NASA exerts 1 million pounds of force on rocket tank; see what happens

By Amy Hubbard

Dec. 17, 2013 10:09 AM PT

<i>This post has been updated. See the note below for details.</i>

I’m a huge NASA fan. Huge. In the past, the space agency has never failed to bowl me over. Curiosity. Wow. Hubble. Incredible. Space station. 925,000 pounds of awesome.

High-tech can-crushing tests? Meh. My problem with this worthy endeavor -- which will help in the construction of lighter, more affordable rockets -- is in the “crush.”

A massive empty rocket fuel tank was set up in a cavernous space at Marshall Space Flight Center in Hunstville, Ala., for the Shell Buckling Knockdown Factor Project. Then nearly 1 million pounds of force -- yes, 1 million! Cool! -- was applied to the tank to test its structural integrity, the space agency said.

You can sense the enormous pressure in the video. Things appear to be popping and buckling. Exciting! Then it’s over. There’s bending, and there’s banging. But there’s no satisfying crunch. Where’s the big heap of rubble and engineers high-fiving each other?

I was told, basically, the popping and bending are the crunching, you knucklehead.

“They don’t crush it all the way flat,” public affairs specialist Tracy McMahan told me. “They are looking at particular areas and trying to identify structural weaknesses. For example, welds are traditionally areas that tend to be weaker and might fail during forces created during a launch.

“The types of bending and buckling you see in the video is not something you’d want to happen during a launch.”

[Updated, 5:03 p.m., Dec. 18: Mark Hilburger, senior research engineer at NASA Langley Research, contacted me on Wednesday and further revved me up on the experiment -- crunch or no. The self-described NASA geek (who doesn’t want to be a NASA geek!) said the high-pressure test was a thrill for researchers. “From a research point of view, it was a tremendous success and a very unique opportunity for us to gather precise data on a full-scale launch vehicle structure.”]

Onward and upward, NASA, and for more metal-crunching fun, watch the video below.

Follow me @AmyTheHub