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Nuts and Bolts and Foam

By Grant Hovey

Rear Admiral Steve Oswald, former astronaut and now a Boeing vice president and manager of their Shuttle program in Houston, spoke at a dinner meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) on April 20, 2005, at the Crown Plaza Hotel near LAX. Oswald brought us up to date on NASA's compliance with the recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Rear Admiral Oswald looks and comports himself like an astronaut — if casting directors were to scan the room for someone to play the part of an astronaut, they would pick Oswald hands down. His slide presentation was well organized and had our attention riveted. His was a nuts and bolts explanation of the how NASA is readying the shuttle for its next mission. Questions about mankind's place in space and human destiny he leaves to others. To say that he is "down to earth" misuses the phrase, especially as he recounted his personal experience piloting the space shuttle's ascent into space: It was one Hell of a ride!

Oswald went into great detail explaining the efforts to secure the foam to the external tank. Most of the foam is applied by spraying its broad expanse. Portions of the tank where brackets and hoses attach present multiple surfaces and must be sprayed by hand, which is difficult to do evenly. These three dimensional parts are the Achilles' heel of the External Tanks. NASA believes that better spraying techniques has solved this problem. The newly insulated tank's slow voyage by barge from New Orleans to the Cape, as seen on Oswald's slide presentation, contrasts with the orbital insertion speed which will follow.

The challenge of making repairs to the shuttle's tiles while in the extreme temperature variation and vacuum of space is not as easily solved. Reliance has been placed on a salmon-colored ooze that astronauts would squeeze out of a space-age caulking gun. Unfortunately, most applications create small, but dangerous, bubbles, which would cause the ooze to disintegrate during the flight. NASA personnel went so far as to visit the plant where the ooze was manufactured and run tests there, but nothing satisfactory came of it.

Inspection and repairs of possible tile damage will be done at the International Space Station (ISS) using the robotic arm. Earlier reports proposed that the astronauts inspect and repair damage to the wing and tiles en route to the space station in the interest of saving time. Thankfully, this approach, which bears all the marks of management gone overboard, has been abandoned. Checking out the shuttle at the ISS may redirect our focus from Earth to Near Earth Orbit. Personally, I believe that the use of the ISS to build a moon-bound ship, as proposed in Arthur C. Clark's 2001: A Space Odyssey, makes a lot of sense for many reasons.

Oswald praised the Space Shuttle. And without overly lamenting the decision to take it out of service once the ISS was built, predicted that it would be another 100 years before we would have its equivalent. He estimated that Boeing could build a new Shuttle for $6 billion.

But that does not tell the whole story. One of the AIAA members at the dinner explained to me that the patterns, jigs, etc., that gave the shuttle its shape have been destroyed. To reconstruct them and build the first one of a new series would cost $6 billion, but subsequent orbitors would cost less, perhaps $3.5 billion.

I'm grateful to whomever it was who sent me the invitation to the AIAA dinner and recommend Rear Admiral Steven Oswald as a speaker for OASIS anytime.