Nasa’s moon mission is in trouble: Can’t recreate material from Apollo
April 8th, 2008
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Nasa’s new vision for space flight is in trouble. No surprise there. Apparently it’s chalked up to a lack of funding, lack of direction and the fact that they don’t really have the equipment necessary to do some of the necessary tasks, such as test and debug a massive solid rocket booster engine firing on it’s own in a manner it was not originally designed for. One thing in a recent report sticks out though:
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the Constellation program, scheduled to begin by 2015, is troubled by engineering, funding and mechanical issues.
Story continues below ↓advertisementFor instance, the program was meant to use heat shielding from the 1960s Apollo program, but experts apparently could not replicate the material.
While I am sure that there is more to the story than that, the fact that they cannot recreate the material which was made for the original heat shield begs a few questions: I can only assume they have pretty decent documents of the manufacture, but have they considered asking someone who was there? This was the 1960’s and hence a very large portion of those involved are still alive. It would surprise me if there are not tons of movies, photographs, diagrams and so on of the process. Also, don’t we still have some of the heat shields? All the Apollo command modules are still around, but of course the heat shields would be well scorched. Then there were a few that were never flown, such as the Skylab rescue vehicle. Reverse engineering?
Nasa also had more than a few extra parts made for the Apollo missions. I wonder if they have a few heat shields left. New old stock anyone? (kidding. it wouldn’t actually be quite big enough).
But it’s definitely frustrating to any American taxpayer.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Bad Science, History, Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 8th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Ablative heat shields are not a significant design challenge. This must be some kind of media-mangled version – I wonder what the real story is.
I just wish NASA would listen to reason and adopt the Direct system http://www.directlauncher.com/ with its high proportion of Shuttle-derived hardware.
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April 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Nasa is not the same agency which sent men to the moon in 1969. At the time they were new enough not to be wallowing in years of protocol and regulations and red tape and they had to do it: They had a clear mandate and national pride and international politics was at stake. They had a clear and direct goal from a fallen leader which was just something they could not fail at. It’s not anything like it is now. Nobody is holding Nasa’s feet to the fire and demanding it be done. It’s full of political appointees. It’s a mess.
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April 8th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
The one thing I can think of is that the old ablative heat shields were, if I recall correctly, made of asbestos resin amongst other things. Asbestos would be well suited to the task. It’s very durable, relatively light weight and if you had asbestos in the material it would give a good margin of safety.
It’s possible that’s just not allowed now. I doubt a few fibers of the stuff being burned in the upper atmosphere would do much and it’s certainly safe to manufacture with the right precautions. It is after all a natural mineral so it’s not like it’s not out there.
Regulations may forbid that though which would be a hurdle if a suitable substitute was not found.
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April 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
There was a time when I dreamed of working for NASA, but then I turned 12.
I think there’s more to this story, though it might also likely have to do with either new environmental regulations or tried-and-true bureaucratic foot-dragging. Why are they trying to go back to the moon anyhow? Shouldn’t designing a new system to replace the shuttle be their one and only priority right now? Ugh.
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April 8th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
The situation is considerably worse than it is made out to be with the heat shield.
Basically the heat shield for orion is too large for any companies to make in one piece they just don’t have the capability to build one thing that size and especially ensure that there are no major flaws. Therefore it is to be made of several pieces which will be attached and have overlaps and stuff to be sure it’s a good fit.
That means the whole thing needs to be recerfied differently or something because they don’t have the protocol for man-certification on a multi-part heat shield. This is complicated by the fact that they don’t have the ability to fully test the shield as one unit, which is apparently part of the official design criteria or something.
I don’t actually know if it involves any kind of enviornmental regulation but they’re testing new materials and the fact that they have had to design the heat shield using a modified process or assemble it differently has thrown a big wrench into the whole procurement/certification/funding/bidding/regulatory process.
Apparently there were some outside consultants who took a look at the project for the GAO as well and they came to the conclusion that there are several critical safety problems with the whole orion plan, and it’s not simply the heat shield.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-nasa0408apr04,0,1109598.story
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=27549
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April 8th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
This is a example of technology loss. Basically if you don’t keep using a technology it can be lost forever. It’s not just a case of knowing what a material is – reverse engineering a process is not a trivial task. Nature has presented us with any number of material we would love to be able to produce at will, and we know exactly what they are made of, but as yet we don’t have a method of making them.
Skills too can be lost the same way. Despite the fact that there are written records, they often do not include the craft-techniques that are passed down from old employees to new ones, and again redeveloping these is a slow and expensive task.
Finally upstream requirements, like tooling, and intermediate materials, not part of the finished product, but necessary for its manufacture can become unobtainable when the market for them disappears. Try and get certain gears made that were popular fifty years ago and you will find that it’s next to impossible because the machines to cut them no longer exist.
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April 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
DV82XL said:
Understood, but is a heat shield really the most difficult part to manufacture and lets remember that there was nobody making these in the 1950’s at all but somehow by the mid 1960’s the capability was created from basically scratch. Why is it that it cannot be done again?
I’m surprised this is as big an issue as it is because I thought an ablative heat shield would be one of the less challenging parts of the design when compared to new thrusters and docking systems and pressure and life support and all that goes along with it.
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April 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Kevin Brennan said:
*sigh* My whole life I have heard about the next shuttle and how it would be everything the Shuttle was supposed to be but wasn’t. So many exciting artists impressions were made too. I think the big one that stayed was the X-30 – the one that was the result of Copper Canyon and they promised for as long as I can rember would be able to fly to space on short notice and with rapid turn around.
Then that kinda died and things seemed a little unsure for a while until they came up with “Venturestar” which was supposed to be the next thing that would do what the shuttle was supposed to. Then it turned out to be a massive failure and extremely expensive. They say that the reusable thing is a tough nut to crack so I guess they gave up. (If they can’t do it I just wish they hadn’t been so optimistic beforehand and so happy to spend money trying.)
One thing I remember a long time ago when I was a kid was some Nasa guy was asked the question if the Space Shuttle would ever be like an airliner in the ability to get to space and he said something like it won’t ever be as easy to get to space as to fly but we do believe in the next few years we’ll have something that will be a lot closer to an airliner. I think he then referenced the SR-71 and the Concord as a reasonable analog to space flight – it will be like a expensive aircraft to fly, but not millions or billions per trip.
I’m so damn angry at NASA for giving up on that the whole Apollo 2.0 thing they’re doing I don’t even care about. It makes me sick.
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April 8th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I think NASA’s current plans are basically stating that LEO is not what they are concerned about and that they want a system to go to the moon and further, but I do agree that I would rather be able to get to space cheaply and easily than to deep space with the old throw-away system.
I think it might be unrealistic to get to space cheaply and easily. I’d take cheaper and easier though. I don’t see the plan they have right now as getting us much. It’s not innovative or new at all.
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April 8th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
The Shuttle has been a failure for a simple reason: it was not intended to be just an easy and routine way of getting people into orbit. If that was what its job was alone it could have been done. It could not have been done all that easily but it could be done and it can be done with the HOTEL concept or a two-stage spaceplane with a high air launch vehicle. It can be done.
Nasa and the DOD decided that was not what they wanted. They wanted it to do that AND to be a general-purpose heavy life launch platform. You can’t do both with one vehicle because they are completely different. If it was to take people to a space station or to just support human space flight then it would be a lot easier. As is, they send a dump truck to space just to carry a few astronauts to the space station. It’s a horrible idea.
Nasa abandoned the whole idea of making it easy to get to orbit with the vision for exploration because they decided that is not their job. They decided they’re a pure exploration agency and they don’t really care about space travel or space tourism or commercial satellite servicing or any of that. It’s not their department apparently.
It’s too bad but I hope the private sector will be able to do it because I hope I’ll live to see the day I might go to space and I’m not planning on being an astronaut. The private sector tends to be better at that kind of thing but it is a huge capital investment. I see NASA as an agency which just sucks up money, but we have a lot of those. At least it returns some decent science from time to time.
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April 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Do they really need a heat shield with an Orion drive? Just pack in enough extra delta-V to kill the orbital speed with the
engines, instead of drag from ramming the ship through atmosphere at Mach 25.
Use chemical fuelled engines to get between ground and about 100 km of altitude (where EMP should not be a problem)
without doing the speed change. Do the speed changes with the Orion.
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April 9th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Also bear in mind that almost all of the Apollo equipment was short production run, custom-tooled, and often had significant change orders done in the middle of production. Remember Apollo 13? It blew up because somebody put rev. B relays (rated at 12 volts) into a rev. C relay board that supplied 60 volts. The relays sparked, ignited the LOX tanks, and kaboom.
Probably the only people who really knew how to build an Apollo retired 15 years ago. Hell, NASA lost the Apollo blueprints for about 15 years. I heard they dug them up recently, but for quite a while, nobody knew where they were.
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April 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Yes that’s true. It’s actually amazing that it was done without any loss of life – except for Apollo-1 which was not even a space mission but a dry run accident. Apollo-13 had the misfortune of running into one of the design flaws but it wasn’t fatal. If they had kept up the project long enough there probably would have been worse mishaps.
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April 9th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Burya Rubenstein said:
You are thinking of a different Orion. This is not the nuclear pulsed thing. It’s NASA’s name for the CEV program which is the capsule on the shuttle-derived thing.
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April 10th, 2008 at 2:14 am
You have to remember that NASA went through a purge called “Faster Cheaper Better” in which they laid off experienced people and promoted junior personnel into the jobs. Like most government programs to save money, it turned out to be very expensive: the lander that slammed into Mars was the result of not having the people who would have checked the numbers. Most likely, this technology loss is the result of the knowledgeable people being gone, gone, gone.
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April 10th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Wired said:
Does anyone know where they went? Did NASA have them all killed?
Okay it’s been 40 years since 1968 when apollo was in full swing. So if they were in their 40’s then they’d be in their 80’s which would mean many would no longer be alive, but a decent amount should still be. If they were in their 30’s then they’d be in their 70’s so still many or most are alive. If they were in their 20’s then they’d be in their 60’s, which means the majority should still be alive.
Gene Kranz is in his early 70’s and I saw him on TV recently. He looked healthy enough. There are plenty of people in that age group still working.
I propose we start a program to track down everyone who did it the first time and get the job done while they’re still alive. It will be difficult but it’ll have to be a national priority to find them all and bring them out of retirement. A big project like… Moonshot!
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