Pink Goop Tile Caulking Repair Kit

Pink Goop And Ingenuity
By Earl Lane

In searching for ways to repair damaged shuttles in orbit, NASA
engineers have gone back to the future. They have selected a pink
goop, mixed in two parts like an epoxy, that has been in use since the
1960s.

The heat-resistant material has the consistency of caulk until it
cures, when it takes on the rubbery look and feel of a pencil eraser.
But looks are deceiving. When the material is exposed to the high
temperatures a shuttle experiences on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere,
its surface chars and slowly burns away, providing what engineers hope
will be a margin of safety to protect a stricken shuttle from
disaster.

Michael Fowler, the NASA official responsible for developing materials
to do repairs on the protective thermal tiles that cover shuttles,
said his team has benefited from previous efforts in 1979 and 1980,
when engineers selected the pink goop, a silicone-based material
called MA-25S, as a potential patch for damaged or missing tiles.
----
While NASA engineers are confident the patching material can be used
to repair nicks and gaps in any of the thousands of tiles in the
shuttle's skin, they still are scrambling to find a workable repair
strategy for the wing edge panels made of a composite material called
reinforced carbon-carbon.
----
Ellen

In article ,
(ElleninLosAngeles) wrote:

Pink Goop And Ingenuity
By Earl Lane

In searching for ways to repair damaged shuttles in orbit, NASA
engineers have gone back to the future. They have selected a pink
goop, mixed in two parts like an epoxy, that has been in use since the
1960s.

The heat-resistant material has the consistency of caulk until it
cures, when it takes on the rubbery look and feel of a pencil eraser.
But looks are deceiving. When the material is exposed to the high
temperatures a shuttle experiences on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere,
its surface chars and slowly burns away, providing what engineers hope
will be a margin of safety to protect a stricken shuttle from
disaster.

Michael Fowler, the NASA official responsible for developing materials
to do repairs on the protective thermal tiles that cover shuttles,
said his team has benefited from previous efforts in 1979 and 1980,
when engineers selected the pink goop, a silicone-based material
called MA-25S, as a potential patch for damaged or missing tiles.
----
While NASA engineers are confident the patching material can be used
to repair nicks and gaps in any of the thousands of tiles in the
shuttle's skin, they still are scrambling to find a workable repair
strategy for the wing edge panels made of a composite material called
reinforced carbon-carbon.
----
Ellen

MA-25S was the ablator used on the X-15-A-2 when it flew it's maximum
speed flight (still the fastest flight of an aircraft, and of any winged
craft aside from the shuttle). The ablator stood up very well, aside
from the ventral stabilizer which was severely damaged due to shock
impingement heating. So, this is a well known substance, and as long as
the application is smooth (i.e. no shock waves) should enable the
orbiter to make it through a single re-entry. Application to the X-15
was a huge issue though...it will be interesting to see how well it
works in vacuum.

Reed

--
Dr. Reed L. Riddle
Assistant Director Whole Earth Telescope Operations
Iowa State University Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
Homepage: http://www.chara.gsu.edu/~riddle

"This life has been a test. If this had been an actual life, you would have
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Reed Riddle wrote in newsAMNdrriddleSPAM-
:

MA-25S was the ablator used on the X-15-A-2 when it flew it's maximum
speed flight (still the fastest flight of an aircraft, and of any winged
craft aside from the shuttle). The ablator stood up very well, aside
from the ventral stabilizer which was severely damaged due to shock
impingement heating. So, this is a well known substance, and as long as
the application is smooth (i.e. no shock waves) should enable the
orbiter to make it through a single re-entry. Application to the X-15
was a huge issue though...it will be interesting to see how well it
works in vacuum.

In fact, MA-25S was also the ablator used in the original 1979-80 shuttle
tile repair kit. It was abandoned because of a tendency to "foam up" in
vacuum. The current tile repair kit development team has apparently solved
that problem.

--
JRF

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