PC/WI: Shuttle Orbiter Question.

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
This is a picture of the ceramic tiles used on the Shuttle Orbiters as a heat shield.

download.jpg


Due to losses on every launch and landing it made replacement and normal servicing a nightmare.

What if instead of using hundreds of separate tiles on the underside (black tile areas only) they instead manufactured a one piece ceramic heat shield for the nose, one for the length of the under body and two more for the underside of both left and right wings?

Would this be possible?

Would this cost effective in man hours and costs?

Would it be any safer than separate tiles?

Regards filers
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Making, storing, and transporting it would be a fuckin nightmare.

Not to mention each one would basically have to be bespoke, since there's nobody that does one-piece ceramic work on that scale where you could just modify an existing pattern.

Whereas with the tiles, in theory you can just order a few hundred thousand at a time from basically anywhere that makes ceramics.

And any damage to it would compromise the entire thing, as opposed to the individual tile.


Not to sound like a dick, but this is possibly the least practical method aside from a literal one-piece heatshield.
 
Would this be possible?
Nope. Manufacturing such a large and complex ceramic surface would be basically impossible, and anyway mechanical effects coupled to thermal expansion and contraction and the bonding between the heat shield and the fuselage would quickly destroy it. They actually ended up going with somewhat smaller tiles than they had originally envisioned for aerodynamic and mechanical reasons.

Would this cost effective in man hours and costs?
No way, since now you have to replace the entire heat shield after every mission instead of just a few tiles.

Would it be any safer than separate tiles?
No. Actually, it would be considerably less safe than the tiles were.
 
What you ask, WILDGEESE

Is only manageable with a Metal heat shield
this work similar like ceramic tiles, but bring other problems
Hot metal panels behave different as hot ceramic tiles
Special Hot metal expand larger as Hot ceramic
means the wings have to be adapted to support the expanding metal panels during reentry
 
The issue of the tiles isn’t, as I understand it, that the use of thermal tiles or multi segments heat shields is a flaw. But that NASA as with all parts of the STS had utterly unrealistic, borderline fantasy, expectations with them. The tiles were made too thin, and then placed in an optimal location to be struck by falling debris.

A better solution would be for NASA to understand the realities of operating the shuttle from the beginning. Or a comprehensive redesign of the system that either includes a dedicated launch abort system, or moves the orbiter entirely away from the external tank.
 
Much of the early orbital reentry analysis was devoted to aerodynamic path definition which had the vehicle develop lift as orbital relief diminished. At that time Bell Aircraft and Goodyear Aircraft were major clients of the Princeton University spinoff that paid my bills. Using a Signal Corp IBM 650 at Ft. Monmouth, we developed flightpath optimization simulation programs that permitted (for example) peak temperature, or maximum crossrange specification- this of course subject to the lift generation and control characteristics of the vehicle.

I bring this up because an entire class of aircraft capable of near-equilibrium reentry were roughed out, but never built- Bell Aircraft proposed a large, light reconnaissance aircraft, and Goodyear a considerably larger inflatable 'Airmat' dart. Bell used primary structure of steel tubing, with the bottom covered with long inconel shingles, fastened at the leading edge. Goodyear considered a metallic cloth inflatable with the upper and lower surfaces held parallel by tens of thousands of conductive strands. The inflating gas was helium- because of its excellent heat transfer capabilities and inert chemistry (not for lift). The internal circulation was via several fans and baffles, encouraging heat rejection from the upper surface. There was a good reason for not building either and abandoning this approach in favor of the much later Space Shuttle.

Stay tuned.

Dynasoar
 
At work.

Just a question but why wasn't the research put into the Lockheed 'Airodynes' (X-23 ish?) utilized more?

The shape of those seems much more conducive to putting heat sheild/tiles onto....

Cheers.
 
A better solution would be for NASA to understand the realities of operating the shuttle from the beginning. Or a comprehensive redesign of the system that either includes a dedicated launch abort system, or moves the orbiter entirely away from the external tank.

Yep - the design (especially requiring the huge payload bay for military payloads) & budget (particularly SRBs instead of liquid boosters) compromises made in the early 1970s enabled the failures that doomed Challenger & Columbia.

If the Shuttle had been built to one of the earlier concepts - either with a 'flyback booster' stage, or a much smaller shuttle being on top of the stack (a stack that could also be used unmanned to launch station modules) - the programme could have been a lot different, and maybe had better a shot at fulfilling some of NASA's lofty goals.
 
Hate to see this interesting thread expire. Time permitting, I'll set up another to explore an alternative with POD in the early thirties where developing rocket technology is applied to boost-glide record setting sub orbital flight. Lots of work in this area by Oberth, Tsander, Sanger et al.

Dynasoar
 
Hate to see this interesting thread expire. Time permitting, I'll set up another to explore an alternative with POD in the early thirties where developing rocket technology is applied to boost-glide record setting sub orbital flight. Lots of work in this area by Oberth, Tsander, Sanger et al.

Dynasoar

I look forward to it, in my own alternate Germany I think the "glide plane" concept gets more play.
 
I thought I read that later shuttles had larger ceramic 'blankets ' on less critical areas. Is that a myth?
 
Here is a really good image of the various shuttle thermal protection system materials:

TPS-materials.jpg


As Workable Goblin noted, because of differences in the thermal expansion rates of the tiles (shown above as the LRSI and HRSI) and the underlying aluminum orbiter structure, there were stand-off felt pads that allowed a certain amount of flexibility.

If you look here:

(Edit: Embeding doesn't want to work, here is a link to the page: https://paulpalubicki.com/2015/03/1...uttle-endeavour/space-shuttle-endeavour-nose/ )

You can see the thermal 'blankets' (FRSI and AFRSI) aft of the tiles. You can note how much larger than are than the tiles, but they are still limited in size.
 
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