NASA Documents Cite Wing 'Burn-Through' Risk, Aviation Week & Space Technology Reports.Business Editors NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 21, 2003 NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. documents as far back as 1988 show that wing roughness, similar to that associated with the shuttle Columbia's left wing, could result in catastrophic burn-through when combined with wing impact damage like that being investigated in the reentry reentry n. taking back possession and going into real property which one owns, particularly when a tenant has failed to pay rent or has abandoned the property, or possession has been restored to the owner by judgment in an unlawful detainer lawsuit. accident, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports in its February 24 issue. Shuttle project office documents obtained by AW&ST spell out how wing gouge gouge (gouj) a hollow chisel for cutting and removing bone. gouge n. A strong curved chisel used in bone surgery. gouge a hollow chisel for cutting and removing bone. damage near the landing gear wheel well or wing leading edge, could combine with Columbia-type wing roughness in a "fatal combination" that would spike reentry temperatures to nearly 1,000 deg. higher than allowable at the site of the debris strike. The AW&ST report displays a 1988 NASA document illustrating what could happen to a wing gouge at the identical location where similar damage is believed to have occurred during Columbia's launch January 16. A gouge at that location, in connection with aerodynamic wing roughness characteristics, could results in "massive shrinkage" or "melting" of wing thermal protection tiles and "exposure of the aluminum wing structure" to temperatures in excess of its melting point melting point, temperature at which a substance changes its state from solid to liquid. Under standard atmospheric pressure different pure crystalline solids will each melt at a different specific temperature; thus melting point is a characteristic of a substance and , the document says. The former chief of the NASA Astronaut Office, Robert L. (Hoot) Gibson who has piloted five space shuttle missions <onlyinclude> This is a list of missions flown by space shuttles. As of 2006, only the United States has flown human spaceflight shuttle missions, in the Space Shuttle program, while the Soviet Union flew one unmanned flight of the Buran. , told Aviation Week that he was "ignored and disregarded" by the shuttle engineering community when a year after the initial thermal assessment, he coupled serious reentry tile damage that had occurred on an earlier mission to the Columbia wing roughness issue. "I was never quite satisfied that we had exhausted everything that maybe we should have looked at," Gibson said. AW&ST also reveals a new set of e-mails exchanged between engineers at the NASA Langley Research Center Langley Research Center (LaRC) Oldest of NASA's field centers, LaRC is located in Hampton, Virginia and directly borders Poquoson, Virginia and Langley Air Force Base. LaRC focuses primarily on aeronautical research, though the Lunar Lander was flight-tested at this facility and a in Hampton, Va., while Columbia was still in orbit. The new e-mails express elevated flight safety concerns in spite of a Boeing analysis that showed there should be no danger from debris that may have fallen from the Lockheed Martin For the former company, see . Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is a leading multinational aerospace manufacturer and advanced technology company formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta. external tank. "One of the bigger concerns is that the 'gouge' may cross the main landing gear door thermal barrier Noun 1. thermal barrier - a limit to high speed flight imposed by aerodynamic heating heat barrier limit, bound, boundary - the greatest possible degree of something; "what he did was beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior"; "to the limit of his ability" and permit a breach there. No way to know of course," Langley engineer Robert Daugherty wrote to fellow engineer Mark Shuart on January 29, AW&ST said. The magazine quotes the engineer's message as saying, "We can't imagine why getting information is being 'treated like the plague'. Apparently the thermal folks have used words like they think things are 'survivable' but 'marginal'", Daugherty wrote, adding, "I imagine this is the last we will hear of this." Two days later Columbia and her crew were lost. About Aviation Week With nearly 50 products and services and an audience of more than 1 million professionals and enthusiasts, the AVIATION WEEK division of The McGraw-Hill Companies is the largest multimedia information provider to the global aviation and aerospace industry. Its web portal See portal. , www.AviationNow.com, offers the industry's most reliable and comprehensive real-time news, professional information and e-business features. Founded in 1888, The McGraw-Hill Companies is a global information services See Information Systems. provider meeting worldwide needs in the financial services, education and business information markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's, BusinessWeek and McGraw-Hill Education. The Corporation has more than 350 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2002 were $4.8 billion. Additional information is available at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com. EDITORS NOTE: Full text of the Aviation Week & Space Technology article and related charts, as well as interviews providing analysis, are available. |
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