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Did you see this on Fox News? Just saw the same thing, but the reporting sounded...off. I haven't seen anything about this yet, online or otherwise.
I saw if on Fox's Shepard Smith report, but now Reuters is carrying it...
Earth to NASA & Congress: fully fund COTS-D NOW!!!!
Reuters AlertNet wire story....
Earth to NASA & Congress: fully fund COTS-D NOW!!!!
Reuters AlertNet wire story....
Thanks, strikes me as a bit of sensationalism though in describing what is obviously SOP for many types of anomalies.
This isn't just any "anomaly" - this one is endemic to the design. Foam or ice (in the case of a foam-less launch) every mission runs a very real risk of being another Columbia. Such is the folly of sidesaddle launching of manned spacecraft. It's already killed 7 people and come damned close to killing others. Russian roulette, plain and simple.
Time to bite the bullet and use part of the current STS budget to get Orion ready and on Atlas V and/or Delta IV while also steering the rest and Ares I and Ares I-X (what a WASTE!) funding to Ares V Lite, or Ares IV if you prefer, for lunar missions.
In the meantime we need to get F9/Dragon up and ready for crew missions, meaning fund work on its escape tower as well as using NASA resources to speed the job. I know others could do it, meaning build a crewed spacecraft, but SpaceX is cutting metal and closest to actually doing it.
IMO this is no longer just a gap thing, this has to be done or we risk losing our manned spaceflight capability, period.
Time to bite the bullet and use part of the current STS budget to get Orion ready and on Atlas V and/or Delta IV while also steering the rest and Ares I and Ares I-X (what a WASTE!) funding to Ares V Lite, or Ares IV if you prefer, for lunar missions.
In the meantime we need to get F9/Dragon up and ready for crew missions, meaning fund work on its escape tower as well as using NASA resources to speed the job. I know others could do it, meaning build a crewed spacecraft, but SpaceX is cutting metal and closest to actually doing it.
IMO this is no longer just a gap thing, this has to be done or we risk losing our manned spaceflight capability, period.
docm":2vqd2ge7 said:
I am sure they will find that the foam loss this time was mainly due to the loading of the ET for the tanking test and the scrubs. The tank skin contracts when the crogenic prop is loaded the expands when off loaded however the foam does not expand and contract.. The cycles cause cracks in the foam. Also cryo pumping of liquid air forms pockets of liquid where the cracks get to the tank skin. When the propellant is drained the pocket of liquid air flashes off and causes more foam debonds. Tanking then draining is bad bad bad for tanks with external foam. We learned that from the Saturn Five over 45 years ago.
The good news is that the foam that is released during due to excessive tankings is normally small and will just do cosmetic damage.
My prediction: This "issue" will not hold up the remaining Shuttle launches.
Apparently some people didn't learn it well enough, did they?shuttle_guy":1r2pdr0y said:
All that fill/drain hunting for the leaks and yet no one thought that perhaps the tank would present a risk? Maybe postpone, go back to the garage and reapply to the high risk areas? IF those pieces missed the shuttles TPS it's more luck than skill and you know it. Same attitude that cost us Challenger and Columbia.
As I said; time to bite the bullet and move on.
Yes we need to do something soon because we will be totally dependant on the russians after they stop launching the shuttle missions. The F9/Dragon could seriously help drastically in our efforts to keep americans in space until the aries is ready to go if they can get everything right on it. 
docmIF those pieces missed the shuttles TPS it's more luck than skill and you know it. Same attitude that cost us Challenger and Columbia. As I said; time to bite the bullet and move on.[/quote said:
Perhaps the risks are unchanged, but IMO they're too high to begin with for the design issues we all know too well.
Look, I understand risk very well having raced/rallied cars, climbed rock etc. etc. My youth before marriage was one risky sport or activity after another, so I "get it". The difference was that if I discovered that my gear was poorly designed I got rid of it ASAP. If a technique was shown risky I sought an alternative.
Yes, risk can be managed to a degree, but NASA's risk management the last 30 years seems more hubris than management. First it was ignoring all the signs that foam shedding could damage the TPS, then it was thinking the O rings could work under ungodly cold conditions then it was back to the foam again both before and after Columbia.
Even in light of 7 deaths on Columbia they were in denial that a few kilos of foam moving at a few hundred MPH could damage the wings leading edge....right up until a real world test made asses of them. Most students I've known/taught would have suspected that risk from f=ma and run a test as soon as shedding reared its ugly head.
As I said: hubris, and IMO near criminal hubris. Outside of a govt. agency such careless or reckless disregard for the safety of others causing multiple deaths could bring manslaughter charges.
Maybe if it did just once the culture would change.
Look, I understand risk very well having raced/rallied cars, climbed rock etc. etc. My youth before marriage was one risky sport or activity after another, so I "get it". The difference was that if I discovered that my gear was poorly designed I got rid of it ASAP. If a technique was shown risky I sought an alternative.
Yes, risk can be managed to a degree, but NASA's risk management the last 30 years seems more hubris than management. First it was ignoring all the signs that foam shedding could damage the TPS, then it was thinking the O rings could work under ungodly cold conditions then it was back to the foam again both before and after Columbia.
Even in light of 7 deaths on Columbia they were in denial that a few kilos of foam moving at a few hundred MPH could damage the wings leading edge....right up until a real world test made asses of them. Most students I've known/taught would have suspected that risk from f=ma and run a test as soon as shedding reared its ugly head.
As I said: hubris, and IMO near criminal hubris. Outside of a govt. agency such careless or reckless disregard for the safety of others causing multiple deaths could bring manslaughter charges.
Maybe if it did just once the culture would change.
docm":18op5aef said:
There is absolutely no way I consider the Challenger loss to be a result of 'business as usual' at NASA. That launch would certainly have been aborted on any other day. But on THAT day, for some reason no one will talk about, that shuttle absolutely HAD to launch. The reason why NASA ignored its own safety guidelines has never beer revealed. Even though there were no explicit prohibitions against launching at low temperatures, everyone in the program, as well as thousands of people across the country who have worked with rubber at high temperatures, knew that it had been much too cold to chance a launch so early in the day.
NASA calls off launches for minor things, it seems, and the extreme cold was no minor thing. But that launch had already been delayed, and it was a very politically important launch, carrying the first Teacher In Space. Someday, maybe we will learn the truth about the Challenger launch, just like someday, we will learn the truth about the killing of John F. Kennedy. But Challenger was not lost due to any deficiencies in design, nor was it lax attitudes about safety. It is a false set of data, because the vehicle was being operated outside of its parameters, intentionally.
docm":2aqgy8lx said:
At this point, bite the bullet = don't complete the ISS. Not a decision to be made lightly, as it would be wasteful.
The headline is overly sensationalistic, because it implies that they may never fly again. That is highly unlikely. Rather, what it means is that they want to understand this foam shedding event before flying the next mission. That is not terribly unusual for this sort of an anomaly. Of course, the mass media tends not to understand that.
I agree with rubicondsrv; the best option is to fly out the remaining manifested Shuttle missions.
It's also rather simplistic to say that this anomaly is endemic to the design, because that implies that they have seen this anomaly many times before. They haven't. They've seen foam shedding on every mission, but this is different, so the engineering analyses based on old data can't be applied to decide whether or not it's safe to fly with the next ET. They need to take some time to understand what happened first. The intertank region is different from the rest of the tank; the foam is much thinner there, only an inch or so thick. The kind of foam loss they expect to see is "popcorning", commonly associated with multiple tanking cycles. This is not popcorning; strips of foam was coming off of the stringers, suggesting a loss of adhesion to the primer layer. That needs to be understood so that they can make sure the remaining ETs do not have the same defect.
It does require patience and an open mind to find out what's really going on and make the best decision under the circumstances. So I can understand why some might prefer to latch on to some simplistic idea and go with it before finding out what's actually going on. That is certainly a lot more expedient.
drwayne":9cbru52y said:
That article certainly says nothing about grounding the fleet:
"The shuttle Discovery is scheduled for launch around Aug. 18, but it's too early to say what impact, if any, additional testing might have on that flight or subsequent missions. "
Of the 3 articles in this thread so far, this one (spaceflisghtnow.com) most accurately describes the news conference.
Here's their headline and lead paragraph:
Strips of foam peeled away from Endeavour's fuel tank
Post-launch photography of the shuttle Endeavour's external tank shows multiple areas of bare metal where thin strips of foam insulation peeled away during the climb to space, the result of an as-yet-unknown mechanism.
docm":2d7bs9tb said:
I watched the news conference, and I heard nothing that would indicate such a dramatic headline. This is a new type of problem, and they are just starting to investigate it. They don't know how serious it is yet. Maybe Irene was at a different part of the room than where the cameras and NASA guys were. Sheesh...
Just so others are aware: Irene Klotz is a veteran science/space journalist and producer who, last I checked, works for The Discovery Channel's "Discovery News" bureau.
Maybe she got something from the backchannel? Happens....
Maybe she got something from the backchannel? Happens....
It's also rather simplistic to say that this anomaly is endemic to the design, because that implies that they have seen this anomaly many times before. They haven't. They've seen foam shedding on every mission, but this is different, so the engineering analyses based on old data can't be applied to decide whether or not it's safe to fly with the next ET. They need to take some time to understand what happened first. The intertank region is different from the rest of the tank; the foam is much thinner there, only an inch or so thick. The kind of foam loss they expect to see is "popcorning", commonly associated with multiple tanking cycles. This is not popcorning; strips of foam was coming off of the stringers, suggesting a loss of adhesion to the primer layer. That needs to be understood so that they can make sure the remaining ETs do not have the same defect.
It does require patience and an open mind to find out what's really going on and make the best decision under the circumstances. So I can understand why some might prefer to latch on to some simplistic idea and go with it before finding out what's actually going on. That is certainly a lot more expedient.[/quote]
Are ya sure you "only" do software Calli? Well said.
It does require patience and an open mind to find out what's really going on and make the best decision under the circumstances. So I can understand why some might prefer to latch on to some simplistic idea and go with it before finding out what's actually going on. That is certainly a lot more expedient.[/quote]
Are ya sure you "only" do software Calli? Well said.
I have a problem using public money to develop something that Spacex will sell to others at a profit.
docm":kw6rw0d5 said:
Hi docm,
I am not at all suprised that this launch has been a problem child. How many times had the ET been tanked, detanked, retanked, etc with liquid hydrogen?
That together with quite a lengthy period out in the hot humid Florida weather, thundertorms dumping huge amounts of rain, then that drying off, then more liquid hydrogen loaded, etc.
I hope that this will only be short term & that STS 128 Discovery will still launch on schedule. NASA must get to the bottom of this one.
Andrew Brown.
3488":3isywhwr said:
You know the more I think about it that makes pure good sence... Solution is to make dang sure everything is perfect before the 1st attempt....
TPS system inspection has found no significant issues. Regarding the "grounding" as reported by spaceflightnow:
Shannon said two teams are looking into the matter, one focused on what happened to Endeavour's tank and the other looking into what might be needed to ensure the next tank in the launch sequence is safe to fly.
External tank No. 132 is scheduled for use by the shuttle Discovery in late August and engineers are planning "pull" tests to measure how tightly bonded its intertank foam is to the underlying metal. Shannon said depending on what the tests show, the tank could be launched as is, repaired or taken off line and replaced by a follow-on tank.
Because the intertank foam separated relatively late in the ascent, it does not appear to represent the sort of impact threat that might suggest sweeping changes. But Shannon said it's too soon to say what impact, if any, the work might have on Discovery's launch campaign.
"We're still putting the plan together to go and do the plug pulls to ensure we have the proper adhesion," he said. "This is not dissimilar from previous work we've done when we've seen foam losses on other tanks. Right now, my expectation is this will not affect a late August launch of STS-128."
But NASA has delayed Discovery's move to the Vehicle Assembly Building for attachment to ET-132 and a set of boosters from Monday to next Friday to allow more time for testing. NASA's internal launch target remains Aug. 18, but that date already was in conflict with a Delta rocket launch and regardless of the upcoming testing, Discovery's flight likely will slip a few days.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/s ... ndex3.html
Shannon said two teams are looking into the matter, one focused on what happened to Endeavour's tank and the other looking into what might be needed to ensure the next tank in the launch sequence is safe to fly.
External tank No. 132 is scheduled for use by the shuttle Discovery in late August and engineers are planning "pull" tests to measure how tightly bonded its intertank foam is to the underlying metal. Shannon said depending on what the tests show, the tank could be launched as is, repaired or taken off line and replaced by a follow-on tank.
Because the intertank foam separated relatively late in the ascent, it does not appear to represent the sort of impact threat that might suggest sweeping changes. But Shannon said it's too soon to say what impact, if any, the work might have on Discovery's launch campaign.
"We're still putting the plan together to go and do the plug pulls to ensure we have the proper adhesion," he said. "This is not dissimilar from previous work we've done when we've seen foam losses on other tanks. Right now, my expectation is this will not affect a late August launch of STS-128."
But NASA has delayed Discovery's move to the Vehicle Assembly Building for attachment to ET-132 and a set of boosters from Monday to next Friday to allow more time for testing. NASA's internal launch target remains Aug. 18, but that date already was in conflict with a Delta rocket launch and regardless of the upcoming testing, Discovery's flight likely will slip a few days.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/s ... ndex3.html
The press being sensationalist? Never?! :roll:vt_hokie":2k694eqa said:
When I used to read these boards soon after Columbia, shuttle_guy walked us through (numerous times) the issue of cryo pumping, so even before this last launch I suspected there would be a problem after so many tank fills and drains. Even though the foam has been modified since Columbia, there is only so much that can probably be done.
I don't see a lot that NASA can do at this point. One possibility is to change the policy on when to try to launch so that that the launch is less likely to be scrubbed. For example, if there is only an 30% chance of launch because of weather, then don't attempt the launch at all. (fill in your own number). Or maybe they can develop some additional tests reduce the scrubs because of issues with leaks, sensors, etc.
But in general, I think NASA cannot make a significant change at this point.
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