Re: Cause of some major X10 problems found

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Who would have thought light
>pieces of foam could do enough damage to the shuttle to bring it down?
>Until they ran the tests and they saw the pictures and examined the damage
>very closely, there were plenty of engineers and rocket scientists who went
>on record with great conviction to say it was impossible.

Anybody who had ever conducted (or seen or heard about) tests on front fans
for jet engines would know that high velocity styfofoam can do lots of
damage. I spent a few years (early '70s) in R&D at GE's Large Jet Engine
Department during the time they were developing their first commercial
engines with front fans. Since the engines had trouble digesting birds, one
of the tests used live duckings (about the size of a seagull). They were
asphyxiated and their warm body stuffed into a styrofoam cartridge that was
fired from an air cannon at a titanium fan blade while filming with a high
speed movie camera. The styrofoam could do nearly as much damage as the
birds.