faulty fuel sensor - oh puleeze

"Icebound" wrote in
:


"Dave S" wrote in message
ink.net...


Icebound wrote:


Where did you get that number?


One of the discovery channel programs on the soviet space program,
which I have not independently verified.



http://www.jamesoberg.com/

James Oberg gives a pretty detailed account of Soviet failures and
myths. I have not been able to find an actual "number" in his on-line
stuff (buy the books, I guess), but the implication is that some rumors
of USSR space deaths are overblown... and he also states that some is
simply not known.

Now since he often appears on Discovery, so that "100" figure may be his
(or NOT), but his chapter at:
http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html
does not seem to imply a number anywhere near that.

Try this article of his....
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/therophe.htm

Brian
--
http://www.skywise711.com - Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism

Seismic FAQ: http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Blog: http://www.skywise711.com/Blog

Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

In article ,
Jose wrote:

[snip]
But the focus of our space program should be going to Mars and onward.

Because it's there.

Absolutely!!!

--
Bob Noel
no one likes an educated mule

"Skywise" wrote in message
...
"Icebound" wrote in
:


"Dave S" wrote in message
ink.net...


Icebound wrote:


Where did you get that number?


One of the discovery channel programs on the soviet space program,
which I have not independently verified.



http://www.jamesoberg.com/

James Oberg gives a pretty detailed account of Soviet failures and
myths. I have not been able to find an actual "number" in his on-line
stuff (buy the books, I guess), but the implication is that some rumors
of USSR space deaths are overblown... and he also states that some is
simply not known.

Now since he often appears on Discovery, so that "100" figure may be his
(or NOT), but his chapter at:
http://www.jamesoberg.com/usd10.html
does not seem to imply a number anywhere near that.

Try this article of his....
http://www.astronautix.com/articles/therophe.htm


Thanks.... in the index on his "Russian" page, I had skipped right over that
one to "Uncovering Soviet Disasters; Chapter on Dead Cosmonauts", several
items below. Thanks again.

Judah wrote:

But the regs say it only has to be accurate when empty!

Wrong.

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

Another fleet of mini-shuttles would be used to
carry people up and down - they would be the size of a lear jet and have
enough payload capability for six people and little else.

Funny you should say that. There is a company in Oklahoma that plans on
taking a stripped Lear 25 fuselage, bolting it to a basic wing, adding
turbofan engines and a re-useable rocket engine. Take-off and climb to
30,000 feet of the turbofans, light the rocket and climb to 158,000 feet,
then coast to about 330,000 feet before gliding back to earth. All in a half
hour flight.

Perhaps I should have been clearer... "Another fleet of mini-shuttles
would be used to carry people up and down, and get them going five miles
per second to meet with other stuff up there."

Jose
--
Nothing takes longer than a shortcut.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Ben Hallert" wrote

I wonder if these low-fuel sensors are part of the system that shuts
down the SSMEs if there's a fuel starvation issue. I remember a
mission a few years back where MECO (main engine cut-off) was
unexpectedly a few seconds early because of higher then projected fuel
burn or something. Not enough to really impact the mission, but it
showed the safety systems that prevent dry-running SSMEs was working.

That was exactly the problem. The main engines shut off at zero fuel level,
and with the sensor reading zero fuel, the engine would not even start. Not
a "good' thing.
--
Jim in NC

Morgans wrote:

"Ben Hallert" wrote

I wonder if these low-fuel sensors are part of the system that shuts
down the SSMEs if there's a fuel starvation issue. I remember a
mission a few years back where MECO (main engine cut-off) was
unexpectedly a few seconds early because of higher then projected fuel
burn or something. Not enough to really impact the mission, but it
showed the safety systems that prevent dry-running SSMEs was working.

That was exactly the problem. The main engines shut off at zero fuel
level,
and with the sensor reading zero fuel, the engine would not even start.
Not
a "good' thing.

There are four sensors - NASA could have removed this (apparently) faulty
sensor from the voting.

Hilton

I'm guessing that they're deciding that they don't want to launch with
the loss of avoidable redundancy. If they lose a sensor after they're
off the pad, that's one thing. But would you embark on a cross country
after losing your vacuum system? Why not, you have the electric
instruments that your IFR training showed you how to use as a
backup....?

Same thing with them, plus a healthy dose of CYA, nobody wants to be
'that guy that said launch anyways' right before it asplodes, and turns
out that it's because of a short in the faulty sensor that, I dunno,
caused a leak of LOX into the H2 tank or something.

Ben Hallert
PP-ASEL

Quick followup, the SSME does not have a restart-in-flight mode, so
once it's shut down, it stays off until after the shuttle is back on
the ground.

Ben Hallert
PP-ASEL

AES wrote:

But the bottom line here is surely that the whole manned space flight
effort and focus at NASA not only should be terminated as fast as
possible, but should have been terminated several decades ago, for at
least two major reasons.

Well, at this point I think manned spaceflight needs to be saved *from*
NASA, not *by* it.

First of all, manned space flight at this point in time is just too
difficult, dangerous, and expensive to be worth pursuing. It's a matter
of the laws of physics versus the currently available or currently
foreseeable level of technology, not the competence or the culture of
NASA. Maybe some future breakthrough in technology will make manned
space flight a much more reasonable goal; maybe not.

"Future breakthrough[s] in technology" do not fall out of trees. Once
upon a time, flying at FL450 was "difficult, dangerous, and expensive."
But because we kept doing it, failing with often lethal results, it is
now as safe (or safer) as traveling on the ground.

But by far the more compelling reason is that there are really zero
useful things, much less compelling needs, that we can or might want to
accomplish in space that are not better done with unmanned rather than
manned missions.

Perhaps. This is where the argument turns from a matter of reason into
one more like faith. There is little that astronauts could do on the
surface of Mars that we cannot at this time do faster and more cheaply
with robots. BUT...

The challenge of sending a human crew to the surface of Mars, and
bringing it back to Earth intact, would I think serve to spur the
development of many things with more quotidian uses. With a mission
likely to last several years, one problem is healthcare. Many things
can happen, and even if you put a doctor on the crew you have to allow
(a) that he won't know everything and (b) he may get injured himself.
So, you need to provide alternatives: computerized monitors which can
observe the body and render diagnoses, and possibly devices which allow
people with less than an MD to provide meaningful care. Healthcare is
currently 15% of our economy, and growing without bounds. Surely such
research could have revolutionary impact on our lives.

The bureaucracy and legal/financial obstacles to developing such things
in the pure civilian world mean that advancements will come slowly at
best. In wartime, governments, businesses, and people are willing to
take all manner of chances because victory depends upon it. Even Stalin
gave up shooting his political opponents for a few years during WWII
when it was clear that the Nazis might roll them all over.

Similarly, the Apollo program provided an imperative of sufficient
power to justify innovation at all costs. Frontiers are, always have
been, and always will be dangerous places, but behind the pioneers come
settlers.

And then of course there is the point that man does not live by bread
alone. You concede that the Apollo program was the right thing to do at
the time, though it had little direct scientific merit. What about
today? Imagine the whole world, from Shanghai, to Tehran, to Paris, and
Los Angeles watching as an American backed down a ladder onto the
surface of Mars. Now imagine that the astronaut is a Muslim woman, who
came here as an immigrant to be educated in our great universities.
Laugh, shake your head, scream "PC!" or whatever, but don't tell me
this wouldn't cast an amazing shadow across the landscape.

-cwk.