NASA's Remembrance Day

Jorge R. Frank wrote:
Maybe NASA shouldn't have any missions in the last week of January and
the first week of February.

This is called "superstition" and has no place in rational engineering.


October 24th - hoodoo day for the Russians at Baikonur:

1960 - Nedelin Disaster. Over 100 die as R-16 missile explodes on pad.
1962 - Sputnik 22, a Mars probe, breaks up in orbit after launch.
Norad thinks pieces of debris may be incoming ICBM, as this is during
Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963 - R-9 missile explodes in silo, killing 9.

No further launches from Baikonur on Oct. 24.
This is not superstition; this is Socialist Realism on the part of The
New Soviet Man, who realizes that rockets are prone to hooliganism on
this date.

Patsky

dlzc wrote:

We aren't going to be able to do any better managing robots, or
teaching them to manage themselves, any better than we do ourselves.

Just Watch Syfy's "Caprica"; the trouble is already starting. ;-)

Pat

Dear Greg D. Moore \(Strider\):

On Jan 30, 4:36*pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
It may have sealed the surface of the foam, it didn't
fill the voids in the foam.

The voids still existed with or without the paint.

Without a path for moisture to reach the cells (in quantity), there
would be little ice in the foam. Without the mass of water in the
foam, the foam would not damage the heat tiles "as much" when it
sheared off. With a differential surface, such as provided by the
paint, what ice did come off, would come off in smaller pieces and/or
earlier. Note that rocks are broken by the freezing of water, and
foam insulation that has water freezing in it will have similar
structural problems.

And this site:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...ft/q0285.shtml
.... says I am full of it.

David A. Smith

Me wrote:

Wrong, frost does not "penetrate" the foam. The foam came of because
of voids in the foam.

....getting filled with liquid air while it was sitting on the pad and
getting fueled, which would go back into a gaseous form during ascent
due to heating from air friction and the decrease in external air pressure.

Pat

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
It may have sealed the surface of the foam, it didn't fill the voids in the
foam.

The voids still existed with or without the paint.

And the way they fixed the ET after Columbia included adding regularly
spaced holes on its surface that went all the way down to the tank metal
underneath the foam, so that any liquid air that formed in voids could
vent to the surface of the foam rather than causing pieces of the foam
to debond from the tank due to the gas pressure underneath it.

Pat

dlzc wrote:
And this site:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...ft/q0285.shtml
... says I am full of it.

That's a truly oddball way to support your argument.
Watch it everybody; I think this guy knows Zen or something. :-D

Pat

Yes, its interesting though. One often wonders if there are some laws of the
universe we do not understand yet. You will probably find there are subtle
effects on equipment and people due to all sorts of things, but as the
effect is small, there has to be some kind of pre-disposition to failure
associated with the effect.
Could well be a bit like a toggle switch, where at some point its not likely
to switch until that critical extra infinitesimal extra push.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
Maybe NASA shouldn't have any missions in the last week of January and
the first week of February.

This is called "superstition" and has no place in rational engineering.


October 24th - hoodoo day for the Russians at Baikonur:

1960 - Nedelin Disaster. Over 100 die as R-16 missile explodes on pad.
1962 - Sputnik 22, a Mars probe, breaks up in orbit after launch.
Norad thinks pieces of debris may be incoming ICBM, as this is during
Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963 - R-9 missile explodes in silo, killing 9.

No further launches from Baikonur on Oct. 24.
This is not superstition; this is Socialist Realism on the part of The New
Soviet Man, who realizes that rockets are prone to hooliganism on this
date.

Patsky

Greg D. Moore (Strider) heeft uiteengezet op 31-1-2010 :
It may have sealed the surface of the foam, it didn't fill the voids in the
foam.

The voids still existed with or without the paint.

--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.
"dlzc" wrote in message
...
Dear Me:

On Jan 30, 2:04 pm, Me wrote:
On Jan 30, 1:53 pm, dlzc wrote:

The frost did not penetrate the paint to any
significant extent. This means it could shear
off at lower speeds.

Wrong, frost does not "penetrate" the foam. The
foam came of because of voids in the foam.

What are you trying to say?

The paint sealed the surface of the foam. Now what do you want to say
that is obviated by the specifications?

David A. Smith

Since when are the ET's painted??
A.F.A.I.K. only the first 2 launches were with a white painted ET, the
paint was discarded to reduce weight.
The rust-color of the insulation gives the ET it's color.

I'll give you credit for admitting your mistake in the light of evidence to
the contrary. Lately too many people have refused to give ground in
debates.

Thanks.

(and for the record Jorge and "Me" (not me, the who posts with the name
"Me") work or have worked on the shuttle program. They generally know of
which they speak. :-)



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.
"dlzc" wrote in message
...
Dear Greg D. Moore \(Strider\):

On Jan 30, 4:36 pm, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
It may have sealed the surface of the foam, it didn't
fill the voids in the foam.

The voids still existed with or without the paint.

Without a path for moisture to reach the cells (in quantity), there
would be little ice in the foam. Without the mass of water in the
foam, the foam would not damage the heat tiles "as much" when it
sheared off. With a differential surface, such as provided by the
paint, what ice did come off, would come off in smaller pieces and/or
earlier. Note that rocks are broken by the freezing of water, and
foam insulation that has water freezing in it will have similar
structural problems.

And this site:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...ft/q0285.shtml
.... says I am full of it.

David A. Smith

Dear Greg D. Moore \(Strider\):

On Jan 31, 10:07*am, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
I'll give you credit for admitting your mistake in the
light of evidence to the contrary. *Lately too many
people have refused to give ground in debates.

Thanks.

You are welcome. I worked for an Apollo program engineer for a while
(after he'd retired). He had a sense of humor...

The pores in the foam get cold, the atmosphere in them gets smaller,
they draw in more atmosphere. Its gets colder still, and starts to
condense / freeze CO2 and water vapor, but probably not oxygen (near
the oxygen tank anyway where temps are boiling temp+, the hydrogen
tank would condense nitrogen, oxygen and argon). Even if it was not
rigid, it would be like a wet sponge or water balloon, at that *would*
be very destructive at those speeds.

(and for the record Jorge and "Me" (not me, the
who posts with the name "Me") work or have
worked on the shuttle program. *They generally
know of which they speak. :-)

I was wondering why they did not "tent" the LOX portion of the
external tank, and blow concentrated nitrogen under the tent? You can
make it from simple compressed air (via a zeolite), it ends up with
very low dewpoint and no significant CO2, and then stuff coming from
the vicinity of the LOX tank and the intertank region at launch would
be essentially soft and pliable.

My team's senior project in college was to design the ET out of
composite materials to save weight. Of course we had to settle on
only the intertank region, and even there I'm afraid we'd lost the
whole fleet... X-P

David A. Smith