Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!cognos!geovision!alastair
From: alastair@geovision.uucp (Alastair Mayer)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Discovery's launch: Am I imagining things?
Message-ID: <419@geovision.UUCP>
Date: 11 Oct 88 00:12:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: geovisio.419
References: <1104@cfa237.cfa250.harvard.edu> <3811@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <417@geovision.UUCP> <1988Oct5.170846.8023@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer)
Organization: GeoVision Corp, Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 19

In article <1988Oct5.170846.8023@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <417@geovision.UUCP> alastair@geovision.UUCP (Alastair Mayer) writes:
>>All of which makes me a bit skeptical about some proposed designs
>>for 'aft cargo carriers' to be attached at the base of the ET.
>
>Why?  Almost any aft cargo carrier is going to be less heat-sensitive than
>the liquid hydrogen that's inside that part of the tank now.

Not a bad point, but consider: the hydrogen at the base of the tank
is thermally closely coupled to the rest of the hydrogen in the tank -
that's quite a big heat sink;  an aft cargo carrier, stuck on the bottom
of the tank, is going to be that much *closer* to the hot exhaust plumes.
There are also the noise and vibration problems, which probably don't
bother hydrogen much.
  But it may not be that bad.  I didn't say they wouldn't work, just
that I was a bit skeptical.

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