Re: Why the hell can't they use chicken wire to hold down the foam??

Chuck wrote:
>
> Why can't they use chicken wire to hold down the foam of the external
> fuel tank to prevent it from flying off during shuttle launches??

Weight. Also, where will you get a 20-year supply of Mil-Spec
gold-plated Instron-qualified chicken wire fabricated across 15
states? Hell, each of the hundred miniature cameras infesting the
Space Scuttle surface cost some $100K each. NASA boasts of it! How
much does a (use once and toss) webcam cost? How many pictures are
taken each time a 747 takes off?

The simple, cheap, effective solution is to add some inch or so
wettable carbon fiber to the last layer of blow. Or surface-primed
e-glass or poly(benimidazole) or kevlar (kinda iffy there -
compression buckle failure and anisotropic moisture uptake giggles).
Even if the top layer cracks it can't come loose in the few minutes it
has to hold tight. Black carbon fiber is easy to see against foamed
resin so political patronage drones can do distribution and pentration
depth statistics after taking pictures for permanent archive storage,
in duplicate, next to the irreplaceable national treasure of
ass-tronaught feces.

NASA - that by its own admission spent $1.4 BILLION making the Space
Scuttle "safer" - had an open solicitation for suggestions. Uncle Al
laid it out, NASA told him to bugger off. How much of that $1.4
BILLION do you think went into the Space Scuttle's infrastructure,
bottom line? $29.95? Who anywhere in industry cannot blow a cylinder
of thermal insulating foam that will survive a long axis-parallel
stiff breeze? Does your fiber-glas bathroom vanity shed lumps over,
say, 20 years of hard daily use?

BTW, NASA installed HEATERS into the thermal insulation to prevent
surface ice accumulation. With liquid hydrogen on the other side,
what is wrong with this picture?

The average cost of each Space Scuttle mission is $759 million in year
2000 dollars. The entire Apollo program Saturn rocket I, IB, V cost
was about $46 billion in 2005 dollars. Each piece of *** *reusable*
Space Scuttle costs more/(payload gram) to launch than a use-and-toss
humongous payload Saturn V. But it's OK - NASA makes up the
difference in projected savings.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
.

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