SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL AEROSPACE REPORTS

A Biweekly Publication of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
VOLUME 44, ISSUE 14 - JULY 18, 2006

16 SPACE TRANSPORTATION AND SAFETY
Includes passenger and cargo space transportation, e.g., shuttle operations; and space rescue techniques.

For related information see also 03 Air Transportation and Safety; 15 Launch Vehicles and Launch Operations; and 18 Spacecraft Design, Testing and Performance.

For space suits see 54 Man/System Technology and Life Support.

20060020704 NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, USA

Orbiter Return-To-Flight Entry Aeroheating

Campbell, Charles H.; Anderson, Brian; Bourland, Gary; Bouslog, Stan; Cassady, Amy; Horvath, Tom; Berry, Scott A.; Gnoffo, Peter; Wood, Bill; Reuther, James; Driver, Dave; Chao, Dennis, et al.; [2006]; 16 pp.; In English; 9th AIAA/ASME Joint Thermophysics and Heat, 5-8 Jun. 2006, Washington, DC, USA Contract(s)/Grant(s): 816-06-02-05-03-05-04; No Copyright; Avail.: CASI: A03, Hardcopy

The Columbia accident on February 1, 2003 began an unprecedented level of effort within the hypersonic aerothermodynamic community to support the Space Shuttle Program. During the approximately six month time frame of the primary Columbia Accident Investigation Board activity, many technical disciplines were involved in a concerted effort to reconstruct the last moments of the Columbia and her crew, and understand the critical events that led to that loss. Significant contributions to the CAIB activity were made by the hypersonic aerothermodynamic community(REF CAIB) in understanding the re-entry environments that led to the propagation of an ascent foam induced wing leading edge damage to a subsequent breech of the wing spar of Columbia, and the subsequent breakup of the vehicle.

A core of the NASA hypersonic aerothermodynamics team that was involved in the CAIB investigation has been combined with the United Space Alliance and Boeing Orbiter engineering team in order to position the Space Shuttle Program with a process to perform in-flight Thermal Protection System damage assessments. This damage assessment process is now part of the baselined plan for Shuttle support, and is a direct out-growth of the Columbia accident and NASAs response.

Multiple re-entry aeroheating tools are involved in this damage assessment process, many of which have been developed during the Return To Flight activity. In addition, because these aeroheating tools are part of an overall damage assessment process that also involves the thermal and stress analyses community, in addition to a much broader mission support team, an integrated process for performing the damage assessment activities has been developed by the Space Shuttle Program and the Orbiter engineering community. Several subsets of activity in the Orbiter aeroheating communities support to the Return To Flight effort have been described in previous publications (CFD-, Cavity Heating? Any BLT? Grid Generation?). This work will provide a description of the integrated process utilized to perform Orbiter tile damage assessment, and in particular will seek to provide a description of the integrated aeroheating tools utilized to perform these assessments.

Individual aeroheating tools will be described which provide the nominal re-entry heating environment characterization for the Orbiter, the heating environments for tile damage, heating effects due to exposed Thermal Protection System substrates, the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics for the description of tile cavity heating, and boundary layer transition prediction. This paper is meant to provide an overall view of the integrated aeroheating assessment process for tile damage assessment as one of a sequence of papers on the development of the boundary layer transition prediction capability in support of Space Shuttle Return To Flight efforts. Author

Computational Fluid Dynamics; Aerodynamic Heating; Tiles; Reentry Effects; Space Shuttle Orbiters; Structural Members; Leading Edges; Aerothermodynamics

20060021511 NASA, Washington, DC, USA

Making Human Spaceflight as Safe as Possible

Gregory, Frederick D.; [2005]; 8 pp.; In English; Original contains black and white illustrations; No Copyright; Avail.: CASI: A02, Hardcopy

We articulated the safety hierarchy a little over two years ago, as part of our quest to be the nation s leader in safety and occupational health, and in the safety of the products and services we provide. The safety hierarchy stresses that we are all accountable for assuring that our programs, projects, and operations do not impact safety or health for the public, astronauts and pilots, employees on the ground, and high-value equipment and property. When people are thinking about doing things safely, they re also thinking about doing things right. And for the past couple of years, we ve had some pretty good results. In the time since the failures of the Mars 98 missions that occurred in late 1999, every NASA spacecraft launch has met the success objectives, and every Space Shuttle mission has safely and successfully met all mission objectives. Now I can t say that NASA s safety program is solely responsible for these achievements, but, as we like to say, 'mission success starts with safety.' In the future, looking forward, we will continue to make spaceflight even safer. That is NASA s vision. That is NASAs duty to both those who will travel into space and the American people who will make the journey possible. Derived from text

Space Shuttle Missions; Space Flight; Failure; Mars Missions; Safety; Spacecraft Launching

Source: NASA