ET Foam Home thread

[rogers_buck]

Or, how about foam baby buggy bumpers on the leading edge of the wing. They get sliced by a wire when the ET drops away.<br />

 

[mikeemmert]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Hwere are a few ideas that come to mind. <br /><br />1) ET condom. A plastic envelope baloon filled with He or dry Nitrogen. At launch, the bag would pull away.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Most products in America come in a shipping container or "crate". This protects the product. In the case of a rocket, it could perform another function; to strengthen the rocket against horizontal loads. Then instead of having to move the gigantic thing slowly and carefully, you could sling it around more.<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>2) Pyro-foam. When the solids ignite, so does the ET foam. It burns and spalls off at a low temperature that will not damage the vehicle. The foam would burn off by the time the tank hit 20,000 feet the tank would be bare.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>The shipping containerwould have pyrotechnic fasteners and be pressurized to slightly greater than one atmosphere. This is jettisoned at T -1 second and would produce a spectacular show as it crumbled into pieces. I think it would be better to do a demolition job because if it were two or a few pieces the nozzle blast might rotate it into the vehicle. The nozzle blast from the rocket is sure to set fire to the shipping crate anyway, so for disposal purposes you might as well incinerate the pieces. Such a thing would be designed with cost foremost in mind, being made out of such things as plywood. I suppose you would use explosive adhesives at strategic locations.

 

[rogers_buck]

Wasn't the liquid H2 tank supposed to be made of Li metal fab'd by the Russians originally? When they failed to deliver they turned to the composite tank as you describe, or am I thinking of something else? They had a lot of problems with delamination on the O2 tank as I recall.<br />

 

[mikeemmert]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Entrained air would bring them right where they could do the most damage, <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>I suppose you could increase the nitrogen (helium around the LH2 compartment) pressure. Maybe start the halves of it flying away with solid fuel rockets?... They seem to have great success with controlled demolitions. <br /><br />The crate idea solidified in my head when one of the solid fueled boosters for New Horizons got dented. Later that day, I read about how the old Atlas boosters had to be pressurized in order to erect them into launch position. Rockets are strong only in the flight direction, the crate is for the forces that occur in other directions, or inadvertently.<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>If you have ever seen an airshow 'firewall crash' you have seen solid 3/8 to 1/2 inch Redwood, not balsa!<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote>Nope. Never been to an airshow. Remember, I'm ex-VVAW, it never occured to me to get into a crowd of honorably discharged Air National Guard pilots (plenty of threads about that in Free Space). But actually, balsa wood sounds like a great idea. Remember, one of the major functions of the crate is thermal insulation.<br /><br />A "firewall crash"? Sounds like Lucha Libre. I actually did go to one of those shows, but the "wrestlers" seemed to cooperate. When I wrestled in high school, I did my best to anticooperate with my opponent. So I didn't go to two shows.<br /><br />Redwood sounds expensive, like osmium plated titanium toilet seats. I ran into plenty of crates when I was a dumpsterdiver. I camped behind an appliance store and there were too many crates to fit into the dumpster with the coffee grounds and wet eggshells, so there were always nice neat piles for my nightly shelter requirements.