When NASA Used an RC Tiger II to Drill into Space Shuttle Tires | Hacker News Reader

When NASA Used an RC Tiger II to Drill into Space Shuttle Tires

tankhistoria.com

160 pointslatchkey72 comments

NASA's own page about the topic:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/cv-990-landing-systems-re...

Way more readable.

Also it leads with a picture of the thing which is a million times better than the OP ad hellscape. Official public pages ftw. Thanks.

I thought I was the only one, but that website is really a nightmare for attempting to actually convey information

Much much better. Though it doesn't mention it was a Tamiya which adds to the charm.

They have a collection of LSRA pictures too:

https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/LSRA/index.html

That first one below the contact sheet sure looks exciting!

The tech brief with more details: https://books.google.com/books?id=Qp_Z-mvBehwC&pg=RA6-PA74&l...

Vol. 2, pages 72-74 with a classic HP workstation ad between.

>possibly permanent hearing loss — to anyone within 100 ft.

This is so scary to me. We all ride in cars or busses with tires and the pressure and power of even an average tire is incredible. I'm a little surprised the tweel concept never took off or other alternatives. Tires are dangerous and fragile and if possible would be great to replace.

While this is true, the Space Shuttle tires held three times the pressure of tires in a bus, so sound levels in the event of an explosion would be much higher.

This page has some more background and pictures, without any ads: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/modern-us-tire-assault-vehicl...

Thank you. The linked article keeps reloading, showing full screen ads, and eventually crashing on mobile.

Side comment - can I just observe how modern web has become an absolute hellscape of ads? The article was very interesting but literally in between every paragraph there's a giant ad, at least for me every time it's for the same thing - some random garbage from Temu. When the site opened I had three full-screen ads that I had to dismiss to read the article, and two more popped up as I was scrolling down. It's just.......too much.

I’m more surprised that you are browsing without an adblocker. 0 ads and popups on my side

Mobile chrome. Not sure if there is even an option for an adblocker here. I used to just have a PIA VPN always enabled with the built in ad killer, that worked well system wide but it kept tripping up my bank apps so I stopped using it.

On Android you can use Firefox which have extensions so you can use uBlock Origin

On iOS you can use Adguard Pro which works with all browsers (I use this) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/adguard-pro-adblock-privacy/id...

NextDNS is an ok option - there’s semi decent ad lists, and I rarely go over the free 300k requests per month tier on mobile. You can also set it to ignore wifi networks if you’ve got PiHole or whatever at home.

Not for everyone I guess, but I haven’t perused the privacy policy in great detail.

Yeah I’m on iOS Firefox - never going to happen to get an ad blocking browser

Brave IOS

I use 1Blocker on IOS -- it works pretty well, but not as well as uBlock origin.

I have an adblock browser installed. Google defies any attempt to make it the default but it shows up in the options on the Chrome browser. When a site is too obnoxious I reopen it in the adblock browser for some relief.

Sounds like your problem is Chrome. Firefox and Safari are not owned by ad companies. Consider using them instead.

Vivaldi mobile native adblock works pretty ok

Nextdns gives you dns with custom blacklisting. It's very lightweight, no battery drain and you can allow certain domains if anything breaks.

Not as powerful as UBO but you can use it on almost any device.

Highly recommended

I was wondering why there was so much "empty space" in between, then I noticed Brave blocked 23 requests, probably all tracking and ads. smh

It's awful. I don't know what the threshold was for me, but after I saw enough comments like yours with replies to "just use Pi-hole," I finally gave it a shot.

I'm happy to report that it is indeed possible to enjoy the web again, even noxious sites like this--you can finally walk down the street now that the sea of garbage is gone.

Even for technical people setting up a pihole seems like a goat rope.

Did you find a tutorial or something that made it accessible?

It also only sort of works because as soon as you leave your WiFi it’s no use, unless I fundamentally misunderstand it.

I’m sure it’s a great product, but it doesn’t seem to solve the ad problem.

I consume hn mostly on mobile. Websites like TFA are almost impossible to peruse. I made it about half way through, looking for a picture of the damn thing before I gave up and came here looking for a link to an alternative article.

This is the internet experience of the vast, vast majority of people. Fewer than 1% of people use an adblocker. (Why don’t you?)

It's just the more businessy sites that are fucked like this. The first page of google and such.

There's still a vast ecosystem of casual sites that are quite nice.

You just gotta avoid the hell-gaze of Mammon.

Even on my iPhone (who’d test against that rare platform?) I got repeated strange delays and redraws. Granted, it’s an XR which is hardly the latest model, but… your page is unusable.

Part of it has to do with their ad provider. Ezoic is TERRIBLE.

Tamiya’s site deserves a link, simple old internet style

https://www.tamiya.com/english/e-home.htm

Of course the actual shop site is more modern https://www.tamiyausa.com/

God that second page. Some crazy tiling background that serves pretty much as a militarily camouflage pattern and hides that there is even a popup on top that you need to close or none of the links work

Recommend checking it in an incognito window to add to one's shitty UX collection

Delightful seeing the pretty modern Bronco in such a clean style website:

https://www.tamiya.com/english/products/58705/index.htm

Wow, you’re not kidding. That really is a delight.

Completely offtopic, but how the hell do you think to earn money with these amount of ads. If will turn people away instantly. Cant believe these sites have a strong retention. Also which adnetworks are willing to accept so many ads simultaneously.

That's... a lot of ads to wade through before you get to a picture of the actual tank-drill-contraption

Works pretty well with JS disabled by default :P

As an alternative: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/modern-us-tire-assault-vehicl...

The picture: https://cdn-0.tankhistoria.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/32...

Thanks, some of the pictures didn't even load for me.

Completely unreadable on mobile, but iPhone’s reader view did the job

I bought a 1/16 King Tiger in 2013, intending to gut it and put a small Linux computer in it. Had some progress (took a while to understand the motor controllers were really bad i2c, couldn't read values out, only write), but ultimately didn't get far.

Alas I never turned it into a mobile webcam, which would have been amsuing during covid - a lone computer-tank wandering the office.

I'm imagining it with a little speaker that plays a theme song which pauses whenever it stops moving, one tuned to the correct mix of triumphal amusing attention seeking [0] versus annoying a human into disabling it.

Just remember to stop before making it able to recharge/replace its own batteries. For safety reasons.

[0] https://open.spotify.com/track/2vH4H9RThw2wxCTdZEGV2p

I’ve had this on my Amazon list for ages now, but have never quite found a reason to make the purchase: https://amzn.eu/d/0jSspfR

Lol. I want to have a reason to buy that. It's obviously been built to try to cover a lot of use cases, being capable of returning to charger remotely, working as a low-end camera plaform for temporary surveillance / notifications of movement, mic/speaker etc

I never understood why omni/mecanum wheels hadn't replaced every wheels on everything ever. It's so cool, functional, and cool. Apparently it's something every real roboticists know from having handled it, that they don't work on slopes. So it stays on my bucket list too.

> However it was, for the time and size, quite a faithful rendition of a Tiger II. Its lower hull was made of metal, as was its suspension swing arms and some of the running gear.

Sounds like a nice kit in its own right.

Tamiya makes the good shit.

A few years ago, I had a work assignment that had me with full pit access to the Indy 500. I can't remember which tire manufacture had the deal, Firestone maybe??, but all cars ran on the same manufacture's tire. They were extremely friendly with sharing information, and it was with a bit of pride, but they told me that there hasn't been a wreck due to tire failures in a really long time. The tires have become that good. After every tire change, the pit crews take readings from the tires, and set them aside to be examined later.

Unfortunately for NASA, I think this really long time was after the designs of the shuttles. But you gotta think that some racing slicks on the shuttle would have been pure awesomeness

Can they fit any more ads on that page

This is so cool. Wonder why they wouldn't just use telephoto lenses an some small caliber gun for this though

This comment hurts my head.

How come? If the idea is to be capable of inspecting the tire, then puncturing it if it's deemed a time bomb, why wouldn't this do the same?

The tire is risky in the first place because people are around, making shooting a gun off a bit tricky in terms of safety.

A gun is not a bomb. It is a reasonably precise tool. If the point is to puncture a wheel, and there is one guy at NASA who isn't bloody blind, I really don't see how this becomes less safe from the tire exploding anyway.

I'm sure that there exists a real reason, but I choose to believe that it's because NASA is made of engineers, and engineers are by nature not practical people. They want to design a solution, not find a solution.

If they'd asked the technicians then they would've landed on Steve with his target rifle, or just a plate with a few spikes in it to drive the wheel over. Y'know, simple, straightforward, and absolutely no drawings required.

Might be true lol. NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome with the first part of "if it's not even invention, it's a worthless solution"

NIH doesn't describe this. They bought a model tank from a hobby shop and strapped a drill to it. For an organization plagued by accusations of excessive costs, this is downright cheap. NIH would involve a purpose-built rover to the tune of millions of dollars.

If you read the article you’ll find that the device successfully punctured many tires WITHOUT any explosion.

The point isn't to puncture the wheel, it's to measure the exact failure modes. They know if they puncture the wheel, it will burst.

A drill, for example, tells you the characteristics of exactly when and how it will lose structural integrity given a partial puncture of a given diameter and depth.

Take it from someone who grew up among gun-happy USA-ians and stupidly fooled around with guns in their youth: Don't shoot tires. Not even an old economy tire left from the target car someone dumped in the abandoned gravel pit. Eventually you may hear a zip going the other way, and it might break your buddy's car window behind you and he'd be super mad and want you to pay for it. [0]

All rounds that don't embed will hit something downrange, for somewhat arbitrary values of "downrange" expressed in terms of angle and retained energy. A core principle of firearm safety is that you only get to pick a round's first target, the round picks the rest. And that's why airports and space centers are generally considered by experts to serve poorly as firing ranges.

[0] it's some kind of miracle that we survived to adulthood

I think because they wanted to let the air out gradually so they could inspect the tire afterwards, they weren't interested in tearing a big hole in it from a high velocity projectile. They even started with a hollow drill bit, but decided that wasn't needed.

They used the camera on the tank to pre-inspect the tire before deflating it, which would have given them close ups and angles of view that wouldn't be possible with just a distant telephoto lens.

And for only $3000, it was probably much cheaper to build this than to put in place all the range safety procedures they would have needed to shoot it.

Werner would be proud.

This is probably a bad idea, but like.... couldn't they shoot them?

Totally, with like a high powered dart gun that shoots hypodermic darts

The bullet would act as shrapnel and pling off into something expensive.

What about an air gun pellet? Surely they are small enough (.177)

On the other hand they might be too small to penetrate the thick rubber.

But why, they already found a perfectly good method

Now you’re thinking like a real rsearcher:

“NASA Develops New Caliber Bullet And Design For Penetrating Shuttle Tires For $50M”

“NASA Awards $50M Contract For Remington To Develop New Rifle For Shuttle Tire Woes”

“NASA Awards $10M Contract For Gun Range”

If the tire doesn't explode (seems like none happened to) then the drill method leaves the rest in good condition for failure and life analysis.

There's the chance of a ricochet, possibly into the body of the shuttle or bystander. Or they miss, hitting whatever was on the far side of the shuttle. I think it would also be not as controlled a release of air as they'd want - the drill bit shown is much smaller than a rifle bullet. And a bullet would add it's own energy to the mix.

Oh.. somehow I missed that the tire didn't explode with the needle. I was thinking, if the tires are exploding anyway, is a bullet much worse? But that makes sense.

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