explorer scam and built an even larger "ocean bottom driller" something Maru to raise the Poluys wreck for the USA. Of course they failed again for exactly the same reason: press leak.
Good point. In fact I think it would be funnier if some comedian said 42 *occasionally*, and not when answering a simple numerical question, but when a complex mathematical problem needs to be solved.
Right way to make a "42" joke:
"Even with very low friction bearings, a sterling engine of that size might not produce enough power from the ICE's waste heat to act as a clean power source for a hybrid car, not to speak of the weight. Anyone know how many BTUs it would take to produce enough energy to drive a 3000lb car with a 4-pole DC motor and a drag coefficient of 0.26 up to 60mph in under 20 seconds?"
"42"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel