How NASA's Apollo 14 Fixed A Critical Problem Using 'Keyhole Rocket Surgery'
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2021
- Fuel sloshing around in the tanks of the Apollo landers caused all sorts of problems, including early activations of the low propellent signal on Apollo 11 and 12. For Apollo 14 an upgrade to the fuel tank was added to lessen the problems and make the flight smoother, but this had to be installed through a tiny 6cm hole in the bottom of the already made tank.
References:
www.aiaahouston.org/Horizons/H...
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/1...
history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
That reminds me of that old joke where a gynecologist was hired as a painter and proceeded to paint a clients house through the mail slot.
or working as a mechanic and overhauled the engine thru the exhaust pipe
well... I might motion a certain early webnets events before whatever when the BBC micro programme showed where end to end visuals of a house and a model of the house in a window view outside from the house window...
Nowadays they do some surgeries in the abdomen on women through the vagina laparoscopically. That way there's no scar left behind afterward. It's truly fascinating what all they can do using small incisions and a laparoscope.
I must hear this joke
@@josephneider7332 It's kind of long to include in a TH-cam comment, but a Google search for "gynecologist hired as painter" (without the quotations) will bring it up for you.
I love hearing about solutions to problems that I didn't even know existed!
Then you should get over to Adam savage's channel. He's got a number of good ones 👌🏻.
Well, it was an easy fix.
It's not exactly rocket surgery. Oh wait..
Nothing about this video existed.
That's good advertising!
@@icollectstories5702 Yes , they provide many different lies to get people to believe them and to have them donate money to the cause 🤣😜
I’m so glad Scott included a high-tech simulation of propellant slosh, it really reinforced the concept.
there is no way scott has access to such advanced technology, it must have been a 3d simulation
like the moon landings!
That happy Scott Manley wiggle at the beginning 😊
Now I have to go back to the beginning again to check it out! :D
I had the same thought...
Oh my God that weld process looks like a nightmare
@asdrubale bisanzio remember you are just soldering a delicate part of the entire lunar module, no pressure. What could go wrong uh?
@@gean31 "Remember, Joe, if you screw this job up, the crew dies on national TV. No pressure. See at the pub later, yeah?"
"The engineers were disappointed, but not as much as the crew of Apollo 13"
I'll let you know when I can breathe again
You doing okay yet? I'm still gasping! :D
I saw a speech given by Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 lunar landing. He said that he "wasn't even concerned" about the "low" propellant quantity warnings he was being given from all quarters as Eagle neared touchdown, as very low fuel quantity remaining was exactly the way he had always done it in the LLTV. Thanks to the excellent preparation the Trainer unintentionally provided, he knew the very little fuel he could count on having was sufficient to do what he had to do.
It sounds like the joke about the mathematician boiling a pot of water. That would almost sound like he deliberately ran the engines until the fuel was low, then landed!
Love your channel!!! Btw my grandfather worked for Grumman and was a metal spinner. He was the man that made the landing pads among some other technique required parts. He complained about making parts and having to work through small holes. I wonder if he was involved with this?!! Later made parts for the F14. His parts are still on the moon today and can’t help but think that that small step for man was made from my grandfathers part. So proud. Please reach out to me, I have some Grumman pics, if you wanted to check it out. Cheers
I hate it when my parts are left on the moon!
Huh, always wondered what that wobble was in the films. 6:07 explains it well enough. I can actually feel the fuel wobbling watching the films now. Great!
Seriously, I can feel it too.
I'vewatched these clips my entire life, noticed the wobble, and thought nothing of it. I 💓 Scott Manley.
surprised neil and buzz didn't get sea sick. neither of them were navy pilots.
Like we say in France "t'es trop fort", translation "you are too strong", meaning "your are too awesome" ! Love your channel ! :-)
No it's more like "ta dead ça chacal "
Dont thanks me 🙃
@@benji37 Sorry kid, that means nothing.
@@benji37 That's literal word mush.
“I’m a brain surgeon, what do you do?”
“I’m a rocket scientist, how about you?”
“Well, I’m a rocket surgeon.”
Oh yeah? I'm a rocket surgeon!
For decades I’ve been dad-jokingly mixing metaphors with “Come on, this ain’t rocket surgery!”
Thanks to this video I will have to up my dadjoke game.
* singing * ...That don't impress me much...
th-cam.com/video/THNPmhBl-8I/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/THNPmhBl-8I/w-d-xo.html
Which is why being a rocket scientist really is rocket science!
There is a wonderful Tindellgram on a problem with the low fuel warning light on the LM which meant even without the sloshing problem the warning would trigger the master alarm as well the low fuel light. The memo finished: "if this is not fixed, I predict the first words uttered by an astronaut to land on the moon will be 'Gee whiz, that master alarm certainly startled me.'"
I looked it up, and it's a fun read, though the quote you mentioned is more in the middle of the memo. In the memo, he says that the mission profile for Apollo 9 guarantees that the master alarm will go off unless the system is activated after ullage. Though he concludes, "I guess it will be standard procedure to punch it off if that happens. But, where this is just an annoyance on D (Apollo 9), it is dangerous on G (Apollo 11)."
a case of an abundance of caution being dangerous? (master alarm going off too early)
@@oldfrend I mean I can see what they mean there, you really shouldn't get your pilots used to just ignoring the Master alarm because it goes off for low (not out of) fuel.
"Anybody here know how to put a ship in a bottle?"
You out the bottle around the ship
Same as apollo 14. It is assembled in there. A true masterpiece made by the best artists.
Make sure the bottle is large enough.
@@drhklm7148
There is some pear brandy that bosts a bottle containing a whole pear.
Of course, one takes the bottles out to the orchard and puts them over the budding fruit.
It’s not rocket surgery..... wait, it actually was
They did surgery on a rocket
Bottom Text
LOL right?
The propellant has the same mass/inertia on the Moon but at 1/6 the gravity. This further confounds efforts to keep it at the "bottom" of the tank making baffling more important. Ask a tanker truck driver if he likes baffles. :)
Not sure moon gravity is relevant when landing, as you are in free-fall when not accelerating (i.e. "gravity" is what YOU make it). Gravity is mildly important when leaving the moon, although your acceleration tends to be mostly straight up so sloshing isn't as bad as it is in free-fall.
@@icollectstories5702 I agree there are no gravitational effects during free fall. Baffles don't have any effect either. However during deceleration and hover they do. :)
@@ebenwaterman5858 The point is whether you decelerate at 0.001g or 5g is at your discretion; moon gravity doesn't apply until touchdown, at which point fuel feed isn't vital. Launching from the moon is a similar situation, aside from assuming that you've stayed long enough for the tanks to settle.
Asteroid departures should probably not make this assumption.
@@icollectstories5702 Well, not quite exactly, as during the final descent you'll have to pull > g/6 in order to decelerate and land -- consider that a perfect hover "feels" the same as being on the surface to your fuel tanks.
@@icollectstories5702 The LM was only in free fall during Lunar orbit, it was a powered descent from orbit all the way down until the last three feet when a contact probe touched the surface and the descent engine was switched off. The LM then dropped the last three feet to the surface.
Apollo program will not stop amazing me for rest of my life
Indeed. It's not just what they achieved, it's the limitations of the technology they had available to achieve it with.
It’s amazing how Apollo program utilized many different crafts people and professionals from surf bums to seamstresses. I would probably believe if I was told that it was gynecologist who inserted the baffles to the tank through the small opening.
I did my PhD in micro-gravity CFD slosh modelling... claim to fame for this vid. XD
Will you work for SpaceX or NASA?
@@conorm2524 neither, I am not a US citizen or PR. *crys*
@@thunder852za ESA?
The term CFD is ringing bells in my head but I can't remember why.
@@ze_rubenator perhaps one day... I am just a Aus citizen living in South Africa. 😅
Thank you for putting together the great visuals to illustrate fluid dynamics so clearly :p
I'm 62 and watched the first moon landing on TV. Leave it to Scott to make me aware of all these issues to solve that I never knew existed. As he spoke on them, it would hit me, "oh yea, that would be a problem..." But at the time I just assumed it just worked. I never knew of the complexity behind all this. Thanks Scott!
Wow, now I'm really glad about the simplified world of Kerbal Space Program. That was tough for me, I salute the real engineers here.
Spaceflight agencies are clearly overthinking this.
They need to get some Kerbodyne tanks.
They dont have such problems
Just attach it to the bottom and then slide it up until it disappears.
Very interesting discussion, thanks. Note that I designed a slosh control device and a propellant management device (PMD) for the liquid stage of Orbital Science's Pegasus rocket. The slosh control device was also assembled inside the tank, since the tank's construction was already completed. The slosh control device consisted of circumferential rings at multiple levels along the tank's length. The assembly's support structure opened like an umbrella inside the tank. The rings were then bolted by hand to that structure by reaching up inside the tank thru the outlet port. The PMD was a cylindrical design bolted to the outlet flange. It was sized to capture any gas bubbles during the initial startup/propellant settling of the liquid stage and thus deliver gas-free propellant to the rocket motor.
"20 seconds from death?"
"Nah, it's ok, you were a whole 60 seconds from death, no worries."
-.-
All things considered thats actually a lot.
It is definitely an improvement
mechanical gaslighting.
From abort actually.
@@yastreb. Depends how quick you are at pressing the abort button. ;)
Man, that was one of the best "Hullo" yet.
I think the term is... wholesome xD
Whoa, millions of little details had to be monitored and solved. amazing!
SpaceX is still trying to get the fuel, igniter situation sorted out on Starship. It's no easy feat. Me I personally like the idea of the bladder tanks, but for the ultra low temp fuels I assume a rubber or even silicone bladder simply won't hold up.
Would you like to know more?
Perhaps it was for non-cryogenic fuel (UDMH/NO2), but then the problem shifts to chemical resistant material... In all cases would like to hear more.
Scott, your videos always brighten my day. Loved the high tech slosh simulation.
Capillary flow is used in many tanks with a complex vane structure. That work has continued and I had the good fortune to support the Capillary Flow Experiments 1 & 2 out of NASA GRC. We flew over a dozen different vessels and had the ISS crew perform hundreds of different test points.
I really love the content in this video. You really went above and beyond with that high-tech simulation of fuel slosh. Great stuff!
Loving the slosh simulations. And indeed have appreciated every video of yours I've seen Scott Manley. Thanks for making and sharing!
I am blissfully happy for the ongoing space engineering content from Scott Manley! I know absolutely no one who is interested in sloshing rocket fuel but when I come here I know there are thousands of us space nerds.
The fluid dynamic simulations in this video are top notch 👌
Thanks Scott. A lot of your videos shows some of the wonderful things engineers can do Your also a great presenter.
Thanks, Scott. I love this bit of mental floss. Tanks are way more complicated than I would have guessed. I recall seeing a video about parachutes that surprised, entertained & educated me as this one did.
Once again sir, you knocked it out of the park. What great storiesabout US Space Program that I did not know about when I watch as a child. Thank you!
People always underestimate sloshing for some reason. I remember a while back there was a bunch of raw minerals transport ships that were sinking and it took them a while to realise that the moisture in dirt/gravel was adding up and making enough water to slosh a ship around until it sinks in heavy sea..
Was wondering about the sloshing and 0g effect on the fuel. Thanks for a very informative video.
Thank you very much for this space engineering class, which focuses on the problems of using liquid fuel engines. We started building engines of this type in Brazil, and we have to learn from mistakes ...
Love your stories and explanations! Keep it up.
Thanks, Scott! Love your videos, man
That was one of your best! I always look forward to your videos!
Excellent as always Scott.
As far as I recall, in Apollo12 landing, that sloshing around was actually causing an RCS feedback loop, where the wobble caused by the slosh would set off the RCS, causing even more slosh. You can hear the astronauts comment that the RCS appears to be excessively active.
So educative as usual! Thanks M. Manley.
Awesome visuals! I was totally foggy on the whole topic until you showed that "high tech simulation of propellent slosh" and it was like an epiphany and I totally understood! Thanks! :D
Man, rocket science never ceases to,amaze me at how hard it is...
Great video. I followed space exploration for many years before I had the realization that making fuel tanks work, especially in zero g, will be a very complex subject once I look into it. But took it for granted for many years. Rockets are not easy.
I hadn’t realized this complexity.
Gods insights and explanation. 👍
Great that you spare no expense in the visuals of fuel sloshing! Always enjoy your vids and learn from you! Fly safe!
You make science fun. Thanks for taking the time to explain things in helpful ways. It has nothing to do with boasting with you and you probably know more that the ones that would. Humble servant FOR SCIENCE! I'm a fan of your Kerbal videos. Keep up the positive contribution to this world we all share.
I spent four years designing Propellant Transfer Systems for a small launcher company. I LOVE this video. The engines get all the glory, but there is SO MUCH MORE to making a functional liquid propellant rocket.
Hydraulic systems, pressurization systems, propellant transfer, thermal insulation, mechanical devices like valves and actuators, safety vents for the tanks, propellant level sensing, propellant fill/drain/conditioning systems - all needed by the engines.
Not to mention all of the infrastructure needed to test and launch....
Thank You for not puting an ad in your video!
Scott Manley
Thank you for an awesome video, I learned something new today thanks to you.
Cheers Scott. Always great content
Answers many questions if been thinking about since sn8 and sn9. Thanks
i was somehow surprised but also appreciative to see the "Numerical Recipe" in the bookshelves ! Kudo Scott !
3:34 makes me feel pretty good knowing that someone like him was apart of making history. Thanks for including that Scott.
When they say it's rocket science when it's actually rocket engineering.
ULLAGE!!! Thank you thank you thank you. More please.
"...tank was taken apart and englarged." I don't know what being englarged actually is, but it sounds terrifying.
It's a highly technical process (literally rocket science) where the 'eng' part of the tank is moved and 'larged' a bit so that it will hold more propellent. :)
i was just about to comment this. It would be nicer if you put the timestamp of 5:25
@@mikefochtman7164 the pipe stretcher!!! I knew it was real!!!! You nasa folks!!!!
It's a combination of "engorged" and "enlarged". Where engorged means that something swells because it is filled with a liquid and enlarged means that something becomes larger. Englarged means that you enlarge something by intentionally filling it with a certain liquid (either under high pressure or not).
it's a typo i think
I said hello to you on a live stream once Scott your a legend keep up the stories you sir are one of the main you tubers which have fired up my intrests in space now I’m a geek Thankyou lol 😁
Jesus, Scott! You make it sound like rocket science!!
Sir: looking to do my own experiments. Could you please explain what the high tech liquid was in your high tech simulation of propellant slosh? I'll need to procure some!
😉 Great video, as always!
I follow all the space quest major youtubers, but as a true space nerd, when I want to get technical explanations of high quality, I always turn to Scott Manley and I never get disappointed.
Great content as always. Thank you.
Excellent video as always! Love the shirt! Cheers!
Timely video. Thanks!
That was a very inquiring "fly safe." I like it
Great explanation, as always. Thanks!
Nice video Scott... and still flying safe😁
As usual a great and very interesting story again! I really love your videos on these stories regarding Saturn rockets to the moon 👍👍
wow.... i just learnt something new today after all these years, since Apollo 14 flew ... !
Great video like always!
Amazing video! I love these videos related to Apollo, like the one on why F1 engines which actually flew look like as if they were made of hammered metal sheets
It’s pretty crazy how much of the Apollo (and earlier Mercury/Gemini) hardware was done by hand. The ~3000 cooling channels on the F1 engine bell was all brazed on by hand for example.
They also designed everything on paper with slide rules and compasses. No CAD, no CNC machining, no fancy computers (the flight computers were literally made of hand woven ROM), and no fancy materials like carbon fiber composites.
@@eyeborg3148 Not exactly true. They had calculators and such. Manual input, to be sure, but they were available. The first real computers were built in the 40s, the Eniac and Colossus.
@@scottslotterbeck3796 Exactly true. No CAD. No CNC. The computers were not fancy. Programmed in a near assembly language written for NASA use. They couldn't program what they wanted calculated they had to program how to calculate it. Calculators were mostly 4 function electromechanical adding machines. Multiplication and division were by repeated addition and subtraction. Electronic calculators were just starting to exist. They were large and still only 4 function. No trigonometric functions. Scientific calculators started to exist after Apollo 13 had flown Everything had to be calculated either by slide rule or writing a specialized computer program and getting computer time ( not always possible it was a limited resource).
Second edit. When they did become available electronic calculators were largely U.S Japanese collaborations so NASA may have wanted to avoid them. Even the scientific calculators including Texas Instruments ( but apparently not Hewitt Packard).
@@eyeborg3148 Not just ROM. The RAM was also magnetic core. They did have a mechanical core weaving device. The difference between RAM and ROM was that ROM had only the read grid, each core had an x-y location, and RAM had another wire to write. A lot of the process was mechanically aided component assembly, then hand "assembly assembly" then likely machine assisted welding. The welding machine program was hard wired.
@@javaman4584 CuriousMarc’s many videos about the AGC and its design would be even better I’d wager.
Subscribed & Liked this video. This type of content is great.
This Was VERY Good Video !!!
I Enjoy Most of Your Work, ( not so much Kerbal ). But This Was Exceptional !!! Thank You.
Thanks a lot! Very instrutive video plenty of designs and explanation. Congratulation.
That was outstanding!
Wow. Mind-blowing knowledge... I didn't know.
I live in Alan Shepard's hometown of Derry, NH. We had our own Alan Shepard day - Have a mini Museum at town hall with Lunar Exhibits and our Post Office is the Alan Shepard PO - Our Police wear Freedom 7 patches
Informative! Thanks 👍
So nice ☺️I was wondering how they do this for a wile now 😅
You have always the best awnser.
Thnx for your education
I remember when we were trying to straighten a bent pin all the way back behind a prop tank and one person was sitting below holding the borescope and light and I had one hand wedged back with the tweezers and it took us 45 minutes to bend a 1mm diameter pin back on a valve. Fun times. Another example of "rocket surgery"
Minus the welding, that method is used for ICL implantations. It’s pretty neat to watch, if you’re not bothered by metal implements in someone’s eye.
I love those englarged take-apart projects.
8:35 For anyone who thought Scott misspoke, he didn't really. He's referring to the supercritical helium tank in the descent stage of the LM on Apollo 13 (not the more famous oxygen tank explosion on the CSM). However, as I understand it, the tank itself didn't necessarily explode, but its burst disk ruptured when the pressure got too high, safely venting the helium into space; it did disable the descent engine, but thankfully by then, they didn't need to do any more burns.
really informative, thanks!
Great video!
The beauty of life is its fractal like nature, a hole world can be found in the minutest of details.
Yea love all your videos!
Man I love these space race era videos so much
I just two days ago had to do something similar on a glider, where one of the wing ribs had broken and I had to insert and glue in place reinforcement pieces through a similarly tiny maintenance hatch.
One more excellent video.
This high tech simulation blew my mind 😂😂😂
Thanks for your vids!
The problems you have with fuel slosh in rockets is the same for fighters and aerobatics aircraft. If the oil pump is sucking air because the plane is in negative G's, your engine will not run for very long. Same problem with fuel (Spitfires that had carburators on their Merlin engines, could not take negative G's without cutting out as the BF-109's could with a fuel injection system).
Also the 109s inverted engine helped with this
Another change for Apollo 14 (originally planned for Apollo 13) was using the SPS on the CSM to place the LM into the proper landing altitude instead of using the LM's DPS. Not only this burn placed the LM into the proper landing altitude, but also preserved the fuel for the DPS, which was also critical for the J-Missions as Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 would land in terrain that was even more rugged than Fra Mauro, and this extra fuel would be necessary to allow for more hover time to find a spot suitable enough to land.
Thanks Scott
Thanks Scott. Legend info as always. I wonder if Spacex has considered an elastic bladder for SN10's landing tanks to help solve the relight issue?
Another banger!!