The wet Shuttle ET

On or about Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:10:24 -0500, Brian Thorn made the sensational claim that:
I honestly don't see any way to avoid that. How in the world do you
keep the rainwater from soaking in after one those almost-daily
afternoon deluges Florida is famous for?

Actually, it hasn't been that way around here (the Cape) for years, at least
that I could tell. Doesn't seem to rain all that often really. Of course,
it would this weekend! Speaking of which, if they miss out on Sat, Sun, and
Mon, what's the next date they could try? (If I'm pulling this 'three days
in a row' thing outta my ass, plz advise. I could swear it's a limit on how
long they can hold the range.)
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water is heavy, frozen or not
accelerative loads make it more so
greatly increasing the probability of failure
when shuttle launches

they gotta scrub the mission and pull those
fricken tanks apart and put them together right.

One of the nice things about reengineering ETs
for potential human habitation is that they get
RE-ENGINEERED - properly this time.

BlagooBlanaa wrote:

water is heavy, frozen or not
accelerative loads make it more so
greatly increasing the probability of failure
when shuttle launches



I don't think they can do it, but it would be interesting to be able to
weigh the stacked shuttle on the pad prior to propellant loading.
If it weighs several tens of pounds more just before you tank it up than
it did as it left the VAB, then you've got a problem whose most likely
explanation is that it's been soaking up water some way.
Although the idea of putting pinholes in the foam to allow any trapped
air that got liquefied under the foam to vent safely when ascent heating
caused it to go back into a gaseous state without causing the foam to
debond solves one problem, it also leaves a way for water to get into
the foam.

Pat

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
I don't think they can do it, but it would be interesting to be able to
weigh the stacked shuttle on the pad prior to propellant loading.

Hey, they could weigh a loaded Saturn V- I saw it in a movie. They blamed
the weight of the stowaway on rainwater.

Although the idea of putting pinholes in the foam to allow any trapped air
that got liquefied under the foam to vent safely when ascent heating
caused it to go back into a gaseous state without causing the foam to
debond solves one problem, it also leaves a way for water to get into the
foam.

Which you solve by spraying the holes with a sealant.

Hey, Pat, I once read the ingredients on a package of air-popped popcorn.
Said popcorn was sprayed with oil after popping, to improve the taste,
according to the distributor. Of course, that wasn't mentioned on the
package itself, while "Air Popped, Not Oil Popped!" was.

Scott Hedrick wrote:



Although the idea of putting pinholes in the foam to allow any trapped air
that got liquefied under the foam to vent safely when ascent heating
caused it to go back into a gaseous state without causing the foam to
debond solves one problem, it also leaves a way for water to get into the
foam.



Which you solve by spraying the holes with a sealant.



What they really needed, particularly given the Cape's wet climate, was
a building that could entirely enclose the Shuttle to just an hour or so
before launch, like Vandenberg was going to have for its Shuttle launch
facility.
In that way you could pick a nice sunny day to roll the Shuttle out to
the pad from the VAB, and keep the rain off of it once it had arrived.

Pat

For all the technology and engineering brainpower being thrown at the
foam problem, it bothers me that NASA is essentially flying four
versions of the tank on succeeding flights: the "old" ET carried on the
fatal Columbia flight (STS-107), the modified one used on last year's
"return to flight" Discovery mission that resulted in more (although
not deadly) foam events (STS-114), the one being used on this flight
(STS-121), and the one slated for the shuttle Atlantis on the next
flight (STS-116), which will have further modifications already decided
on. It's not clear to this non-engineer that the accumulation of data
from flying four designs isn't so complex it could actually conceal a
problem rather than spotlighting it.

Matt Bille
www.mattwriter.com

Pat Flannery wrote:
Scott Hedrick wrote:



Although the idea of putting pinholes in the foam to allow any trapped air
that got liquefied under the foam to vent safely when ascent heating
caused it to go back into a gaseous state without causing the foam to
debond solves one problem, it also leaves a way for water to get into the
foam.



Which you solve by spraying the holes with a sealant.



What they really needed, particularly given the Cape's wet climate, was
a building that could entirely enclose the Shuttle to just an hour or so
before launch, like Vandenberg was going to have for its Shuttle launch
facility.
In that way you could pick a nice sunny day to roll the Shuttle out to
the pad from the VAB, and keep the rain off of it once it had arrived.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
What they really needed, particularly given the Cape's wet climate, was
a building that could entirely enclose the Shuttle to just an hour or so
before launch, like Vandenberg was going to have for its Shuttle launch
facility.

Well, the Cape pretty nearly has one -- the VAB. There's no fundamental
reason why the shuttle can't be *ready to fly* at rollout. As soon as
it's hard down on its mounts at the pad, you start filling the ET as the
crawler beats a hasty retreat, and towards the end of fueling, the crew
boards. You time it so the tanks are full five minutes before the launch
window opens. (Okay, maybe half an hour if you're feeling cautious. :-))

That's how the VAB was conceived to operate, with *all* preparations done
indoors in a protected environment. KSC has never managed to do it, but
the Ariane 5 launch facility at Kourou demonstrates that it is possible.

I expect you'd need a considerable overhaul of procedures, and probably
some equipment changes, to do that for the shuttle. And it's a bit late
to do that now. But there's nothing fundamentally hard about it.

In that way you could pick a nice sunny day to roll the Shuttle out to
the pad from the VAB, and keep the rain off of it once it had arrived.

Barring further facilities changes, you want to do the rollout when NASA
does it -- in the predawn hours -- because the orbiter has no lightning
protection between the VAB and the pad(*), and that's the time of day when
surprise thunderstorms are least likely. A nice sunny day is actually
about the worst time; that coast gets *lots* of short-notice thunderstorms
on nice sunny days.

(* A side effect of moving the umbilical towers from the mobile platforms
to the fixed pads. The Saturn V could and did roll out in bad weather; on
one occasion the crawler had to stop for a while, en route to the pad,
because it was raining so hard that the drivers couldn't see ahead. )
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BlagooBlanaa wrote:
water is heavy, frozen or not
accelerative loads make it more so
greatly increasing the probability of failure
when shuttle launches

they gotta scrub the mission and pull those
fricken tanks apart and put them together right.

One of the nice things about reengineering ETs
for potential human habitation is that they get
RE-ENGINEERED - properly this time.


Oh please. The whole ET as space station module died years ago with the
development of the Transhab inflatable module technology.
-Mike

wrote in message
ps.com...

BlagooBlanaa wrote:
water is heavy, frozen or not
accelerative loads make it more so
greatly increasing the probability of failure
when shuttle launches

they gotta scrub the mission and pull those
fricken tanks apart and put them together right.

One of the nice things about reengineering ETs
for potential human habitation is that they get
RE-ENGINEERED - properly this time.


Oh please. The whole ET as space station module died years ago with the
development of the Transhab inflatable module technology.
-Mike

Ok, but the ET would make a fine hub for a Stanford Torus
One that uses inflatables on the perimeter.
The whole idea is if the ET needs re-engineering (and it does)
may as well make it really useful on orbit, by dual purposing.

Back to topic, for those like Brian, its time to launch....

How will you feel when NASA found by the next safety board to be
negligent, and having IGNORED the CAIB recomendations other than the
2010 end date get its budget slashed to near zero?

what will be left if we are lucky is a small robotic program run out
of JPL, the rest will all be a footnote of history...

TRULY IS IT WORTH THE RISK?

The water running out of tank foam indicates we DONT understand the
problem...

That in itself should be a reason for grounding!