Shuttle DIY

I was looking at a rifid paper and was interested that to test the
temperature between tiles rifids were inserted that relayed
temperature.
Trial heating was carried out with a plasma torch.
Perhaps more interesting for the humble electronics engineer was the
fact that the tiles were held on with modified RTV.
Wonder if the acid is buffered?

 

I think they can afford the platinum-catalyzed cure RTV.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

The irony is that the segmented SRB and the tiles were both selected
assuming a shuttle flight a week or something. It was policy/religion
to have nothing on the shuttle that was throw-away.

They could have used expendable boosters and bolt-on, one-time
ablative heat shields - bog reliable technology - and saved a lot of
lives and money. The tiles are especially fragile and expensive, not
to mention ugly.

John

 

Perhaps with the ablative coating-- whatever it is-- robotically
applied to the bolt-on surface and automatically tested over the whole
surface (if necessary) for high reliability. Making one a week or one
a day from virgin materials would be a snap for their contractors-
that's just the kind of quantities they typically deal in anyway. Keep
the most expensive and less stressed parts, figure out how to cheaply
and reliably build lots of the more stressed parts and throw them out
after use.

AFAIUI, the tiles are made in thousands of different shapes and
thicknesses and have to be individually hand-applied.

About $100,000,000 per spacecraft using a value of $4,000 per tile*
24,000+ tiles. And a bunch of them get damaged every time it flies.

It was an interesting idea. Maybe it should have stayed in whatever
brainstorming session it came out of.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany