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LA Times: Critic says Space shuttle is "Inherently Unsafe"
Lynndel Humphreys wrote:
Graphite epoxy with a little quartz fiber and hypothetical diamond titanium alloy thrown in would be much much better. http://www.whitebottom.com/philipball/m03_12.asp Diamond would be great, but someone is going to have to break down and tell De Beers that diamonds are just a bunch of carbon, and in the future it will be as common as dirt. The RCC panels are manufactured much the same as charcoal. A graphite impregnated rayon cloth layup. Bake everything out except the carbon. Then add more carbon (alcohol) and baking everyting out of it again. Finally add a layer of silicon carbonate. I would think a better RCC panel might be made out of SiC foam with a layer of graphite cloth on both sides, all held together with SiC. It would be stronger and more impact resistant. Instead of somewhat random carbon (charcoal) with a little bit of graphite in it, it would be single fiber graphite cloth composite with a foam core. Much stronger, thicker, stiffer and impact resistant. Maybe even make the SiC foam on graphite instead of a vitrious carbon http://www.ultramet.com/ Light weight SiC foam is good at abosrbing impact energy, which would help stop the leading edge from being fully penitrated. Kind of looks like NASA isn't going to change it's impact requirements for the heat shield and is going to continue to fly through a blizzard of debris. Bussiness as usual. There's a big difference in designing a leading edge to meet a "no impact" requirement than an "impact resistant" requirement. The current "no impact" leading edge requirement has a "bleeding edge" safety factor of only 1.4. I wonder is NASA's going to change the leading edge safety factor to 4.0 like the TPS? Craig Fink |
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