Wednesday Spring and GCPS Joint Luncheon

Join Al Sacco at the first ever joint Spring Meeting and GCPS Luncheon on Wednesday.

You Think you Have Safety Concerns! The Flight of STS-73

Al Sacco, Dean of Engineering, Texas Tech University

What is it like to sit on seven and one half million pounds of thrust, go from zero velocity to just under 5 miles per second in 8.5 minutes? Or looking at it another way, how does it feel riding a chemical reactor with ¼” aluminum walls, burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen at 3000 gallons per second for ~ 8.5 minutes and with two additional reactors (solid rocket boosters) each burning at 1000 pound per second a mixture of aluminum powder, aluminum perchlorate powder, and a trace amount of iron oxide as the catalyst all neatly packaged in a polymer binder for ~3 minutes or until empty?

Let me add, all three reactors burning adiabatically with little to no control! Followed by living and working for 16 days in a ¼” aluminum shell surrounded by a 10-6 torr vacuum with no means of escape if fire occurs while traveling at 17,596 mi/hr. Oh yes, least I forget, being assigned to grow an HIV protein for structural determination! Anecdotal stories will discuss the safety training, processes, and attitude put into practice in our manned space program. Why would a scientist risk his life to do science in space, what was done, what do the results show. Was it worth the risk? Take a trip on the space shuttle Columbia. Spend sixteen days in low earth orbit doing science in the areas of crystal growth, combustion, fluid physics, biotechnology and earth observations. A visual tour of traveling into space will be given along with an explanation on why these activities should be of interest to you.

*This is a ticketed event and available to bundle registrants only.*