Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Shuttle's Future?
Message-ID: <1988Feb18.140826.12217@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <191800002@trsvax> <1988Feb3.140727.13026@utzoo.uucp>, <966@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 18-Feb-88 14:08:24 EST

> Somewhere, at the back of my memory, I remember an article on
> development work being done by the DoD on SRBs using
> composite materials to reduce their weight...
> 
> This was about three or four years ago, before challenger.
> Does anyone know what happened to this work?

Ah yes, the filament-wound casings.  They were tested and pretty much
seemed to work.  There were (unofficial) grave doubts that they would
ever be reusable (although it is not clear that reuse of the metal casings
is really all that worthwhile).  I believe they currently are pretty much
in limbo -- the USAF requirement for them has sort of quietly gone away,
and it's not clear that NASA trusts them enough to use them.  They are
of rather more complex construction, with more joints (the field joints
themselves have to be metal, so each filament-wound segment is two metal
rings joined by a composite main body), and that's enough to make people
nervous these days.  At the very least, nobody is going to want to fly
with them until they've undergone some more stringent ground tests, and
that won't happen until the more stringent testing of the metal SRBs is
fairly well complete.
-- 
Those who do not understand Unix are |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
condemned to reinvent it, poorly.    | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry