Hello everybody,
in the meantime another expert and friend of
Craig Capdepon has joined our Facebook-Dialog, namely
Vince Morales (Sr. Staff QA Engineer) from Louisiana, ie a quality assurance specialist, who among others was also involved in the repair of hail damage at the
ET-124 (STS-117) in the KSC.
And he has spontaneously shared more details on my questions.
The rotation of the tank varied during sprays depending on the required SOFI thickness and averaged approximately 2 rpm for the LH2 Tank and up to 6 rpm for the upper part of the LO2 Ogive.
As he said the
peak to valley was about
5 inches due to the tanks being sprayed in a shingle pattern (barber pole style), what did confirm my estimated approx. spacing between the wavy rings of about
1 mm (1:144).
The
Pencil sharpener was only applied to the most affected area at the top of the
LO2 Tank during the repair work on the damaged by hail
ET-124.
Due to the high density of golf ball-sized holes at this point, the entire area had to be repaired,
Source: NASA
while the rest of the approx. 1.000-2.000 impacts further down in painstaking detail was repaired hole by hole by hand.
Source: NASA
This amazing tool, mounted on the
Lightning Rod on top of the
Composite Nose Cone, was be swung all-around for grinding the hand-sprayed SOFI foam.
Source: NASA
Viewed from up close, one can see that the device was a kind of
Multi-belt sander.
Source: NASA
And with this speckled ET the Atlantis stack came back to the pad, seen here from the west side,
Source: NASA
and here from the south side,
Source: NASA
and was then ready for launch again.
