This thread is amazing... I wonder what other older gems are buried back in the past I haven't discovered.Whatever happened to Steve?
Good thread.
bumping an old thread for the newbies
Quote from: Jim on 06/21/2011 07:35 pmbumping an old thread for the newbies You changed Jim I noticed this in other threads, more in this one. In mid 2005-07 maybe you enjoyed your job more?
Anyway two of the ones that really stuck with me:During Apollo, they had cameras mounted in one of the upper stages (can't remember if it was stage 2, or 3, or both), but these cameras were mounted in the top of the LO2 tank and were aimed down. These cameras were used to observe the levels and dynamics of the LO2 propellant as it slowly filled the tank, and later, as the LO2 was pressurized. According to John, watching the LO2 fill operation was rather uneventful -- the boil-off from the LO2 tended to obscure the view. HOWEVER, when the tank was pressurized, he said, the boil-off stopped (almost instantly), and what was visible was a bright, crystal blue liquid with a surface as smooth as glass -- he said it looked almost like a swimming pool, and you could see all the way down to the hardware at the bottom of the tank. Very cool visual -- somewhere there is film of that and I'd love to see it someday.
Another story -- and I'd love to get a firsthand account of this -- was during a tanking operation during Apollo (can't remember if it was a launch attempt or a tanking test), a KSC patrol car rather foolishly drove through a cloud of gaseous oxygen (I don't recall the details of how & why the patrol car and the cloud of GOX ended up in the same place at the same time). Those of you who know about GOX, flammable materials, and heat sources know what happened next. The shocked officer reportedly got out of the car -- but just barely. The car caught fire almost instantly and burned to the ground in seconds. There was nothing left but a thin layer of cinders on the ground.