Shuttle Endeavour: NO repair

[Dr Mordrid]

If it fries on re-entry heads are gonna roll, especially since they have 3 different types of repair kit on board.

Somehow they're convinced themselves that he boundary layer under the re-entry plasma will keep it from melting the wing off at the landing gear well.

Jeezzzz.....

Link....

[Jammrock]

I saw a report that said if they use that much goop for repair it would probably cause the tiles to shift in re-entry, posing an even greater danger. And with a teacher onboard...well, that's just been a curse so far.

Jammrock

[Dr Mordrid]

So they delay the program to get repair options, then at the first time they are needed they say they're too dangerous to use?

What's wrong with this picture

[az]

If it fries on re-entry heads are gonna roll

Heads are gonna burn first, most probably.

[ZokesPro]

It's a "cross your fingers and hope you have life insurance" type of situation.

On the news channel in Montreal (LCN), they have been talking about it extensively and they have shown pictures of the gash such. There are mixed feelings amongst my collegues. As for myself, I think that they might make it back alright, but I know nearly nothing about the symantecs of shuttle re-entry, so it's just an un-educated opinion.

[Dr Mordrid]

It's quite an argument on the space forums.

90% of the NASA guys go with the decision, 10% are very apprehensive and nearly everyone else, including former NASA and aeronautical engineers in NewSpace & elsewhere, think they're bonkers.

From the purely PR point of view; if they have 3 repair options, don't use them and Endeavour cooks there's going to be hell to pay.

First heads roll.

Second, the shuttle program ends immediately, 3 years early, and ISS construction stops with it. The remaining modules are made to be shuttle launched & mounted with its robotic arm. There are no boosters capable of replacing them.

Third, the shuttle maintenance crews will probably not be retained, complicating the work on Ares I and Ares V, which use shuttle SRB & tank components, unless the Congress comes up with additional funding to keep them around.

There are those who feel canceling Ares I should happen anyhow. It uses an expanded shuttle SRB (solid rocket booster) with 5 segments instead of 4 and has been barely making its power requirements. This problem is so bad they've had to shrink the Orion spaceship from the original 5.5 meters to 5 meters, and now they're talking 4.5 meters. Not a good trend.

One alternative is called "Direct". It's also shuttle derived but much more powerful and is supported, and partially designed by, much of NASA's own engineers. Problem is the NASA management has a bad case of "not invented here"

Another alternative is using the Atlas V or Delta Heavy expendable boosters, but NASA doesn't want that either. Don't ask

Things may change though. The main proponent of Ares I just left NASA after it slipped its goals...again. It now may not fly in completed form, with an Orion, until 2012 and may not be crewed until 2015-2016.

Meanwhile SpaceX is cutting metal on their big Falcon 9 (makes Ares I look like a pea shooter) and their Dragon capsule, both of which fly in late 2008.

Any questions as to why so many are pulling for NewSpace?

[ZokesPro]

Any questions as to why so many are pulling for NewSpace?

What is NewSpace?

I checked on the net and this is what I got.

http://www.newspace.com/about_us.html
A St. Louis company founded by Bob Fox in 1984, NewSpace has designed and installed closet interiors, home offices, entertainment centers, commercial office interiors and fine wood furniture for more than 50,000 satisfied clients.

I doubt this is the NewSpace your talking about?

[Elie]

I'm deeply concerned for the shuttle and it's crew, a "gash" in the hull is always critical no matter how small it is.

I hope everything goes well.

[Dr Mordrid]

What is NewSpace?

It's the term being used for the emerging entrepreneurial space industry; Scaled Composites, Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceX (SpX), SpaceDev, Benson Aerospace, Armadillo, t/Space, Blue Origin, RocketPlane-Kistler (RpK), AirLaunch, UP Aerospace, XCOR, JP Aerospace, Orbital Outfitters etc. etc.

Also known as Alt.Space or entrepreneurial space, but NewSpace seems to be sticking.

Read here;

http://www.spacex.com

http://www.spacedev.com

http://www.bensonspace.com/

http://www.bigelowaerospace.com

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archi.../22/65477.aspx (about Bigelow)

http://www.hobbyspace.com/NewSpace/index.html

How serious are outfits like SpaceX?

SpaceX Falcon 9 update w/pictures....

>
What does it look like?

It is important to appreciate that the Falcon 9 is a *big* vehicle. To give you a sense of scale, it stands about 18 stories (54 meters) tall on the launch pad and has a cargo area in the nose that is 17 feet in diameter and 50 feet long – big enough to carry a bus to orbit. Falcon 9 has a maximum thrust of just over one million pounds
>
The Falcon 9 Heavy, which I expect will fly about two years after the standard Falcon 9, will have over three million pounds of thrust, which is almost halfway to a Saturn V.
>

[MultimediaMan]

NASA is really starting to make me wonder about how they think scenarios through, but I think in this case doing nothing is probably their best course of action.

There is some precedent: Challenger came back home once with several missing bottom tiles, and several hundred more damaged after a severe foam/ice divoting event. Atlantis also came home safely with damaged/missing tiles surrounding her landing gear doors, IIRC.

NASA's repair options are limited, and the risks of putting ~500KG of astronaut and gear waaaaaaaay underneath the shuttle on the Canadarm Robotic arm with a 100 foot boom attached, literally flapping in the breeze trying to stick some putty into a crack. Imagine trying to grout some tile while flapping around a distance of 1 meter, with no handholds on your work area, and no way to stabilize yourself against the work area. It's like pushing toothpaste into a tube while bungee jumping...

The real issue: the location of the divot could not be in a worse location for repair due to the limitations of the arm and the boom. I think they could have come up with a far more rigid boom for the 100 million dollars or so we gave them rather then a telescoping tube of aluminum.

[ZokesPro]

For SpaceX, example, where does one get the funding?

Q: How did SpaceX manage to develop Falcon so quickly?
A: Through an exceptional team of engineers with deep experience in aerospace engineering, combined with uninterrupted financial backing.

But still, you need to be associated with some major companies to get such funding.

[Technoid]

Seems like nasa has the IBM syndrome

[Dr Mordrid]

Seems like nasa has the IBM syndrome

A whole lot of people in and out of NASA would agree.

For SpaceX, example, where does one get the funding?......But still, you need to be associated with some major companies to get such funding.

Not if SpaceX has an owner like Elon Musk who earned his fortune by starting Zip2 (publishing s/w for news companies) and PayPal (sold to Amazon for $1.5 billion in Amazon stock ), making him a multi-billionaire now. As such SpaceX is largely self financed.

They also have a NASA COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) contract for developing Falcon 9 & the Dragon spaceship for transporting cargo & at NASA's option crews (Dragon can do either) to the ISS post-shuttle.

Note: the person who headed up SpaceX's Falcon feasibility study a few years ago? Now NASA administrator Michael Griffin

Still, these development funds are only a small portion of that budget, and the use of Falcon9/Dragon is not exclusive to NASA. One of their customers is to be Bigelow Aerospace, makers of the inflatable space station modules.

Bigelow just accelerated their schedule for the 2nd time in a year and now plan to have a manned station in orbit by decades end or sooner. It's final size will be ~2x that of the ISS; 840 cu/meters vs ISS's 425 cu/meters and it will only take 4-5 flights to assemble. This too will be easily expandable to over 2,000 cu/meters if desired; basically the system works like Tinkertoys.

Note for the investor types: Musk says after a successful Falcon 9 flight they plan an IPO.

[Claymonkey]

Now... how long has the shuttle been around? How did the tiles NOT manage to be a problem for 20+ years and not cause accidents before this? Now it seems to happen every other launch.... sigh

[Dr Mordrid]

Now... how long has the shuttle been around? How did the tiles NOT manage to be a problem for 20+ years and not cause accidents before this? Now it seems to happen every other launch.... sigh

It's been flying 27 years and the tiles have been a problem since day one. In fact NASA was warned in the development stage several times it would be a problem with sidesaddle launch, but the warnings were ignored. The alternative would have been continued development of Apollo, perhaps enlarging it to a crew of 6, and parallel development of a cheaper heavy lift rocket (Saturn V was too expensive) and a MOL (manned orbiting laboratory) the size of a freight train car.

First; the shuttles TPS (thermal protection system) has 3 basic parts; thermal blankets, reinforced carbon-carbon (leading edges, nose etc.) and the glass-silica tiles. On the first 4 flights the tank was painted white. With liquid oxygen inside and humid air outside ice formed on its exterior, fell off during launch and did severe damage to dozens of tiles. They're lucky one of those flights didn't fry.

So then they started using the insulating foam coating on the tank, very much like the canned sealer foam you can get at hardware stores. Because of vibration and a problem called cryopumping** it too was shed during launch, but it was thought that with its low density it wouldn't be a problem. Wrong.

Shed pieces of foam knocked off chunks of tiles almost immediately with over 200 hits being recorded on some flights. Still it was thought that even large pieces couldn't cause enough damage to create a re-entry problem. Someone must have forgot the basic law of momentum; even a low density object moving fast enough is a cannonball, and foam was being shed and impacting the TPS at near supersonic speeds.

Complacency set in and they continued to fly, even though as early as 1990 many wanted to start on a replacement, or at least a more robust ship to do crew only missions. The 10 passenger HL-20 spaceplane was born, fully developed to the point of being built then canceled. Funding was the excuse, but in reality it was shuttle proponents feeling threatened.

Eventually this caught up with them and a briefcase size piece of foam knocked a 10" hole in the carbon-carbon at the front of Columbia's wing. Well, all of a sudden NASA's geniuses finally realized that a test of foams effect on the TPS at high speed was in order. They fired a chunk at a leading edge segment and were actually shocked to see it destroyed by the impact

During the ensuing shutdown they developed 3 tile patching methods, all of which they now say are too dangerous to test on Endeavour.

End of shuttle program in 2010 so they can finish ISS - theoretically. In reality if they lose another shuttle the program will be halted and the sh*tstorm starts.

HL-20 is now a NewSpace project, SpaceDevs Dream Chaser, and is set to fly on an Atlas V. It mounts on the top of the rocket, so no problem with ice or foam. It also uses a strong solid & machinable tile, SIRCA, which unfortunately is too heavy to use on the shuttle due to the quantity required.

**Cryopumping: When the external tank is fueled for launch air trapped in voids in the insulation or near the skin of the tank can turn into a liquid. As the shuttle speeds up aerodynamic heating can cause that trapped liquid to turn into a pressurized gas. The pressure generated blows pieces of the overlying foam away from the tank.