Comments by "Aristocles Athenaioi" (@aristoclesathenaioi4939) on "I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA... (But I said it anyway) - Smarter Every Day 293" video.

  1. My father, who was a cryogenic physicist, told me about a conference attended where he heard a presentation made by a French engineer about the importance of doing dynamic testing as well as static tests of apparatus. The engineer told the story of a one of engineers from German occupied territories who was forced to work for the Germans on the V-2 rocket development during the 2nd World War. He realized that he could dent a fuel line on the V-2 rocket in a way that never showed up in static pressurization tests, but that would cause the fuel line to break under vibration during the operation of the engines. The German engineers never did vibration tests, and as a consequence that foreign engineer at considerable risk of exposure would dent in the fuel lines in that way whenever he could because the engines would fail during flight. At the end of the talk, the engineer showed a picture of the man who did this, and it was a photo of him as a younger man. Everyone applauded of course. My father told me this story in the 1960s after he returned from the conference.
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  2. As I understand, the Russians knew about this problem and had designed their launch systems to avoid the need for the step where the capsule needed to be in a pure oxygen environment. Also what compounded the problem was that the interior capsule was covered in Velcro because it was useful to attach objects to the interior of capsule. However, it also provided fuel for the fire when the spark ignited the conflagration.
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