Posted on 12/11/2018 1:10:39 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
He had one job to do.
Should have used Kramerica gaskets made with materials from Play Now and had the surfaces smoothed by Kruger Industrial Smoothing.
I know the site manager. He was furious the bad gasket leaked. he called for the shut down until they could confirm no other problems. Could not have come at a worse time -busiest travel day of the year.
Not as lovely as Patterson Ave in fashionable S. Philly!
A simple gasket failure killed seven astronauts.
I heartily agree with 4yearlurker.
Please eat some Bocconcini and Sopressata for me as well.
Small things mean a lot it’s the little things that count.
A simple gasket failure killed seven astronauts.
Here’s the complete breakdown.
They had had burn-thrus before, but the gasket melted and flowed into the gap, sealing the leak, as it had previously, and as it was designed to do.
Here is the sequence:
1. It was an extremely cold, wet winter at the Cape.
2. Technical problems kept Shuttle on pad longer than usual.
3. Freezing weather at launch time.
4. There was an SRB burn-thru on Ignition as had happened before
5. After a second, the gasket flowed and resealed as it had numerous times before.
6. No more problems until throttle-up after Max-Q.
7. Then just as they throttled back up to 104% power, the highest upper air wind shear ever recorded buffeted the Shuttle and rocked the entire stack.
8. SSME gimbaled over to correct with no problems.
9. But rocking the stack reopened the previous burn-thru.
First Bad Luck:
Extreme High Winds at Throttle Up
Second Bad Luck and Primary Cause:
Burn-thru was located on the minority portion of the arc opposite the ET (External Tank). If the burn-thru had occurred on the ~ 300 degree arc not opposite the ET, the shuttle would have achieved orbit with no problem. The slight loss of thrust from the SRB burn-thru would not have been a problem.
It was only sheer bad luck that the burn-thru occurred where it did, no other reason.
And don’t even start about how the SRB’s were segmented to start with. NASA wanted to build the SRB’s at the Cape, but politics dictated that the Shuttle project largess be spread around to other states, including Utah where the SRB’s were built.
Unfortunately, due to a non-segmented SRB being too large to be transported, due to tunnels and overpasses, they were segmented.
Otherwise, no segments, no burn-thru, no explosion.
Or, I dunno, they could have listened to the engineers who refused to sign off on the launch.
Morton Thiokol could not find a single engineer to approve the launch.
A nontechnically skilled manager did.
Or, I dunno, they could have listened to the engineers who refused to sign off on the launch.
Morton Thiokol could not find a single engineer to approve the launch.
A nontechnically skilled manager did.
Probably wouldn’t have made any difference.
Remember I said that there had been previous burnt-thrus, at least 5 that I remember. including summertime launches.
And also remember that the burn-thru sealed, just as in the past. Hot or cold really had nothing to do with it.
Despite what Feynman did with the ice water and a piece of the gasket, the joints immediately heat up after SRB ignition. That’s why the gasket material flows and seals.
I see. If there was no launch that day the high altitude winds would have still opened the joint and killed all seven astronauts.
Logical fallacy.
The cold weather at the time of launch had nothing to do with the high winds at MaxQ. The temps at the height of MaxQ (35,000-40,000 feet) are pretty much a constant -60° year round.
The burn-thru’s happened in both hot and cold weather. They had launched in cold weather before, only a few degrees warmer than this one.
If they had launched an hour earlier or an hour later, would it have made any difference? Maybe, maybe not.
If they had launched the day before or the day after, would it have made any difference? Maybe, maybe not.
It’s like saying that if you’d left home 5 minutes earlier or later you wouldn’t have been in that intersecetion when the guy ran the light and T-boned you.
Does that make the accident your fault?
They could have launched in the summertime, had the same burn-thru, the same high winds, and gotten the same result.
And if the burn-thru had happened on the other 5/6 of the SRB arc, nothing else would have mattered, not the launch day, not the temperature, not the winds, nothing.
Gus has the best pizza...
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