<VV> Viton at NASA - not much Corvair

[jvhroberts at aol.com]

 Good to know. The SRB casings are actually made of steel. As I said, based solely on material properties, Viton is good stuff. However, the joint design demanded more than the O rings were good for. If the casing stretched less, if there was more interference, etc., they would've held. And then there's the issue of NASA management ignoring partial failure on previous launches, and not addressing these, and these were at acceptable temperatures! Material properties are but one element of this sort of design. 
But enough about the Space Shuttle. 

For us, the appropriate grades of Viton have existed before the Corvair was designed to make O ring issues nonexistent. Like you pointed out. 


 


John Roberts

 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan Blackwell <bryan at skiblack.com>
To: jvhroberts at aol.com
Cc: Virtual Vairs <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Sent: Sun, Sep 27, 2009 8:48 pm
Subject: Re: <VV> Viton at NASA - not much Corvair









FYI, the SRBs certainly did use Viton, and Dr. Feynman famously demo'd that it's not elastic enough in below freezing temps, which the shuttle saw the night before the crash.  The crash has been pretty conclusively shown to have been caused by temperature related failure of the Viton o-rings coupled with flexing of the booster joints on liftoff.?
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See:?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster?

http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/challenger.htm?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY?
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Now, a Corvair doesn't have the same requirements as a shuttle booster.  The Viton is effective in our relatively stationary joints, versus a booster joint that sees enough pressure to throw a shuttle into orbit and actually bows the aluminum case out on ignition.?
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If you'd like a good read, you can go to my site and search for Classic Feynman and get a copy from Amazon.  It includes a CD of one of his lectures about his experiences on the Manhattan Project.?
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--Bryan?
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Bryan Blackwell bryan at skiblack.com?

http://autoxer.skiblack.com/?

?Corvairs: '62 700 Wagon, '64 Greenbrier, '65 Corsa, '66 Corsa?

?'69 Road Runner, '09 Ford F-150, '99 Neon R/T?

"Why do something if you're not going to obsess about it?"?
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On Sep 27, 2009, at 8:30 PM, jvhroberts at aol.com wrote:?
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> Not sure if the SRBs used Viton, but it wasn't cold enough for any > of the commercially available formulations to fail based solely on > material properties.?
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