Spacecraft

Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Feb. 2, 2015. Charles Bolden delivers a “state of the agency” address. Left to right, the three spacecraft on display are the Boeing CST-100, NASA's Orion and the SpaceX Dragon. Photo: NASA/Amber Watson

Typical NASA, the didn't identify the spacecraft in their photo. I had to figure that for myself. Stack Exchange provided an answer. The Dragon and Orion have both been to space, though not with any passengers.

This diagram shows the seven pieces of Orion’s primary structure and the order in which they are welded together. Credits: NASA

I came across this photo while I was reading about the welding operation NASA was using to build the Orion. The are going to a great deal of trouble, building one complete shell structure just to check their tools and procedures. A spacecraft is a pressure vessel, and while the pressure is not that high, the spacecraft itself is rather large. I have an air compressor in my garage that holds 100 PSI, but it's only about a foot in diameter. These craft are considerable larger, and while the pressure is lower, when multiplied by the area it gets big, as in tons of force. The shell has to be able to withstand the strain, and it probably doesn't weigh any more than my air compressor.


Robotic Friction Stir Welding Automation - Courtesy of CRIQ
To my surprise, I found they are using friction stir welding, which is kind of a bizarre technique. Watching the way aluminum will gum up a file or a grindstone might give you some idea of why it works.

Update: Jack provided this snippet from a different Wikipedia article:

Friction welding (FRW) is a solid-state welding process that generates heat through mechanical friction between work pieces in relative motion to one another, with the addition of a lateral force called "upset" to plastically displace and fuse the materials. Technically, because no melt occurs, friction welding is not actually a welding process in the traditional sense, but a forging technique

Update November 2020 replaced missing video.

More Oil

Der Spiegel reports on a new oil field discovered in the Gulf of Mexico called "Jack 2".

The drilling rig was built in Singapore at a cost of half a billion dollars. They claim this field contains reserves of 15 billion barrels, which at today's price of $90 a barrel amounts to $1.3 trillion. Sounds like big money, eh?

15 billion barrels amounts to about one half of one cubic mile of oil, which is enough to fuel the United States for about six months.

Here are some photos of the rig. Most of them are very small. Typical news reports, the bigger the project, the smaller the photo.

The oil is five miles below the surface of the Gulf. The water is more than a mile deep. I think they may be reaching the limits of drilling technology. If they are using five inch pipe (which is just a wild guess on my part), the drill string is going to weigh on the order of 300 tons. The tensile strength of the pipe is going to be about 500 tons. God forbid anything should break. Is five inch diameter pipe even big enough to transmit the torque six miles down? How strong would the steel have to be to be able to withstand the pressure of the drilling fluid being pumped down the hole? People like to talk about rocket science like it's something special. These guys are doing things that are really difficult. Of course, there is lot more money in it, and not that much to see. It's all underground, out of sight and out of mind.

Update 1 - Welding Drill Pipe

I remember a guy telling me about working at Hughes Oil Tool in Houston a long time ago. They used to weld the couplings onto the drill pipe using friction. Here's a video of friction welding. I imagine this is similar to the way they were welding the drill pipe. While I was looking for this I also came across something called "Friction Stir Welding" which has only been around for 15 years or so. It is very weird.

Update 2 - More about the "Cajun Express"

Another slide show from onboard (dead link)
Industry newsletter article
National Geographic article

Update December 2016 replaced broken links.

Michoud Assembly Facility

NASA - Liquid Oxygen Tank - LOX/GWT Tool. Time Lapse Video.
NASA is charging ahead with the construction of their SLS (Space Launch System) rocket booster. It's a sizable construction project and in order to build the rocket they needed to build some tools. The video shows the erection of two specialized welding tools in the Enhanced Robotic Weld Tool. The two hemispherical scaffolding-like structures are the tools. The one on the left is the Gore Weld Tool and the one on the right is the Circumferential Dome Weld Tool.

They are using Friction Stir Welding to join the parts of the tanks. Stir welding is kind of weird in that it does not involve burning flammable gases or electrical arcs. It works with brute force, which kind of explains why they need such substantial jigs, which is essentially what these 'tools' are.

This is all being done in the Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans, Louisiana.

MAF is one of the largest manufacturing plants in the world with 43 environmentally controlled acres under one roof, and it employs approximately 3,700 people. From 1961 to the end of the Apollo program in 1972 the site was utilized by Chrysler Corp to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn IB, later joined by Boeing Corp to build the first stage of the Saturn Vs. From 1973 to 2010 it was used for the construction of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tanks by Martin Marietta Corp., Denver Colo.  

The facility was originally constructed in 1940 at the village of Michoud, Louisiana to make plywood C-76 cargo planes and landing craft. During the Korean War it made engines for Sherman and Patton tanks, and boasted a 5,500 foot paved runway. - Wikipedia

Return of the Jetsons

Arconic Jetsons Kathrin Jassmann
I used to watch The Jetsons, when? A million years ago? It was kind of a dumb show, along the lines of All In The Family, or Married... with Children, but the gee-whiz gadgets were kind of cool.

This video comes from Arconic, an aluminum manfucturing company. They are a spin-off of Alcoa. Where Alcoa is concerned with mining and smelting, Arconic is more into producing finished aluminum parts. To that end they have just installed a new stretching machine in their plant in Davenport, Iowa. Stretching straightens the sheet and relieves stress. Like friction-stir welding, it is unique to aluminum processing. It isn't used with steel.

Arconic also has a plant in Indiana where they produce aluminum-lithium alloy. I had never heard of aluminum being alloyed with lithium before, but that's not saying much. I hadn't heard of aluminum-copper alloys until recently, and they've been in use for a hundred years.

Update May 2019 replaced missing video.

Update December 2022 replaced missing video.