I have always wondered what hand guided the o-ring installation on the SRB such that the leak of the joint in cold weather did not point away from the external tank and tank support arm. installing that particular o-ring was a team effort. I hope that the person to last lay hand on that particular section of o-ring will never bear the memory of it. It is enough that the engineer who designed the joint and the manager who approved the design and the test engineer who passed on the design testing and the inspectors who approved the installation of the o-ring can say the same. often the littlest of things can make or break the greatest of things
If you haven't read it either Feynman or Pournelle wrote up the outcome of the meeting with NASA where they talked accumulated risk factors with NASA having no clue what they were talking about and Feynman demonstrated the o-ring would fail at temps below 32 deg by simply dunking it in a glass of ice water and showing them. One of the dismal outcomes was the US got out of the rocket engine business and started buying all of them from RUSSIA of all places. Congress has been trying to put a stop to that for years.
I don't know, but I could speculate that it was structural forces that caused the leak and then burn-through to happen precisely where it did. It might very well have had nothing to do with how the O-ring was positioned, and even if it did, there was almost certainly nothing to warn the techs putting it in.
True. I used to pose as a man working above rocket scientists. We had been moved to Old Town 3 and we had a very limited deck over the ULA people building the fuel tanks for rocket launches on the floor below my office. I used to think it was humorous. My x disagreed. She had zilch for sense of humor.
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apollo one, colombia, challenger, God knows how many russians. Damn.
I have always wondered what hand guided the o-ring installation on the SRB such that the leak of the joint in cold weather did not point away from the external tank and tank support arm. installing that particular o-ring was a team effort. I hope that the person to last lay hand on that particular section of o-ring will never bear the memory of it. It is enough that the engineer who designed the joint and the manager who approved the design and the test engineer who passed on the design testing and the inspectors who approved the installation of the o-ring can say the same.
often the littlest of things can make or break the greatest of things
If you haven't read it either Feynman or Pournelle wrote up the outcome of the meeting with NASA where they talked accumulated risk factors with NASA having no clue what they were talking about and Feynman demonstrated the o-ring would fail at temps below 32 deg by simply dunking it in a glass of ice water and showing them.
One of the dismal outcomes was the US got out of the rocket engine business and started buying all of them from RUSSIA of all places. Congress has been trying to put a stop to that for years.
I don't know, but I could speculate that it was structural forces that caused the leak and then burn-through to happen precisely where it did. It might very well have had nothing to do with how the O-ring was positioned, and even if it did, there was almost certainly nothing to warn the techs putting it in.
The report was crystal clear. There's no wiggle room about the loss of Challenger or Columbia. Nobody tried to hide the facts in either loss.
True. I used to pose as a man working above rocket scientists. We had been moved to Old Town 3 and we had a very limited deck over the ULA people building the fuel tanks for rocket launches on the floor below my office. I used to think it was humorous. My x disagreed. She had zilch for sense of humor.
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