Shuttle Tank

stuck making a turn...

If the pedestrians weren't blocking the path, the driver could have swung out wider.

e arrival of the 66,000-pound tank means the California Science Center - located in Exposition Park, across the street from the USC campus - will have the only existing full stack of real Solid Rocket Boosters, Orbiter and External tank on display.

"The donation of this never-used artifact from NASA is significant, and allows the Science Center to fulfill its vision of building a full stack for Space Shuttle Endeavour's final display in the launch position in the future Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center

ooppps, a lil to close to the sign

two boom trucks repairing signal after "love tap"

Interesting.

crossing Crenshaw Blvd in Inglewood, you can see a plane from LAX in the upper left

Here's a nice little Fermi problem: Using only the information in the OP, plus general knowledge of vessel construction, estimate the wall thickness of this tank.

would 9 feet of concrete be a bit thick?

That may be an estimate, but not a very close one! Wrong material, too.

its insulated steel? not aluminum?

I don't know, and that would give about a 2.5:1 ratio between wall thickness estimates of aluminum versus steel.

If steel, sounds reasonable. I don't know the dimensions of the tank, but by comparison with other stuff, I would guess about 20 ft x 80 ft.

I worked on 6m x 25m, very close to yours

It may be interesting when eventually we look all this up. If we're close so far, that's a pretty thin-wall tank. I don't yet know how dense the contents are, and how much pressure is generated by weight plus acceleration. From another thread, it appears that the tank may made of a copper-enriched aluminum alloy, which by weight could maybe make it 20 mm ~~3/4 inch thick.

I thought it's a bit thin, but for 66000 lb it must be something like that if it's steel. About 21mm if it's aluminium.

If that thin of steel, I wonder if it would sag of its own weight, but of course it could be pressurized to say 10 psig for shipping.

(I have specifically refrained from other than mental-estimate calculations so far, because this is intended as a Fermi exercise.)

I suppose that's Enrico Fermi, but why him? You've lost me there.

The classic example is, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? The idea is that in the absence of information, one tries to make reasonable assumptions and estimates before looking it up in the Yellow Pages. The Drake equation is similar.

Still don't see what it has to do with Fermi

Because he posed that problem (and perhaps other similar ones) as a thinking exercise in class.

Don't forget, it's not completely hollow, and it has external components as well...

There was actually three different designs, the early standard weight tank(SWT) the lighter lightweight tank(LWT), and the lighter still, super lightweight tank (SLWT)...

77k, 66k, and 58.5k lbs respectively...153' x 27' overall...

I estimate ~ 7mm

The SLWT is only 2.5 mm thick Al-Li alloy with .5" of epoxy and ~2" of spray-on foam insulation....