[AR] Re: shuttle SRBs (was Re: Re: Phenolic regression rate)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 13:55:31 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 3 Feb 2018, I wrote:
...there was a development effort for filament-wound SRBs...
The whole thing quietly died after Challenger, partly because the USAF (the
folks with the heavy polar-orbit payloads) lost interest in using the
shuttle, and partly because the new emphasis on safety discouraged
unnecessary major changes to flight-critical fault-intolerant hardware...
Oops, forgot: and because after Challenger, NASA had its own SRB-upgrade
project, ASRM, which was going to have better safety and higher
performance, and was going to be made in a government-owned plant so that
a single contractor wouldn't have a locked-in monopoly. (NASA was
interested in breaking Thiokol's SRB monopoly even before Challenger --
talk about establishing a second source for SRBs contributed to the
pressure on Thiokol not to delay the launch.) ASRM eventually died when
Congress lost patience with growing cost overruns and slipping schedule.
Henry
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