Community Discussions

Shuttle Foam Loss Linked to EPA Regs

As recently as last month, NASA had been warned that foam insulation on the space shuttle's external fuel tank could sheer off as it did in the 2003 Columbia disaster - a problem that has plagued space shuttle flights since NASA switched to a non-Freon-based type of foam insulation to comply with Clinton administration Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

"Despite exhaustive work and considerable progress over the past 2-1/2 years, NASA has been unable to eliminate the possibility of dangerous pieces of foam and ice from breaking off the external fuel tank and striking the shuttle at liftoff," the agency's Return-to-Flight Task Force said just last month, according to The Associated Press.

But instead of returning the much safer, politically incorrect, Freon-based foam for Discovery's launch, the space agency tinkered with the application process, changing "the way the foam was applied to reduce the size and number of air pockets," according to Newsday.

"NASA chose to stick with non-Freon-based foam insulation on the booster rockets, despite evidence that this type of foam causes up to 11 times as much damage to thermal tiles as the older, Freon-based foam," warned space expert Robert Garmong just nine months ago.

In fact, though NASA never acknowledged that its environmentally friendly, more brittle foam had anything to do with the foam sheering problem, the link had been well documented within weeks of the Columbia disaster.

Call me crazy if you must, but if the choice is between safer, environmentally unfriendly foam and poor foam which is more likely to cause a catastrophic failure...I'll choose safer foam every time. If the shuttle program is important, then it should be made as safe as possible...meaning you need to go with what works, not gamble unnecessarily with astronauts lives. Too many fine people have already been lost.

AZ

No doubt!

im still watching ...

Marshall a good many people from canada wish a safe return for the shuttle.

chris 

I am with you guys on this one

I was pretty mad when those people lost their lives and then they also lost the shuttle. I was also recently made because I heard something fell off the Discovery. I guess it turned out to be nothing but it just pisses me off. We can't gamble with the shuttle program and people's lives just to use a more enviroment friendly foam insulation.

I was watching a show the other day (forget what it was) and it had this guy on there that made his own compound that aloud for extreme heat temps up to 10 minutes untill the fire got through his stuff. He demenstrated it by surrounding a dull house with his stuff and using a propane torch on the dull house. He had it on there for a long time till it was all black. Then when he took the stuff off, everything inside the dull house including the dull and glass window were perfectly intact. When the guy took that stuff of his down to get tested they found a few things in it that they recognised and a few things they never saw before. Turns out when put under a high tech and high powered microscope, his stuff was rocky looking with lots of holes in it. They said the holes was a part of why it can take extreme temps for long periods. The puropse of this stuff was that he was tired of so many people's homes getting burned down so quick because the exterior walls and roof did not have his compound on them. He also wanted this stuff to be used on the space shuttle too. See, he believes that if this stuff can give them 10 extra minutes incase something went wrong, thats 10 extra minutes that could save their lives.

If anyone saw that above show and  you remember more spacifics than I, please by all means post them here...Thanks

It is not like we have thousands of space shuttles flying everyday.  Come on.

C