New post:http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/memory-fault/
Required reading."X-33/Venture Star was a good plan, it could have worked."My favorite deceased SSTO there.
Quote from: psloss on 01/31/2011 04:01 pmNew post:http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/memory-fault/I wonder if someone on NSF could help out Wayne's memory of this event.
Quote from: Lee Jay on 01/31/2011 04:06 pmQuote from: psloss on 01/31/2011 04:01 pmNew post:http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/memory-fault/I wonder if someone on NSF could help out Wayne's memory of this event.I think Wayne concluded this didn't happen as remembered.
There was a mis-configured valve in one of the experiments in the lab, designed to allow the experiment to vent to vacuum on orbit. It’s this valve you’re thinking of earlier. The question started out asking if anyone had heard of something like this happening and morphed into a discussion of the cabin depress valve, as communications without a lot of details will sometimes do. At one point your name is mentioned, but the conclusion never got back around to you.
It was during the turnaround between the first and second launch attempts of STS-55 (there were three attempts; the third was successful). The experiment valve in question was leak checked and failed. They discovered the valve was not in the fully closed position and a redundant sealing cap was not installed correctly. The misconfig likely happened during CEIT. Due to the dilligence you described, the situation was found and corrected. Over the years, it became a story about the depress valve you alluded to in your blog. Typically, the folks who were discussing this are not involved a lot in nitty-gritty pre-launch work, so that’s likely why it got turned into a depress valve story (so probably a lesson more in communicating to upper management properly!). This does not as far as I know involve any data collected from the case studies.
Quote from: psloss on 01/31/2011 04:40 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 01/31/2011 04:06 pmQuote from: psloss on 01/31/2011 04:01 pmNew post:http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/memory-fault/I wonder if someone on NSF could help out Wayne's memory of this event.I think Wayne concluded this didn't happen as remembered.It actually did happen, though it was a different valve.This is what Steve T. said in the comments:
I remember my father working (perhaps leading, we didn't talk much about it) elements of the autoland system. he was always irritated that it was not used. He mostly dealt with the antennaes for the sytem, as I recall.
So was the autoland system actually used on a later flight?
Really enjoyed Mr Hale's latest!http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/breaking-through/Now searching to see what we have on STS-53
Some interlinking Philip's interview with Mr Hale:http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=24466.0 <--thread linking to the article and the book thread.