Quote:
Originally Posted by jplinville
My next door neighbor I had when I lived out there retired from MT. He told me the same thing...the cost of recovery and reconditioning was higher than building new, but the public liked the idea. He told me that the worst day in his life was the day the SRB failed and the shuttle exploded. To know that something you worked on failed and killed people in the process is a heavy weight to carry...and he was still carrying that weight over 2 years ago.
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Back when that happened, I had a subscription to Aviation Week. In the aftermath, according to AW, one of MT's competitors offered up a solid one piece version of the SRB's - they apparently had a casting pit large enough and deep enough to cast four SRB's in one shot - doing away entirely with the joints and o-rings.
Also according to AW, NASA rejected this proposal for monetary reasons - it was felt they had too much money already invested in MT's design and existing hardware to just simply scrap it all.
Although I've no doubt there was a lot of politics involved in that as well.