mag field thing

Not so. According to the Cortwright report, the explosion happened as the result of degraded insulation on one or both stirrer motors, whose windings were immersed in supercritical oxygen. The insulation degradation was the result of overheating during a pre-launch test detanking operation, using a nonstandard procedure, where the tank was heated above the cutout temperature. The nonstandard procedure was used because the normal procedure would not empty the tank, due to the internal structure having been displaced in an incident at the factory, where the whole shelf assembly was dropped, due to a broken sling adapter.

Normal flight power to the heaters was 28 volts, whereas ground operations used 65 volts. The tank thermostats were qualified for 28 volts, and had not been specified for 65 volts. It was subsequently found that, opening at 65 volts, they would weld closed, allowing the temperature to rise above the designed 80+/-10F

It is believed that the temperature during the detanking operation rose sufficiently to degrade the stirrer motor insulation, and arcing occurred when the tank was routinely stirred in flight, igniting the insulation, and leading to overpressure.

The tank was composed of two hemispherical Inconel forgings, electron beam welded together. Working pressure was around 900PSI, test pressure in excess of 2000PSI. Wall thickness was a mere 0.060". The whole was enclosed in an evacuated outer shell.

The stirrer motors were 200/115 volt, 400 hertz, 3-phase, open induction motors.

The tank heater was not blamed.

The full report is available online, at NASA.

--
"Design is the reverse of analysis" 
                   (R.D. Middlebrook)
Reply to
Fred Abse
Loading thread data ...

[about ambient magnetic field and signal relays]

Time to break out catalogs of pneumatic switches; an air diaphragm and microswitch mechanism will work regardless of B-field.

Reply to
whit3rd

Well, at least now you can mention the exact margin by which you exceed their spec.

Reply to
Ralph Barone

"Immersed" ? Not in zero-G. The LOX would just be kinda floating in there, lightly adhered to one side of the tank by surface interaction. My understanding was that the fatal damage was caused by there being *some* LOX hitting the too-hot heater on the stirrer, which flashed to vapor which agitated a greater mass of LOX to strike the unit causing thermal shock to the already overtaxed insulation.

But that was surely educated speculation since the actual unit was destroyed, and then doubly destroyed when it plunged back into the atmosphere.

I don't trust NASA ... a culture of butt-covering and blame-displacement.

In any case, it was a proverbial clusterfuck ... an unfortunate series of events which, independently, may not have created an issue.

Reply to
Mr. B1ack

How about "flambe`ing the design margins"?

?-)

Fiddly fudge, how does one compose characters when running Agent in wine?

o_0 ^ \

Reply to
josephkk

For a time I had some old equipment using magnetic-field-immune relays. They were somewhat like tiny little thermometers: The heat of a filament in a little bulb would push a bit of mercury in a capillary tube across a pair of contacts. *Slow*. Unreliable. Glad to be rid of them.

Jeroen Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

On a sunny day (Wed, 08 Jan 2014 08:50:41 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Yes,cool, I like playing with that stuff:

formatting link

Probably a standard line, could be other things on board, Hall sensors perhaps, I have some nice Hall sensor DC current sensors. Or some sort of CRT, electron tube, if you turn your old color set around from E/W to N/S the color would change due to the earth magnetic field changing where the beam landed. And PMTs, try a magnet anywhere near one... Probably other things too.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Not LOX, *supercritical* oxygen, which behaves differently.

Read the report, *then* form an opinion.

The actual unit, or most of its fragments, was blown out of the service module, at the time of the incident, and never returned to the earth's atmosphere.

Read the report, especially the appendices, where the investigation, and technical details, are described.

My copy stretches to 100 meg.

--
"Design is the reverse of analysis" 
                   (R.D. Middlebrook)
Reply to
Fred Abse

Neat! But yes, temperamental.

Cheers, James Arthur

Reply to
dagmargoodboat

...Only when the President of the US makes yet another illegal "mandate".

Reply to
Robert Baer

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