Woketman,

I have a question about the external tanks......can we cover the
entire external tank with chewing gum (the good stuff you know,
Trident, or Bubble Yum). Would that keep the foam from falling off?
and if it didn't work, would the gum still be chewable?

RN

Richard - please get a clue ! You can't seriously expect Mark to answer such a question unless you give him ALL of the pertinent facts.

So - what flavor is the proposed chewing gum ?

The European Space Agency uses Fruit Stripe Gum, but remember the Ariane is so different from the shuttle, not sure if Fruit Stripe would work...

ahhh... French Ariane... Fruit Stripe... Nice

No, no, and no. The ONLY thing that could stay flexible at cryogenic temps for pre-liftoff AND not ablate away during the aero-thermal environment during ascent (or going up-hill, as the astronauts say) is........ Essence of Jensen!

The secret substance that Gordon alluded to when he asked what the original GlassCat was glued together with.

AHHHHHH! It wasn't aeropoxy!!!! Hopefully it is simply generated by a Bunny.

While we are on the subject of name dropping...

A few years ago I caught wind of the fact that Colonel (retired) Edwin E. Aldrin was due to visit us in the Advanced Programs section at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility on the very next day. Normally the twelve who have walked in the lunar regolith do not (at least the ones still alive) sign autographs. But Buzz was here kissing up for some Lockheed Martin funding for a reusable booster that he was on the board for. So I asked my boss if I could ask for an autograph and he said sure. I asked Buzz to write "to Jack & Katie, may one of you be first on Mars." But he messed it up a bit. Now I always tell the kids, "well Buzz laid down the guantlet: you gotta do it now!!!"

Which will be worse? The battle to get to Mars, or the battle over who gets to keep the autographed photo?

Mark,
What I mean about the thrust being matched is that the thrust-to-weight ratio should be the same. That means the orbiter acceleration and the ET/SRB acceleration would match even if the vehicles were seperated. That way stress on the attachments would be minimal. The weight of the ET/SRB's is considerably more than the weight of the orbiter. That would mean that as solid and liquid fuel are burned, and the ET/SRB's become lighter, that the orbiter engines would have to slowly throttle up to avoid unwanted pitching, since the SRB's thrust remains constant, or nearly so.
Of course, there is the idea of a metal shield that would cover the underside of the wing, and jettison at the same time the ET jettisons. I'm sure they have thought of that.

Where is Composite ARF located? And you say that is who does BVM's work? They don't do it in Florida?

Oh you guys just aren't gonna let up on the bear/beer thing are ya.....THIS THREAD IS CLOSED!! (just kidding )

You guys, myself included, are definitely having some fun with this one! Just keep it clean and no inappropriate pictures please, I need the laughs!!

I'll go have another bear!

Richie

Composite ARF is located in Atlantis ( the lost island , and not the resort ) They are also manufactiring a Starjet in 3 diferent color schemes. There is even one with a canard conversion. Im trying to get a hold of a rep to get one myself. Hef has also commisioned CompositeARF to manufacture a full scale Rookie and Kangaroo for him, and that will be manufactured by real life OmpaLoompas somewhere in a secret cave on the Galapacos islands.



Wojtek

Tracy, I think I can help you out. I just got an email from a guy in Nigeria who has some of their oil money, about $25m, and just needs a partner in the West to transfer it to. If you can just send me the particulars of your bank account, we can set something up...

Air Traffic Control was GS-2152, now called AT-2152. I have never figured out why they took it into the Cleveland court, to stop all contracting in the country, why not D.C. Two controllers from Burke Lakefront Tower in Cleveland brought the action, with the Unions help. Seems to me if an employer wants to contract out your job and give you a transfer and promotion and pay for your move you shouldn't ***** about it. But when their negligence delays your transfer, and then they give you a smaller pay raise because of the delay by skipping the rules, compared to other identical employees who were not delayed and had their pay set correctly, wait a minute!! I think the problem was that the Union President came from a high level facility, New York Approach Control, and they look down on the Level One controllers, so his attitude was "they're getting a good enough pay raise as it is, screw them about the rest". Now he plays dumb and says he didn't realize the agreement would cause discrimination against employees. But a Federal Agency committing a Prohibited Personnel Practice against 28 employees, and then refuses to fix it and gives false information about it to two Senator's offices? What planet do we live on?

No. As the stack consumes LO2, LH2 and solid fuel everything is getting lighter at different rates. On top of that, the SSMEs only throttle down as we pass max Q (maximum dynamic pressure, to aleviate loading primarily on the Orbiter wings and ET protuberances, NOT Tracy protuberances). True, they throttle down again late in flight, just pre-MECO, to maintain 3 Gs longitudinal acceleration on the vehicle (cause by that time we've burned so much propellant that we are getting so light that the SSMEs can push the vehicle over 3 Gs). For the rest of the time they are at 104% rated thrust (unless an engine-out abort were to occur, then under certain circumstances they are cleared to 109%).

Not only that, but your description ignores a plethora of other forces acting on the entire stack such as aero loads, vibro-acoustics (they are tremendous), local shock impingement, etc., etc., etc.

Metal shield? Forget it! Weight alone would make it a non-starter. And then there are the other 50 reasons I can think of why it won't work. remember: at this point we have no choice but to live within the system's limitations that were designed into the vehicle system in the '70s.

Believe me, nothing about the National Space Transportation System is anywhere near simple in any way! Just part of the price to accelerate little pink & brown bodies safely to 17,500 mph.

And yes it was NATCA, MIke McNally says he will testify that he screwed up to get it fixed, but the current Union President, John Carr, is making $180,000 a year in D.C. and refuses to do his job and fix it. You would think he would always be checking his 6.

Excellent one, ET!!!

AWWWW...REALLY LOUD NOISES!!!

"For the rest of the time they are at 104% rated thrust (unless an engine-out abort were to occur, then under certain circumstances they are cleared to 109%)."

So why don't they just make 100% thrust more and call it 100%?

It's kind of like "these amps go to eleven", no?

Bunny glue?

Ok,
What ARE they doing to fix the problem?

ET: I think its because the SSME was originally designed to a certain thrust leavel (what is now 100%) and they were later able to build more capability and robustness into the system (likely the high pressure turbo-pumps) that allows continous ops at a higher thrust level, reliably. Pre-Challenger, IIRC, they aere using 109% rated thrust during ascent on a nominal ascent. That all changed due to Challenger.

TJ: it depends which "problem" you speak of. The pre-Columbia problem of lots of foam debris has, for the most part, been cured. Eileen Collins (commander STS-114) was just at MAF on Thursday for a general assembly. She noted that post entry and landing, when she did a walk-around of Discovery, that it was by far the cleanest Orbiter she had EVER seen, post landing. We flew the cleanest ET ever. VERY few dings on the Orbiter. The big issue, of course, was the single large chunk of PAL Ramp that broke off on ascent. In well over 100 STS flights, only one other PAL Ramp event has ever been noted (though there were several flights with no post-ET separation photos, so on those no one will ever know for certain). The Program just decided yesterday to proceed to the next flight by removing the PAL Ramp altogether. I was lead structures guy on PAL Ramp removal for months now when we were supposed to have 1.5 years to do this. Not we have to ship the next flight's ET in March. No Christmas AGAIN this year due to this.

Oh well, maybe buy a turbine with the overtime $$$...... Get me a completed, redesigned, AND tested GlassCat and maybe I'll buy that!

Here's a new subject, and after this I'm sure you will say I was drinking or smoking wacky weed.

Since I have had premonitions in my life that always seem to come true, and all of the bizarre coincidences concerning the lady now in Lehigh Acres, Florida that I taught to fly 20 years ago when we were in Decatur, Illinois (was pressured to become Catholic to marry her, and I didn't), and hoping to get my job back soon, I was in the back yard about August 12th, and looking up at the sky. I noticed a very bright star almost directly overhead, about as bright as Vega, and thinking of certain Bible prophecies (like that Sara would have a child at 80 some years old, and Abraham laughed at God, then it came true), I thought, "God likes to make predictions about something that humans say is impossible to happen, then it happens (like her and I being back together again, which everyone says isn't going to happen). About 20 seconds later the star FADED out and DISAPPEARED!! There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the Milky Way was clearly visible nearby. I went out again for three or four nights in a row, and it was still gone. I later looked at a star chart and it doesn't show it!
Speaking of Decatur, in about 1995 I was in the control tower at Felts Field, Spokane, Wa. and there was not much traffic and I was bored, so I daydreamed a bit and thought, "I wonder where my future wife is right now". Not even thinking about Sharon, thinking I haven't met my future wife yet, and about two minutes later I glanced over at the wind instruments, and noticed on the face of one, "Wind Speed Indicator". I couldn't believe it. The word "Indicator". At that time she was still in Decatur. Not spelled the same, but pronounced "InDecatur". I had been a pilot for over 20 years and lived in Decatur for 3.5 years and it never dawned on me that Decatur was in that word. If I would have known it when I was teaching her to fly I would have said, "what's this?" (pointing to the airspeed indicator) and she would have responded "the airspeed indicator", and I would have said, "get it, In Decatur!", but it never dawned on me until two minutes after I wondered where my future wife is right now.
Then on about this last Sept. 9th, I was in the back yard again, using the telescope and talking to my mother about how the tilt of the earth causes seasons, and I noticed under the North Star, about 10 degrees above the treeline, a bright reddish light, as bright as a landing light, but totally stationary. It couldn't have been Mars, which was dimmer in the eastern sky. I said to my mom, "what the hell is that?". She turned and saw it too, then if slowly faded out and disappeared. I had binoculars in my hand, so I brought them up, and all I could see was a normal star field. But I had my eye on one star that was in the exact position the bright light had been, but the same brightness as the surrounding stars. About 30 seconds later it started moving RAPIDLY down toward the horizon and disappeared behind the trees. So it went from what appeared to be only a few miles away, to a few thousand miles away in a matter of 5 or 6 seconds. Nothing from this earth that I know of could do that. I think the Bible says that right before the second coming of Christ we will see amazing things in the skies. Any astronomy buffs have any explanations?

Its going to take you more than 2 months to make a PAL Ramp..... I could machine the whole RAMP
from a solid block of Titanium is less time than that...

Eddie Weeks


btw... what is a PAL Ramp. ?

Several threads here on RCU of Comp-ARF, building the KingCat and new compost Bobcat. Located in Thiland if memory serves right. There are 6 reps in the USA contact one of them.

For the best quality control go with Sparks in China, so have I read.

One of these days I want to build a 6 or 7 foot high Shuttle, and rocket launch and R/C back in to land. They have rocket engines that put out up to 100 lbs. of thrust now. Does anyone know if that has ever been done?