Attn: 'über' space geeks...live play-by-play of a Mars probe entering orbit

[Carnos Jax]

This is in regards to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mro/status.html

It's in undergoing the critical orbital insertion burn. To make matters more tense, it's just slipped around the back side of the planet, so we won't know for sure if it has completed the burn properly until it shows up on the other side.

[Carnos Jax]

Success! At least in regard to achieving orbit. During the next half hour or so, they'll be checking the data from the orbiter to determine if they're in the proper orbit. The main thing though is that orbit was achieved (as opposed to sailing right past Mars).

[Racer X]

You have no idea how much they were sweating the catalyst bed heaters burning up the thrusters. My drinking buddy is the thermal engineer who came up with the solution to keep them from overheating and burning up the engines. He proposed it as a bad joke originally, but NASA actually decided to do it, not knowing that he was kidding.

[Paul F.]

I don't 'zactly know what catalyst bed heaters are... but I know that if thi mission had failed to make Martian orbit, there'd be guys at JPL hanging out the windows by their shoelaces...

After a somewhat mixed history in Mars probes, this was a "biggie"...
If they'd lost this one there'd be a lot of folks really upset.

[Racer X]

news flash, mars landing in 2008! The phoenix mission, named because it uses a rover and module from two previously cancelled missions. I am testing the parachute mortar this week and next week. We made this hardware years ago, and we drug it out of Stores, and are retesting to re-certify it.

Hydrazine must be warmed as it flows through the catalyst bed so it can go "Fwoom" and make it the craft go forward. But since it is a wee bit chilly in space, the fuel must be heated or else it is frozen. It must be even warmer to get it to burn as it passes through the catalyst.

There is an incredible amount of electrical energy needed to make a current tech spacecraft work. There is a also a finite amount of fuel available, and a finite number of fuel valve opening/closing cycles. So when you see in a movie when they simply divert a recon sattelite, it isn't just a simple phone call to the "big guy", and you get to do that VERY few times, or you cut years off the usefull life of a recon bird.

The big deal about the insertion today is that they are using some fuel valves from the '70s that were pulled of off a scrapped sattelite, and have already been functioned for far more cycles than their design spec. All this because some NASA bean counter wanted to save around 25 grand. They put an entire mission at risk for 25K. These valves feed the fuel to the catalyst with the very "iffy" bed heaters. They found the heater fault when the craft was halfway there. that was when my friend was called in to solve the problem. This was after they didn't have him run the numbers for the original design because the program managers burned up the engineering budget on useless manager's meetings. I kid you not.

[Carnos Jax]

First time I've heard about these 'catalyst...heaters'. Of course, there are a myriad of things that go to making up a spacecraft, so its no surprise. I suppose in the cold of space, you can't necessarily expect things (such as the chemicals used for propellant) to behave as they do in other environments.

Racer, for some reason (such as previous posts) I thought you were involved in some multi-media capacity for an aerospace company...are you on the technical side instead/also?

[Carnos Jax]

Oh...so did your buddy come up with the catalyst heaters or did he come up with a solution to their portential problem (i.e. burning up)?

So the hydrazine...is it something that reacts with something else (with the aid of the catalyst) to produce combustion products that jet out the nozzle or is it just heated so that it will vaporize and thus jet out the nozzle?

[Paul F.]

I don't doubt that for a moment...

That's one of the sorts of things that the new head of NASA, Mike Griffin, is trying to cut out... He's trying to re-orient parts of NASA away from bean-counting, and generating paper, and back towards actually DOING things.
He's fired about a dozen managers...

[Racer X]

cat bed heaters have been around for decades. He proposed that they remotely reroute the fuel flow throughout the entire spacecraft and keep the fuel flowing in a huge loop and back in to the fuel tank. Turn the fuel into coolant, and the entire craft into a heat sink. All this to prevent the valve from overheating. It was supposed to be a huge joke, and they took him seriously. It must have worked. It had about a 2% chance of working, according to the guestimates.

This was an off the cuff wild-ass solution with the craft 2/3 of the way there. "What could be done remotely?"

He actually took the time to look at the data coming back from the telemetry. He had casually spotted the problem not soon after launch, but it wasn't his dept or his responsibility at that stage in the game. They came to him, and he pointed out that he told them on such and such a day in his memo number whatever that this would likely happen, and pulled it up on his computer screen, and he then told them he had been ignored. He bails them out, and his boss takes the credit for his dept finding the problem and providing the solution. This was after he was the one who burned up the money that would have gone to engineer the system properly in the first place..

I am the contracted photo/video guy. I worked on staff for 4 years, got laid off, then hired back 6 months latter for twice the money, and half the work. But before I changed school paths back to my passion of photography, I was studying engineering. The math kicked my ass, and that was that. It was rather disconcerting, as I understand the basics of physics and chemistry rather well, and I am genuinely interested in learning where and when i can. So when i ask questions at work, and they are thoughtful and intelligent, I usually get quite a good schooling. 3 of my drinking buddies are engineers (and I grew up with them) 2 are aerospace engineers (one the thermal expert, known worldwide) and the third is an EE with the power company with a background in generation plants. the fourth buddy is a master outboard/inboard engine mechanic.

So I learn an awful lot when we BS at the bar, at work, or out on the boats they own. Lots of guy talk when 4 single guys get together plus me (I am the only one married). 2 of them have garages bigger than their houses, and one owns his own forklift! Why? because it was cheap, and he always wanted his own forklift.


Hydrazine pour it on rich organic dirt, and watch it burst into flames! Roughly 5000 per lb for the High-Pure spec stuff. When a sattelite tank may hold 500 lbs of fuel, that's a very expensive fuel fill-up.

[Racer X]

I do some other stuff involving high speed film and digital high speed video gear....and I can't say much else other than an auto airbag opens really, really fast, and the people who are afraid that they are dangerous are far, far safer with them, than without them.

For every thousand lives they may save, maybe they will directly cause the death of one or two. you do the math.....