Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker
July 12th 03, 02:56 PM
Am 8 Jul 2003 11:27:08 -0700 schrieb "TVDad Jim":
>I'm mostly a bonehead on engineering structures, but something occurs
>to me that seems obvious as a fix for the foam-impact problem.
>
>The first few shuttle launches had the ET painted white. This was
>discontinued due to weight and cost savings, I believe (much like
>American Airlines stopped painting its planes in the late 60's).
As of my knowledge, there were two different types of tanks flown by
the shuttle (take the white painted as a third, if you like). The
original type had a relatively thick spray-on foam insulation, that
was "relatively" heavy but stable (the white paint added more weight
and was soon left away).
Somewhen they began to develop a lighter tank version to increase the
shuttle's payload capacity. And that included a machining process to
make te insulation thinner (and lighter), But I think, that removal of
the "natural" surface did weaken the tank insulation somewhat too
much.
It is known, that the insulation fall-off problem did arise when Nasa
began to use the lightened tanks - and that the problematic was well
known (they evaluated it by cameras mounted in the boosters of some
missions). But it was judged as being under control. What a shame...
cu, ZiLi aka HKZL (Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker)
--
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>I'm mostly a bonehead on engineering structures, but something occurs
>to me that seems obvious as a fix for the foam-impact problem.
>
>The first few shuttle launches had the ET painted white. This was
>discontinued due to weight and cost savings, I believe (much like
>American Airlines stopped painting its planes in the late 60's).
As of my knowledge, there were two different types of tanks flown by
the shuttle (take the white painted as a third, if you like). The
original type had a relatively thick spray-on foam insulation, that
was "relatively" heavy but stable (the white paint added more weight
and was soon left away).
Somewhen they began to develop a lighter tank version to increase the
shuttle's payload capacity. And that included a machining process to
make te insulation thinner (and lighter), But I think, that removal of
the "natural" surface did weaken the tank insulation somewhat too
much.
It is known, that the insulation fall-off problem did arise when Nasa
began to use the lightened tanks - and that the problematic was well
known (they evaluated it by cameras mounted in the boosters of some
missions). But it was judged as being under control. What a shame...
cu, ZiLi aka HKZL (Heinrich Zinndorf-Linker)
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign
\ /
http://zili.de X No HTML in
/ \ email & news