Shuttle & Foam!

Eliminate NASA and turn space projects over to private industry.

Cam

"Gaz" wrote in message
.com...
You know I can still very clearly remember watching that ill fated
return to earth of the Columbia! I can remember watching Sky News and
realising that something bad had happened even before the News
stations picked up on it!

Since then we had all the protestations from Nasa that they had spent
millions of dollars on fixing "the problems" and "following the
commissions recommendations"!

Yet here we are again, we have also had the startling and quite scary
revelation, that dispite the above, NASA are reported to have flown
"the foam tank, AS IS", well that is what has been reported on several
news channels!

NOW I am NO scientist or engineer (hell I am not even sure how to
spell those words) but surely it must be possible for NASA to
effectively sandwich that insulation foam, between the original tank
material, then the foam, then an outer layer of very thin but strong
aircraft aluminium or other strong but lighweight material, thus
hopefully preventing any faom from falling off that tank!

Just a simple thought!

Gaz.

"Gaz" wrote in message
.com...
You know I can still very clearly remember watching that ill fated
return to earth of the Columbia! I can remember watching Sky News and
realising that something bad had happened even before the News
stations picked up on it!

Since then we had all the protestations from Nasa that they had spent
millions of dollars on fixing "the problems" and "following the
commissions recommendations"!

Yet here we are again, we have also had the startling and quite scary
revelation, that dispite the above, NASA are reported to have flown
"the foam tank, AS IS", well that is what has been reported on several
news channels!

NOW I am NO scientist or engineer (hell I am not even sure how to
spell those words) but surely it must be possible for NASA to
effectively sandwich that insulation foam, between the original tank
material, then the foam, then an outer layer of very thin but strong
aircraft aluminium or other strong but lighweight material, thus
hopefully preventing any faom from falling off that tank!

Just a simple thought!

probably a too simple thought.

Gaz wrote:

NOW I am NO scientist or engineer (hell I am not even sure how to
spell those words) but surely it must be possible for NASA to
effectively sandwich that insulation foam, between the original tank
material, then the foam, then an outer layer of very thin but strong
aircraft aluminium or other strong but lighweight material, thus
hopefully preventing any faom from falling off that tank!

The tank was originally designed with a skin as you suggest.
The design was changed to bare foam to save weight on the
tank, in order to permit more pounds of cargo.

The tank certainly could be redesigned and manufactured with
skin. I haven't seen anything about recent discussions
of that option.

--
Glenn Holliday

Obviously a job for duct tape!!! But it needs to be really sticky duct
tape!
g
"Glenn Holliday" wrote in message
...
Gaz wrote:

NOW I am NO scientist or engineer (hell I am not even sure how to
spell those words) but surely it must be possible for NASA to
effectively sandwich that insulation foam, between the original tank
material, then the foam, then an outer layer of very thin but strong
aircraft aluminium or other strong but lighweight material, thus
hopefully preventing any faom from falling off that tank!

The tank was originally designed with a skin as you suggest.
The design was changed to bare foam to save weight on the
tank, in order to permit more pounds of cargo.

The tank certainly could be redesigned and manufactured with
skin. I haven't seen anything about recent discussions
of that option.

--
Glenn Holliday

On Tue, 02 Aug 2005 21:42:37 -0400, Glenn Holliday
wrote:

Gaz wrote:

NOW I am NO scientist or engineer (hell I am not even sure how to
spell those words) but surely it must be possible for NASA to
effectively sandwich that insulation foam, between the original tank
material, then the foam, then an outer layer of very thin but strong
aircraft aluminium or other strong but lighweight material, thus
hopefully preventing any faom from falling off that tank!

The tank was originally designed with a skin as you suggest.
The design was changed to bare foam to save weight on the
tank, in order to permit more pounds of cargo.

The tank certainly could be redesigned and manufactured with
skin. I haven't seen anything about recent discussions
of that option.

I would be surprised if they when that root. Weight with the tank is a
concern. That is why they stopped painting it. It used to be white.
-JATO
http://jatobservatory.org

Would that be square root, cube root, tree root, or, just possibly, route??
wrote in message
...

I would be surprised if they when that root. Weight with the tank is a
concern. That is why they stopped painting it. It used to be white.
-JATO
http://jatobservatory.org