Re: Kudos to Musgrave

From: Christopher M. Jones (christopher.m.jones_at_gmail.com)
Date: 12/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 00:27:50 -0600

Henry Spencer wrote:
> Correct. Everyone assumed the RCC was durable enough to take an impact;
> the concern was with the tiles on the underside.

Yup. I believe the key problem was that the Shuttle
engineers assumed that the RCC responded somewhat similarly
to the tiles to impact. And they did not perform adequate
tests on just the RCC alone to determine what the response
actually was. Unfortunately, the RCC is a much different
beast than the tiles and it responded much differently.
The engineers knew full well that the tiles were damaged
to some degree (though the tile system responds pretty well
to that) and were leery about excess heating during reentry
(and resultant materials damage and softening). Though
they knew that it was unlikely to be too terribly severe,
which it wasn't. What they did not anticipate, and did not
know, was that an RCC support could be damaged in such a
way that it could fail catastrophically under the stress of
reentry. When this happened on Columbia it opened up the
leading edge of the wing and brought about a cascade of
failure in the wing that would eventually result in complete
failure of the wing, the thermal protective systems on that
side of the vehicle, and eventually loss of vehicle and crew.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Kudos to Musgrave
    ... >> the concern was with the tiles on the underside. ... > engineers assumed that the RCC responded somewhat similarly ... program wrt impact damage, and had been found to be quite tough. ... There'a a raft of report on NTRS (The NASA Technical Reports Server) ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • Re: Wings on Shuttle orbiter
    ... The wing, as well as the entire airframe, held together under ... I'm not aware of any cases of the RCS being damaged, ... The CAIB had this to say about the damage resistance of the RCC: ...
    (sci.space.history)
  • Re: Obvious solution to the "foam problem"
    ... it was foam impacting the much less dense RCC on ... I thought that RCC was denser than the tiles. ... little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor ...
    (sci.space.shuttle)
  • Re: Temperaturen bei Eintritt in die Atmosphäre
    ... >> weissen duennen Tiles und dann noch die Gewebeblankets - und ja, ... >wobei diese RCC Panels selber nicht ausreichend isolieren, ...
    (de.sci.raumfahrt)
  • Re: Kudos to Musgrave
    ... MasterShrink wrote: ... >thought the RCC wasn't the worry, but the tiles under the wing. ... the concern was with the tiles on the underside. ...
    (sci.space.history)