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Arc Jet and Return to Flight
06.22.05
 
Links to broadcast quality audio files and transcripts, May 4, 2005 interviews with Ernest Fretter and John Balboni, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., about the Ames 'Arc Jet' facilities and their use in returning the Space Shuttle to flight.

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Radio 16 bit 44.1 kilohertz stereo WAV 9.8 MB
Radio 320 kbps MP3 2.2 MB
on-line Mono-56kps MP3 404 KB

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Full Transcript (below)


15. Q: Please describe NASA Ames' arc jet facility.

Balboni: Well, when you walk into the Arc Jet laboratory, you'll see about a room-sized version of a blowtorch. Really. It sits horizontally. In other words, it sits flat on a bench. It's surrounded by, ah, thousands of water hoses – water being used to cool the, ah, the heater, the heating device, ah, because the temperatures are very, very high. The temperatures are two to three times as high as the surface of the sun. Now, that would be the temperature inside this blowtorch. And it's now then shooting this hot gas into a large chamber – a large vacuum chamber, one that – one that, after a test you can open a door and walk into. But during a test, it's closed up. And it's evacuated by a gigantic vacuum pumping system. So, that this hot, superheated gas is now flowing into a vacuum, and that's where the test then occurs because the vacuum is used to simulate very high altitudes at which the heating occurs. (58 SECONDS)