Jun 23 1976
From The Space Library
Marshall Space Flight Center announced award of a $209 368 contract to a small business firm, Northern Research and Engineering Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., for designing, assembling, and demonstrating a portable self-contained firefighting module conceived as a joint effort of NASA's Technology Utilization Office and the U.S. Coast Guard. The module would be a lightweight unit complete with pump, hose, firefighter suits, and other equipment that could be transported by helicopter to the deck of any medium-sized boat in the area of a shipboard or dock fire; it would be able to pump about 5700 liters of sea water per min for an uninterrupted 3 hr. (MSFC Release 76-116)
The USAF Arnold Engineering Development Center operated in Tenn. by the Air Force Systems Command announced that it was using infrared equipment, designed in Europe to locate tumors in the human body, for studying heat patterns on the surface of the Space Shuttle manned orbiter vehicle under simulated flight conditions. Infrared cameras were known to detect a tumor because its heat-radiation characteristics differed from those of normal tissue. In the USAF tests, a model heated in a wind tunnel's supersonic airflow produced infrared radiation received by a camera and transferred to a detector that could record infrared radiation from 7000 points in the field-of-view.
Earlier Shuttle tests had shown the need for a protective system when the vehicle plunged into the dense atmosphere and for data on expected temperature levels, important to the selection of structural materials and to the design of internal parts. Ceramic-like tiles had been used in a scanning test to see the effect of a slight misalignment on the overall heat distribution on the orbiter's underside; the resulting data had demonstrated advantages over more traditional methods. Standard procedures required the application of surface coatings-either a paint that changed from solid to liquid at a specified temperature, or compounds whose ultraviolet radiation changed with temperature-but such materials could create a surface roughness that would alter the results. Also the melting-paint technique required washing and repainting the model after each test. The infrared camera could transmit its findings to a computer for analysis within minutes, and could provide a permanent color record if required. Use of mechanical heat-measuring devices was limited by the number of sensors that could be installed, and the time required to do so. (Although the infrared system would minimize the need for mechanical instrumentation, tests calling for simultaneous temperature data from all portions of the model surface would still require installation of sensors.) About 90% of the system used at AEDC was off'-the-shelf hardware; computer programs and methods of interconnecting components were devised by ARO, Inc., the center's operating contractor. (OIP 114.76)
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