In article , n-
neckar.de says...


That ice causes more damage then foam alone is obvious.

That's NASA-style thinking -- assumptions without analysis or testing.

And your assertion, which many people ('sheepishly raises hand') DID jump
to, turns out to be untrue.

My asseration was about a small ball of ice inside the foam debris.
The seperation of the foam from the ET was probably associated with an
older crack (hours or days old). And in such a crack ice accumulation by
cryopumping is a possibility. Thats my line of thinking and I assume
that of Schomburg & Co. too. In such scenario more weight and therefore
more damage is obvious.

Less obvious is whether a pice of ice alone seperated from the ET would
cause more damage then foam. My first guess is yes, second may be, third,
hm..., wait for the nummbers

Lots and lots of us speculated about whether or not there was ice mixed
with the foam that hit the wing. With all of the talk and all the
analysis the CAIB did, I still haven't seen a really good theory proposed
for the *process* that resulted in the shedding of such a large chunk (or
chunks) of foam from the bipod ramp. It wouldn't surprise me in the
least if ice formation was involved. It's not like foam has been shed
from *all* of the ET bipod ramps over 100+ shuttle flights, after all --
it's got to be a process that only happens occasionally. (Of course,
since the foam is being removed from the bipod ramp permanently, it's a
process that will never be repeated. At least, not from the bipod ramp
area.)

Ice, of course, is denser and more massive than foam. If the foam that
hit the wing had some ice within it, I think it's safe to say that the
energy dissipated during the strike (and imparted into the RCC) would
definitely be greater than if the impacting object were 100% foam.
Unfortunately, it's going to be damn near impossible to ever determine
the exact ice content of the impactor, and it seems unlikely at this
point that anyone is going to spend the time or money to determine the
ice incorporation and shedding processes... *sigh*...

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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for | Doug Van Dorn
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