More cracked ribs on Discovery ET

On 1/2/2011 9:48 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
"What Would Elon Do?" - Musk's team cutting the back of the
Merlin engine nozzle off around a day or two after cracks were found in

My undertanding from the News articles is, this was a piece of engine bell
that gave better performance in vacuum - essentially a nice to have. OK so
they trimmed it to stop the crack from propagating further. On the shuttle
we have a piece of structure in a region where a similar failure caused the
loss of vehicle. Seems a bit of irrational grasping at straws to compare the
two situations.

Don't tell me, tell the people in the "WWED?" T-shirts.
One thing that's going on here is no one down at NASA wants to be the
person who it can be traced back to that said the Discovery is safe to
launch and have something go wrong on it during ascent.
They would be expelled to the lower reaches of The Infernal Regions to
roast weenies with the people that said Challenger was okay to launch,
and Linda Hamm and her no Columbia EVA decision.
Wisely General Bolden stays above the fray by remaining in his office
with the phone off of the hook and a sofa barricading the door.
No fool, Bolden; they can't play pin the tail on the donkey if there is
no donkey in the room. :-D

Pat

On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 08:03:52 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Apparently, NASA employees have been spotted wearing T-shirts with
"WWED?" emblazoned on them, this standing for "What Would Elon Do?" (a
parody of "What Would Buffy Do?") and probably a reference to the ET
crack problems and the lengthy "launch rational"* description of what's
going on in regards to it, versus Musk's team cutting the back of the
Merlin engine nozzle off around a day or two after cracks were found in
it:

We must be very careful with this sort of criticism, as in my opinion
that kind of sniping, internal and external is what built the "broken
safety culture" that led to Challenger and Columbia. "Oh, just go
ahead and launch! We've probably been launching with cracked stringers
for decades, and its never caused any problems before..." Sound
familar?

NASA simply can't win with its critics. Either they stand down to fix
a problem, and get attacked because "that's not what Elon Musk would
do!" or they play down the problem and launch anyway, only to be
criticised for putting schedule over safety.

Brian

" A while back, NASA issued a statement about watching out for possible
sabotage in relation to the Shuttles in regards to delaying their
launches, so that the Shuttle-related workforce could keep their jobs
longer:

There's two ways to play that game. The first is something done wrong that
then has to be fixed costing additional procesing time (true sabotage), the
second is going out of the way to find something that was normally there on
past launches and simply tolerated or not noticed and then making a big
safety issue out of it (looking for trouble). The whole end of program
process seems to be a really bad experience for those involved for many
reasons, and not just unemployment


Val Kraut

On 1/3/2011 8:53 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:

We must be very careful with this sort of criticism, as in my opinion
that kind of sniping, internal and external is what built the "broken
safety culture" that led to Challenger and Columbia. "Oh, just go
ahead and launch! We've probably been launching with cracked stringers
for decades, and its never caused any problems before..." Sound
familar?

NASA simply can't win with its critics. Either they stand down to fix
a problem, and get attacked because "that's not what Elon Musk would
do!" or they play down the problem and launch anyway, only to be
criticised for putting schedule over safety.

A while back, NASA issued a statement about watching out for possible
sabotage in relation to the Shuttles in regards to delaying their
launches, so that the Shuttle-related workforce could keep their jobs
longer:
http://www.wesh.com/news/19786382/detail.html
I'm not saying that happened in regards to this last incident, but it is
something to think about.

Pat

On Jan 3, 1:52*pm, "Val Kraut" wrote:
" A while back, NASA issued a statement about watching out for possible

sabotage in relation to the Shuttles in regards to delaying their
launches, so that the Shuttle-related workforce could keep their jobs
longer:

There's two ways to play that game. The first is something done wrong that
then has to be fixed costing additional procesing time (true sabotage), the
second is going out of the way to find something that was normally there on
past launches and simply tolerated or not noticed and then making a big
safety issue out of it (looking for trouble). The whole end of program
process seems to be a really bad experience for those involved for many
reasons, and not just unemployment

* * * * * * * * * * * * Val Kraut

Having worked for a company that ultimately closed, it sucks.

you watch your friends lose their jobs, and know your day is coming

Pat Flannery wrote:
On the other hand, they only spotted the cracked foam as they were
de-fueling the ET after the launch was scrubbed by the hydrogen leak, so
if the hydrogen leak hadn't occurred, would they have spotted it, or
have launched with the cracked ribs and foam? That could have led to a

Yes. The cracks were found by the ice inspection team. They did the same
inspection on the scrub that they do for a launch.

Glen Overby

Having worked for a company that ultimately closed, it sucks.

you watch your friends lose their jobs, and know your day is coming

Your certainly right about that - I was at Grumman when the LM program ended
and we lost the Shuttle. Every Friday there was the layoff ritual and for
"security reasons" those who left each week found out real time.

Many years later I was visiting Vandenberg periodically as part of a
collateral operation to missile launches. They had just decided not to
launch Shuttles from Vandenberg. Each Friday the Lockheed Guys faced a
layoff. Happy hour at Marie Calanders was mayhem each Friday - some getting
drunk because they were let go - others celebrating because they got to work
at least another week. Went on for a couple of months. I have never again
heard such mayhem inside a building.

So then the Government wonders why we don't have more kids going into
engineering and science -


Val Kraut

Pat Flannery wrote:
There are two other ET's built and ready to go down at the Cape; the
last planned flight is to use the ET that was damaged in the hurricane
and repaired, and there is a brand new ET that is being held in reserve
in case the last planned flight suffers a problem that leaves it
stranded in orbit or at the ISS. I imagine both of those would get a
pretty close inspection via X-rays to see if there are any cracks in
them before being swapped with the damaged ET.

According to comments I've read on nasaspaceflight.com, the other tanks have
been x-rayed.

Since no root cause has been found, there is no way to know if the other tanks
have the same problem.

Glen Overby

On Jan 3, 5:35*pm, Glen Overby wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:

There are two other ET's built and ready to go down at the Cape; the
last planned flight is to use the ET that was damaged in the hurricane
and repaired, and there is a brand new ET that is being held in reserve
in case the last planned flight suffers a problem that leaves it
stranded in orbit or at the ISS. I imagine both of those would get a
pretty close inspection via X-rays to see if there are any cracks in
them before being swapped with the damaged ET.

According to comments I've read on nasaspaceflight.com, the other tanks have
been x-rayed.

Since no root cause has been found, there is no way to know if the other tanks
have the same problem.

Glen Overby

next tank to be used had at least one crack.

fridays at the company I worked for were stressful, each friday more
would get let go, and have their posesions searched on departure. it
was pure hell....

their were managers wondering why productivity was off.... then they
got let go and understood

On Jan 3, 9:31*pm, " wrote:
On Jan 3, 5:35*pm, Glen Overby wrote:





Pat Flannery wrote:

There are two other ET's built and ready to go down at the Cape; the
last planned flight is to use the ET that was damaged in the hurricane
and repaired, and there is a brand new ET that is being held in reserve
in case the last planned flight suffers a problem that leaves it
stranded in orbit or at the ISS. I imagine both of those would get a
pretty close inspection via X-rays to see if there are any cracks in
them before being swapped with the damaged ET.

According to comments I've read on nasaspaceflight.com, the other tanks have
been x-rayed.

Since no root cause has been found, there is no way to know if the other tanks
have the same problem.

Glen Overby

next tank to be used had at least one crack.

fridays at the company I worked for were stressful, each friday more
would get let go, and have their posesions searched on departure. it
was pure hell....

their were managers wondering why productivity was off.... then they
got let go and understood- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

looks like they will add stifners to the entire tank areas, at the
cost of a schedule delay that will likely make everyone happy.

they get to keep their jobs a bit longer