M&M fix?

Am 8 Jul 2003 11:27:08 -0700 schrieb "TVDad Jim":

I'm mostly a bonehead on engineering structures, but something occurs
to me that seems obvious as a fix for the foam-impact problem.

The first few shuttle launches had the ET painted white. This was
discontinued due to weight and cost savings, I believe (much like
American Airlines stopped painting its planes in the late 60's).

As of my knowledge, there were two different types of tanks flown by
the shuttle (take the white painted as a third, if you like). The
original type had a relatively thick spray-on foam insulation, that
was "relatively" heavy but stable (the white paint added more weight
and was soon left away).

Somewhen they began to develop a lighter tank version to increase the
shuttle's payload capacity. And that included a machining process to
make te insulation thinner (and lighter), But I think, that removal of
the "natural" surface did weaken the tank insulation somewhat too
much.

It is known, that the insulation fall-off problem did arise when Nasa
began to use the lightened tanks - and that the problematic was well
known (they evaluated it by cameras mounted in the boosters of some
missions). But it was judged as being under control. What a shame...

cu, ZiLi aka HKZL (Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker)
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