Low Quality Alloy Cause of Shuttle Main Tank Issue 118
BJ_Covert_Action writes "NASA engineers have finally discovered the root cause of the cracks that have been found on space shuttle Discovery's main external tank. The main tank, one of the 'Super Lightweight Tank' models developed by Lockheed-Martin, employs an aluminum-lithium alloy developed by Lockheed-Martin specifically for this application. The new alloy is used in various structural stringers throughout the SLWT design. Unfortunately, the batch of this alloy used in the tank that is currently mated with the Discovery shuttle appears to be of low quality. The alloy used in the stringers has a 'mottled' appearance, compared to the nominal appearance typically used in the main tank stringers (see picture in article). This appearance is indicative of a fracture threshold that is significantly lower than typical. NASA has determined, through testing, that this low grade alloy has only 65% of the fracture strength of the nominal alloy typically used. NASA engineers have devised a potential fix to the problem that they are currently testing to ensure the repair will cause no unintended consequences. NASA plans to have the Discovery shuttle ready to launch again by February 24th, 2011."
Typical U.S. quality (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Typical U.S. quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Performance clauses (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the Government's stupidity for not putting a performance clause into the contract
And you know that because...?
I work as a QA engineer for a large defense contractor. One thing I can tell you is that we issue a lot of documents requiring our plants and our suppliers to follow a metric shitload of MIL, ISO, EN and whatnot standards, for the very purpose of meeting stringent quality requirements set forth in the contracts. It takes months, sometimes years for our products just to pass qualification and type-approval tests, and our products don't even go in space.
In short, you're talking out of your ass.
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You're blaming "corporate whores" as if you know for certain this is some sort of intentional error arranged around benefiting a company or people within that company. How do you know it's not simple human error? True, I'm sure these parts go through strict quality control during and after manufacturing, but what if some poor slob just screwed up? Put a decimal point in the wrong place? Miscalibrated the test gear before testing the sample? There are a billion different ways this could have gone wrong
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Obviously publiclurker is one of those many slashdotters who has never made a mistake, and so has no understanding of the concept. This talent is the reason why many on slashdot don't read TFA - they don't need to, as with their omnipotence they know what the article is about without reading it. :)
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So, who's talking out of their ass again?
You are. Try to keep up.
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To be fair, that's the Government's fault for not putting a quality clause on posting to the Internet.
Then there wouldn't be anything on here to read!
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I am an engineer in the supply side for the nuclear power industry, we have to retrain your kind extensively - our paperwork is measured in avoirdupois kiloshitloads. Good paperwork is no substitute for good quality. The process has to be designed so that it will will consistently deliver the intended product, not merely meet specifications. I would bet that the CMTRs (Certified Material Test Reports) for the batch of stringers that have failures show the material met specs. Meeting specs is what QA is
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Re:Typical U.S. quality (Score:5, Insightful)
False.
Quality has been a part of every government requirement I have ever seen.
Price is another factor as well.
But hey, lets not let facts stand in the way of urban myths and hyperbole.
NASA quality has had a very demanding view on quality. No, it's not perfect. Unfortunately, when it's not perfect and something fails, it's a big deal. When that happens, no one seem to remember all the success.
The singles biggest point of quality failure is no bid contracts.
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A critical material order should be held on delivery pending a independent positive material identification. Though a
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That line is much, much older than COD4.
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Try and remember that a significant percentage of slashdot denizens weren't even *born* when the shuttle started flying. Now.... get off my lawn.
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"Get away from that, you don't know the components!"
"'American' components!? 'Russian' components!? All made in Taiwan!"
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"Get away from that, you don't know the components!"
"'American' components!? 'Russian' components!? All made in Taiwan!"
Unfortunately Taiwan outsourced much of their manufacturing to mainland China.
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Armageddon [imdb.com]
Typing this to get past the lameness filter.
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No, as a metal worker I can say that the mild steel, stainless, mag and aluminum that our shop gets from China is FULL of impurity. I can tell if the steel is from America vs. China / Mexico by the amount of crap that sticks to my tungsten. If after a rod of GOOD filler rod and no dips you need to re-grind your tungsten, it isn't a pure aloy. The issue gets worse and worse the more the more specialized the alloy. Having worked in airspace, if you don't dip your tung in the Al alloy you should NEVER have
You know how they will fix it.... (Score:2, Funny)
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I guess I'm an optimist... (Score:3)
It seems like the contract must have been poorly written(and/or a blatant giveaway to our precious, precious defense contractors and their poor starving shareholders) if the solution they are ending up with is "have in-house engineers get their Macguyver on and make the gigantic tank-o'-rocket fuel on a manned vessel work somehow."
Re:I guess I'm an optimist... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, the fuel tank production facility has already closed. There aren't any spare parts. It could well be that the last production cycle was done on the cheap for just that reason - there's nobody to complain to, there can't be any penalties placed on those responsible, they get their last paycheck, and if they walk away with the difference in costs, well who'se going to even notice?
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Sure there is. Either LM finds a way to give NASA a new tank or they pay someone else to do it. It might cost every dime their company is worth, but that is the risk you take.
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No, the ramp-up time would be well over the retirement date. Not just of the shuttle, but the IIS as well.
That's why NASA opted for hand-crafted fixes. It was that or cancel the launch. Those were the options.
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sounds like, to me, Lockheed Martin needs to build another one in the same hand-crafted, manual way that they build prototype units, which is to say with lots and lots of labor and at considerable expense.
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Paid for by who? Lockheed-Martin? You assume they could afford to pay for a tank out of their own pocket, especially a tank built (as you put it) in the most expensive way possible. The result would very likely be the financial doom of the company, causing hundreds if not thousands of people to lose their jobs. But, hey! You'd feel righteous, wouldn't you? Because your life wouldn't be affected by such boneheaded actions. Just somebody else. Unless, of course, you work somewhere that provides goods o
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So the feds should effectively bail out Lockheed-Martin, by writing off the loss and freeing them from a contractual obligation? (Assuming such obligation exists -- it's entirely possible there's some loophole here.)
Re:I guess I'm an optimist... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I guess I'm an optimist... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The last launch was a "bonus run" and might never happen. NASA is responsible for certifying the product is launch-ready, not LM's employees. If the launch is scrubbed due to cheap tank defects, it's no skin off the teeth of any of LM's employees - the next-gen heavy lifter won't exist before they're permanently retired or dead, and won't use a liquid fuel tank.
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and if they walk away with the difference in costs, well who'se going to even notice?
I imagine that if the tank failed, blew up another shuttle, and killed another seven astronauts, an awful lot of people will notice. And Congress will call an inquiry. And constituents will demand that heads roll. And anyone and everyone associated with the tank -- working, retired, resigned, fired, or whatever -- can and will be roasted alive in the court of public opinion, fined into oblivion, professionally ruined for life, and perhaps even jailed. Never underestimate the power of the public's desire
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The enquiry will take years, if not decades, assuming it ever happened at all. (We have a deadlocked government in the US - if the Democrats called for an enquiry, they Republicans would block it out of spite. Same the other way round.)
By the time any conclusion was reached, most of the former employees will be dead or overseas in a tax haven, possibly making a fortune off insider memoirs.
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this is very much a chicken and egg scenario in a lot of ways.
you have: lowest bidder, no bid contracts, government specs being too stringent, and gov't specs being not stringent enough.
all of these occur sometimes, whether it's one independently or multiple.
So no, don't just blame the contractor, and don't just blame the gov't. Everyone has a part in the issues here.
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More than likely the contract just called for the standard alloy number, AlLi-2090 I'd guess. The alloy mixture is probably correct but the heat treatment was likely not performed correctly. Add to that the contract probably didn't call for testing the materials.
End result is certainly that the govt will pay for the rework. I've worked with Lockheed Martin before. They do contracting very well and always get paid since they have high level politicians in their pocket. We had one experience where they de
Re:I guess I'm an optimist... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like Spirit and Opportunity, right?
Or did you mean Deep Impact (not the movie)?
Voyager 1 and 2? Cassini?
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Better yet, have Congress tell NASA what they want, then have NASA do all the contracts, irregardless of the senators & reps' home states.
However, good luck with congress not fucking that up.
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Either way, its a huge amount of bureaucracy, which can likely be better served by companies in it for profit, wanting to develop space flight for long-term use.
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Ah, but then what motivation would there be for Congress to tell NASA what they want in the first place? Congresscritters control the purse strings of the national budget, which means they control what gets spent and where. Naturally, they want as much of it as possible to be spent in their state to maximize the state's economy, thus maximizing its prosperity, thus ensuring their re-election. Remove the money from the process and Congress will cease to give two damns about NASA, which will promptly die.
L
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because there isn't a way to fix it. If they where going to fly for years, then yeah. But hwo are they going to build a new one in time for the next flight? They can't, no one can. It's not possible.
What shuld happen is the contractor picks up the cost to fix, as well as liability from failure.
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You can't just lay this all on L-M. For all we know, NASA gave L-M a spec that they fulfilled. It's up to the original engineers to know the nominal strength and then design in the usual safety margin. The fact that they were able to pull up records right now showing a lower quality material was used tells me that *someone* looked at it and signed off that it met whatever requirements were applicable at the time. It's not like NASA doesn't have a Quality Assurance program.
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Somehow I doubt Lockheed-Martin received a contract for a main fuel tank that cracks and leaks when filled with fuel. And really, if they thought, "Hey it's good enough even with the cracks" then they really are bad people.
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Heard this before? (Score:2)
That is surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
The bad alloy is distinct enough from the good one to tell at a glance from a low res photo.
And it even seems that they had records of the unusual appearance. So the materials came in, somebody noticed and documented that this batch looked funny, but nobody thought to investigate if they might have got something other than what was specified?
Interesting that altitude affects it (Score:1, Funny)
It's interesting that a quality alloy simply put at a lower altitude would cause an issue. You'd think it was something more obvious, like a missing hyphen.
Master of the understatement (Score:2)
they are currently testing to ensure the repair will cause no unintended consequences
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35% is very high, and it increase the risk enough. Even with perfect materials, there is always a risk.
Clearly you have no clue on engineering shit the goes into and returns from space.
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I can't help but think... (Score:3)
These aerospace materials are extensively tested, analyzed and inspected. Paperwork with melt number, lot number and names of everyone that ever touched the material are kept.
Decide for yourself...
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These aerospace materials are extensively tested, analyzed and inspected. Paperwork with melt number, lot number and names of everyone that ever touched the material are kept.
Why would that be expected to work? Good intentions? In testing where you have a very low "positive" rate (that is, presence of rejectable flaws in your parts), especially with humans making most of the inspections, then you tend to get a high false negative rate. So it's not surprising to me that a flaw made it this far. IMHO it's likely that this flaw has made it onto Shuttle launches before, it's just the first time it got caught at this point.
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That this is more of a "make-work" project than anything else. Last shuttle flight is coming up, then everyone goes home. What better way to give them all a 3 month bonus than to find some previously-undiscovered issue.
These aerospace materials are extensively tested, analyzed and inspected. Paperwork with melt number, lot number and names of everyone that ever touched the material are kept.
Decide for yourself...
And the wife of the fellow who is scheduled to fly the final mission just got shot in the head very publicly by an American terrorist. Personally, I'm OK with NASA stretching out their schedule 3 months, if that's all this is, in order to allow the captain to fly as planned.
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Not every nutcase is a terrorist. That word is far over used. He is a criminal, a murderer and a nutcase, so are most terrorists but the inverse is not always true.
Re:I can't help but think... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are dozens of ways low-quality material could have made it through the QA process at Lockheed that don't require some sort of communist-conspiracy, "OMG we need jobs," to explain. For instance, it could be that, since production on this particular tank model has stopped, the remaining work force was simply trying to make due with what they had, materials wise, and produce their product (the tank) as quickly as possible without giving a particular two-shits to the wind as to how sound it was since, you know, their program was getting canceled anyways. Or, yeah, it could be a jobs program. Sure.
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Revise to say
These aerospace materials should be extensively tested, analyzed and inspected. Paperwork with melt number, lot number and names of everyone that ever touched the material are kept.
I think there's more to this story. If these parts are considered critical, there should have been tensile tests conducted on coupons from the same melt/heat lot. If the paperwork indicates the tests were conducted and the coupons passed, either the paperwork was falsified or the parts degraded during storage.
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everyone that ever touched the material...
...no longer works there.
fixed it for ya!
statistical testing (Score:1)
the production folks at lockheed martin, one of the largest us govt contractors, might want to look into it.
simply amazing that they weren't performing acceptance tests on each batch of material.
and shame on NASA for not making them.
they should both know better.
Warranty? (Score:2)
Aren't manufacturer defects generally covered by a warranty? It should be replaced for free!
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Sure, but that return freight is gonna bite ya in the ass :O
I think the QA guy at L-M should get a free shuttle ride ;)
That is how my dad ran his aircraft repair...the mechanic got to be the 1st passenger. You can bet all the bolts got double checked :)
Time to make a post X-mass return. (Score:2)
Return it and demand a replacement/refund.
Downsizing NASA (Score:1, Offtopic)
NASA still has 10 "Centers". NASA still has all the "centers" it had in the Apollo era. With the end of the shuttle program, that needs to come way down. NASA Ames should be trimmed down to just the wind tunnel. The centers in Slidell LA and Cleveland OH should be closed. One of Langley and Dryden should be closed. One of Huntsville and Houston should be closed. And NASA HQ should be downsized to about half its current size.
Think about the children! (Score:2)
But if politicians can't grab bits of the funding for their own districts, won't the entire economy collapse?
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Fascinating.
Since these facilities were opened, we've added comsat, gps, ISS, and countless military/industrial/commercial space programs. NASA provides data for everything from urban planning to weather to crop planning and cultivation, and is involved in deep space research, materials science, world climate research and god knows what else.
But Apollo and a closing space shuttle program mean these facilities should be mothballed.
God I hate the stupid that comes out when slashdotters start speaking authori
Make Lockhead supply another one (Score:2)
If they supplied faulty parts make them replace it or sell their company to someone who will.
Why is NASA Being Blamed? (Score:3)
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It's not rocket science, people! (Score:2)
Well, rocket science metallurgy, but still!
Your tax dollars at work (Score:5, Insightful)
A contractor provides inferior quality alloy for a lightweight fuel tank. So NASA engineers come up with a system to brace said fuel tank, reinforcing it and fixing the problem.
The lightweight fuel tank now weighs as much as a regular fuel tank, when you include the reinforcement, but at 3 times the cost. But don't worry, people stayed employed at your expense, and that's all that matters. Yay!
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The radius block repair involves (extrapolating from the article) 156 strips of aluminum about 1" wide, 10" long and mmm .080" thick. That's about 124 lbs of aluminum added. According to LockMart the Al/Li tank saves 7500 lbs so you are only eating 1.6% of the weight savings.
The NASA fellow mentioned that the problem was fracture toughness, a property not usually checked in quality tests. You can have bad material with high tensile strength and low toughness.
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Just another bullshit cost-saving measure making American equipment shittier. Here's a car analogy for those that need one: In 1994 Ford went from the A185 IDI 7.3 liter diesel to the T444 direct-injected 7.3 liter diesel "Powerstroke". The early 'strokes have the "left over" forged rods from the pre-powerstroke motor, and the later ones have powdered metal rods. Well I did a little research, and found that powder metal rods are almost 10% weaker than forged and have an order of magnitude worse failure mode
The only thing that bothers (Score:1)
Whew! (Score:2)
Drop Lockheed-Martin (Score:1)
They where even granted a exception by the EPA on having to switch to a different foam, but they did it anyhow.
No conspiracy here, just a Bird Colonel that favors Lockheed.
watch their stocks go way down... (Score:1)
I wonder if this will deter future contracts and maybe even make stocks go down.
You get what you pay for (Score:2)
Space exploration costs. Money or lives. Your pick.
During the 60s, the US opted for the former, the Russians often for the latter. Who got to the moon?
I just have one thing to say... (Score:1)
Let's light this candle...
Oh, wait...