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August 02, 2005
NASA, The Shuttle Disasters, And "Green" Engineering
Here's more on the possibility that NASA has put environmental concerns ahead of manned flight safety (via The Corner). The loss of both Challenger and Columbia have been traced to failures which involved products that had been changed as a result of environmental pressures.
In 1997, during the 87th space shuttle mission, similar tile damage occurred during launch. NASA's Greg Katnik stated in his December 1997 review of the problems of STS-87: "During the STS-87 mission, there was a change made on the external tank. Because of NASA's goal to use environmentally friendly products, a new method of 'foaming' the external tank had been used for this mission and the STS-86 mission."
NASA was just responding to pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency to stop using Freon, a fluorocarbon that greenies claim damages the ozone layer, in the manufacture of its thermal-insulating foam. But the politically correct foam was known to be less sticky and more brittle under extreme temperatures.
Hannes Hacker, an aerospace engineer and former flight controller at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, states: "The risk of a piece of debris falling off and causing significant damage to the shuttle's thermal protection system was 10 times greater with the new material than the old material."
Likewise for Challenger: In 1977 the use of asbestos had been banned in most paint products and as a result NASA could no longer obtain the O-ring putty that has been used successfully until then. Almost immediately burn-through problems were noted in the solid rocket boosters.
"Engineers have not yet determined the cause of the problem," [NASA analyst] Cook wrote. "Candidates include the use of a new type of putty." Six months later the Challenger blew up, killing its crew, as hot exhaust gases burned through the brittle asbestos-free O-ring putty.
Malcolm Ross, who studied asbestos as a research scientist for 41 years at the U.S. Geological Survey, noted that, about the same time, the Air Force had two launch failures with its Titan 34-D rockets after 50 straight launch successes before substituting for the asbestos-based putty.
I wouldn't be surprised if the analysis is more complex than this, but in a business in which the highest standards of engineering rigor must prevail, there is no place for environmental pseudo-science.
If this turns out to be correct, I'll be "green" all right--with nausea.
For more on the history of the foam problem, check out the knowledgable post by AJStrata.
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Comments
It never ceases to amaze me how Greenies will state hypothesis as fact. Most notable is the ozone layer argument. Unless there has been some major revelation in the scientific world, I have been under the impression that all of this chatter about the ozone layer is theoretical.
Just about any school child can tell you all about the ozone layer, but not many can tell you the year that Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Posted by: The_Bad at August 3, 2005 10:29 AM
