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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread
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To: maceng2 who wrote (19921)1/30/2008 5:35:17 PM
From: Thomas A Watson  Read Replies (2) of 36918
 
I don't know what a long time is, but all work I did for Nasa used English Units. Torque and Load were measured in Lbs. The equipment doing the work was calibrated in Lbs and Ft-Lbs. But a units error did not cause the big Challenger Bang.
acute.ath.cx
On January 28, 1986, at 11:38, Mr. Watson was at lunch with a group of students. The students were taking a course authored by Mr. Watson on the use of Computer Aided Schematic capture and netlist database generation. In the restaurant the TV station broke to live coverage of the the launch of STS Challenger. Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff. Television film footage captured the tragic explosion and its aftermath, as smoke trailed out of the craft and it fell to the ocean. All seven crew members died due to a faulty "O-ring" seal failed in the solid-fuel rocket on the shuttle's right side. Flames escaped through the failed seal. The flames burned through the shuttle's external fuel tank and a support attaching the rocket to the tank. The rocket broke loose and pierced the tank. Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuels ignited, tearing the shuttle apart. The shuttle launch program was not resumed until designers made modifications and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) management implemented stricter regulations regarding quality control and safety. The accident and the ensuing investigation into its cause temporarily halted the space shuttle program. Shuttle missions resumed on September 28, 1988, with the flight of the shuttle Discovery.

In 1990, as a result Challenger accident NASA contracted with the PowerDyne Division of Raymond Engineering for the development the Hydraulic Ultra Sonic Bolting System. Mr. Watson as a Consultant to Raymond Engineering designed and developed the HUBS control program. The HUBS program was a real time embedded control program for the controlled sequential bolting of the joints of the solid rocket boosters. The program maintained a database of the bolting process and provided complete calibration of pressure and ultrasonic load measuring instrumentation. To provide realtime signal emulation Mr Watson designed and fabricated the HUBS Electronic Emulation Simulator.
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