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Whale oil's use as lubricant in space

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Author	Topic: Whale oil's use as lubricant in space
xlsteve Member Posts: 391 From: Holbrook MA, USA Registered: Jul 2008	posted 01-12-2012 12:31 PM One of my wife's fellow teachers asked about the use of whale oil (Spermaceti) as a lubricant by NASA since it remains a liquid even at very low temperatures. I poked around online and only found conjecture and hearsay about the issue. What I can glean is that it may have been used up until 1980 when it was banned in the U.S. There was also mention of it being used in the gyroscopes in Hubble. Finally I searched these boards and found only one mention of it with nothing conclusive, so I thought I would submit this to the hive mind of collectSPACE.
Robert Pearlman Editor Posts: 42981 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999	posted 01-12-2012 05:58 PM A cursory search turned up a reference to whale oil being employed by the Hamilton Watch Co. as part of an experiment aboard Biosatellite II in 1967, but no other obvious uses.
xlsteve Member Posts: 391 From: Holbrook MA, USA Registered: Jul 2008	posted 01-13-2012 07:42 AM Thanks Robert that is helpful. I found a lot of references to the History Channel's America the Story of Us. Apparently in their discussion of the whaling industry mention was made of the Hubble "running on whale oil," and a lot of hay was made over this comment. However there was nothing from a reliable source.
GACspaceguy Member Posts: 2474 From: Guyton, GA Registered: Jan 2006	posted 01-13-2012 11:13 AM I asked the question of what lube was used in space on the shuttle to our Materials and Processes (M&P) Manager here (former M&P Engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center for the shuttle). Here is his response: The grease that is used is braycote 601 EF (environmentally friendly). It's stable in the vacuum of space and rather costly. Don't believe the advertisement that it is a corrosion prevention grease - it's not. The shuttle program found that planetary actuator gears that were lubricated with grease generated major pitting where they had to be replaced. Minimal use allowed the grease to separate (fillers, etc.) and requirements changed to actuate on a frequent basis. The braycote does not degrade from radiation especially when heavy duty x-rays utilized to inspect hardware.

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