NASA's Michael Griffin Interviewed

richvan writes "NASA administrator Michael Griffin was recently interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel about his first nine months on the job. He covers topics such as foam, Challenger, Mars, the budget, the astronaut corps and intelligent design. Describing the reasons for the foam loss, he states 'Cycling of the tanks with cryogenic propellants - in fact, [super-cold] liquid hydrogen, because we don't see this problem with liquid oxygen - causes or exacerbates voids in the bond between the foam insulation and the tank and produces cracks in the foam. If and when those cracks propagate to the surface, with a crack connecting a void to the surface, then you have a mechanism for cryopumping. When the tank is cold, air is ingested. It liquefies and goes into the voids. Then as the tank empties and the [air] warms up and evaporates, the resulting pressure blows the foam off.'"

Old freon based foam was best.

[HornWumpus]

IIRC there were no foam related failures untill they removed freon from the process.

I propose giving the EPA the finger and using the really old un-PC foam process until a suitable replacement has been built and tested.

Re:New Foam Idea

[microarray]

Good one, but someone beat you to it.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/11/25/sprj.colu .shuttle.fix.ap/ [cnn.com]

Re:Now that's hostile

[CruddyBuddy]

Foam caused the Columbia to become damaged, and subsequently be destroyed on re-rentry.

A bad seal cause the Challenger to explode.

Get your disasters right! (granted we have too many to choose from...)

Look at his credentials

[chickenmonger]

http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/griffin_bio.h tml [nasa.gov]

He's not only the author of the book I'm currently using for my undergraduate Spacecraft Systems course, but he's also got way more degrees than anyone should have. From the bio:

"Griffin received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Aerospace Science from Catholic University of America; a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland; a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California; a master's degree in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Business Administration from Loyola College; and a master's degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University."

I still wouldn't say he's overqualified for the job. The NASA admin -should- be one of the country's smart people.

No shit.

[s20451]

Recently, he said [usatoday.com] that the shuttle and ISS were mistakes, and that the trick will be to re-make the space program without causing too much damage (like irritating the ISS partner nations).

Re:What the hell is this

[vertinox]

Believe it or not, some people like to talk about God, err, Intelligent Design, whatever you wanna call it.

Apparently, Griffin does not.

FTFA:

Griffin: NASA as an agency and I as its administrator should be mindful of the specific instructions we receive from the president and the Congress. That is what we do. If I obey my instructions from the Congress and follow the law, then I've done my job. When I was very young, I was told that a gentleman never engages in public discussions of politics, sex and religion. And I think I'll stay with that advice and not go beyond where I was, which is: my objective as administrator is to carry out the instructions I'm given by our elected representatives on behalf of the American people. The American people have very diverse views on politics, sex and religion and I believe I should leave them to it.

Re:Now that's hostile

[CruddyBuddy]

Okay, if you want to be really picky...

The external tank violently disassembled causing the orbiter, Challenger, to likewise be disassembled. (The big fireball confused a lot of people.)

While being too close to an IED doesn't mean you exploded, you might as well have, especially if you have been reduced to red mist.

The primary cause of the confusion seems to be that so many (even some folks here at /.) do not differentiate between Challenger, the orbiter, and Challenger, the mission. The entire stack is commonly refered to as Challenger, or just "the shuttle", not the "orbiter, ET and SRB's".

Example: "the shuttle lifted off". What exactly are you calling "the shuttle"? Is it just the orbiter, or is it the entire stack or launch system?

It sort of like pointing to the monitor, and calling it the computer. It is only one component of the system, but a most visible and identifyable component. It's the part everyone can identify. And so, almost everyone I work with points to the monitor, and says "computer". Nevermind that there is a lot more there that they don't want to be confused by.

Re:Thermal Cycling of Liquified Air

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't reuse the tanks, they burn up on reentry. They reuse the boosters which are dropped much earlier and parachute down.

Re:Lets translate some of this

[Rei]

If you didn't understand that, you need to go back to middle school. What word in there didn't you understand? Exacerbates? Propagates? Cryopumping (if you know what "cryo" means, you know what cryopumping means)?

It's not like he said something like "The K5NA on the ET is an effective TPS, but near the aft IEAs and the PIC it has a tendancy to experience explosive gassification..."

Re:Hubble mission still a possiblity!

[mbrother]

No you don't. We've already got a "replacement" scheduled to go up (although it will be better in some ways, it won't duplicate everything Hubble can do). The thing is, the replacement, the James Webb Telescope, won't go up before 2012, and Hubble is the only available optical space telescope until then. Let it die, you lose optical space-based observations until 2012 at the earliest.

There's zero chance to build and launch a duplicate Hubble on the timescale of a repair mission plus a few years.

Re:Hubble mission still a possiblity!

[alanh]

And even then, the James Webb is optimized for IR observations and doesn't completely overlap the observable spectrum available on the Hubble, which include UV. The two compliment each other.

From the James Web Space Telescope site [nasa.gov] What kind of detectors will JWST have?
JWST will have two types of detectors: visible and near-infrared arrays with 2,048 x 2,048 pixels, and mid-infrared arrays with about 1,024 x 1,024 pixels

From The Advanced Camera for Surveys site [jhu.edu]: It consists of three electronic cameras and a complement of filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared (1200 - 10,000 angstroms).

Re:Fix foam again? Start anew?

[DerekLyons]

In other words, contrary to popular belief, the difference in reliability between Shuttle and 'more traditional rockets' is insignificant."

The difference is, when a shuttle launch is 'unreliable', you lose an irreplaceable multi-billion dollar spacecraft and kill the crew...

Only in some fantasy world where every 'unreliable' launch ends in complete vehicle failure. Here in the real world, we've already had two launch failures - one destroyed the vehicle, and the other resulted in an Abort-to-Orbit. (The resulting orbit was too low for the payload, so they landed and flew it again later.) Yes, there are scenarios that lead to a complete LOCV or LOV - but there are also many more that lead to a crew and craft standing on Terra Firma making brave statements at the press conference after.

when, say, a Soyuz launch is 'unreliable', you lose a launcher that you were going to throw away anyway, and the crew get an exciting ride.

In a universe where the Soyuz was (unlike everything else) perfect, and everything else imperfect - that would be true. Here in the real world where the Soyuz emergency escape system performed marginally the one time it was used, and where Soyuz seems to have an ongoing problem with automatic sequences... I'd suspect it's not true.

Soyuz has had two launch accidents - in the first (a fire on the pad) the was not engaged, which meant the crew had to beg the ground to activate it - which they finally did with less than a second between activation and the launch vehicle exploding. In the second, the first stage failed to seperate - and again, the automatic system failed, requiring manual intervention, and again - almost too late.

Heck, if I remember correctly one Soyuz even survived entering the atmosphere backwards: try that with a shuttle and see how far you get.

You don't remember correctly.

Let's see - Soyuz re-entry accidents; six that I can think of offhand, two of which were fatal - and the remaining four only missed being so by sheer luck. (Out of 87 flights, and not mentioning at least five landing accidents.) Shuttle - one reentry accident, fatal. (Out of 114 flights, with only one landing accident.)

Which vehicle has the worse record? The bald fact is that Soyuz, in 87 flights, has racked up a worse record in every single category you can name when you compare it to the Shuttle's record in 114 flights.