Comments on: NASA Does Space-Age Archaeology, Uncovering Apollo Heatshields to Help with Orion

By: Mike Gentry

Mike Gentry — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:34:41 +0000

We just today had two wood pallets marked NASA and APOLLO come through our plant. They now contain tasty Prairie Farms frozen yogurt like substance half gallons. Just did a little research and found this article.

By: GBendt

GBendt — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:13:30 +0000

If proven old technology does the job as required, there is no need to develop something better, and there is no need to spend money on research on something better. That is not the type of situation which companies and institutions like who make a living on doing research and to provide a useful result.
Blueprints are not of much use if the materials used in the systems of which you have a blueprint are not available any more, and if the people who built and processed these materials and built the system are dead and gone, and the background documentation has got lost during with the passing time. You simply can´t keep records on everything forever.
600.000 people worked in and for the Apollo program. The combined skills, the knowledge and experience of these people was necessary to make the flight to the moon a success. Even if you have the blueprint on your table, you won´t find that it has the knowledge and experience of these people atached to it.
Therefore, even the blueprints of the Saturn V were destroyed deliberately some decades ago, as the responsible managers concluded that this rocket will never be built again.

Without the technical documentation records which might hold information on where samples of tested Apollo heatshields were kept, it is impossible to learn that these samples exist. I think it is a matter of real luck that they were discovered.

Regards,

Günther

By: betsy

betsy — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:33:53 +0000

In the words of the great Motown singers: "Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby!"

You can have all the documentation and blueprints you want, but handling it…that's a whole other reality.

By: N0Body

N0Body — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:39:41 +0000

Ah. I forgot about that. Yeah, I bet the thing is that the previous test or actual items may not be examined the way we can do now, (with better technology).

Although, I like the idea of returning to the Moon. I feel somewhat sadden that we returned to the capsule setup. I would like to see a real space plane.

Thanks,

By: watchful stone guardian

watchful stone guardian — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:58:11 +0000

To further what The Occupant said I'm sure there has been developments in materials science and engineering that would allow examinations and tests on this material what wasn't available to the engineers 40 years ago.

By: ed

ed — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:51:43 +0000

This is good.

TO NObody:

Great deal of engineering new technology is first proving it will not fail, second if it fails improve it, and third keep improving and prove it won't fail again.

There is no better way to do this than by checking upon old technology that precedes the new one.

By: Excalibur

Excalibur — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:21:04 +0000

I believe that at the time, the heatshields where designed to do the job with adequat margins – and it did.

What the researchers are most likely looking at now is how did the shields actually perform, any cracks, melting, anything that can bring clues for further improvements.

Hypothetically, doubling performance can be interpreted in atleast two ways – reduce the weight to half with same performance, or double the amount of heat.damage the shield can take with the same weight. Both are ways to improve, and thats where the old shields can add input i believe.

By: Warren Platts

Warren Platts — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:06:38 +0000

It's pretty sad that NASA has to reverse engineer 40 year old technology.

By: The Occupant

The Occupant — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:04:58 +0000

@NOBody: The trouble with documentation, is that if the original documentation lacks something, then they have no idea what that something is. Having something you can touch and do tests on ,tests they may not have had at the time of documentation, allows more data to be collected. Documentation lacks the resolution of the real deal, as it were.

By: N0Body

N0Body — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:40:59 +0000

Question: I feel this is kind of unnecessary. Was there no notes of previous experiment? Was the work, during the Apollo era, forgotten and undocumented?