NASA's Rollercoaster For Moon Rocket Escape

simonbp writes "NASA's Constellation Project has approved the Rollercoaster Escape System to be used as the Emergency Egress Systems (EES) for astronauts and pad crew to race away from the Ares I pad, should an emergency be called. The Ares I is the first of NASA's new moon/Mars rockets and is scheduled for a first manned flight in 2014." From the article: "An unpowered fixed single-rail system from the access arm level of the ML tower to the existing bunker would be used. The railcars could be enclosed to provide personnel protection. Each railcar can hold four to six people. The rail would follow the ML tower vertically down to the pad surface, then turn and continue close to the ground to the safety bunker. A passive magnetic and friction braking system will decelerate the cars at the tracks end as well as prevent the cars from hitting each other."

Comments

Obligatory Obscure Game Reference

[StefanJ]

Be sure to assign lots of Handymen to the exit area. Sounds like this thing will have a maxed out the Nausea Rating.

Re:Obligatory Obscure Game Reference

[voidptr]

The Saturn 5 is going to incur development costs? Its already developed, its old dependable technology, and its relatively cheap.

No, it's not already developed. The blueprints and software have been lost, the tooling to build any of it no longer exists, and the original engineers and machinists are dead or well past retirement.

Not to mention several critical systems like the guidance computer used to weigh multiple tons. Modern units today could be built with orders of magnitude more functionality and safety for orders of magnitude less weight, which means either more useful payload or a lighter propulsion system. Even if you had the original Saturn V stack, the avionics took up so much weight and room, you'd have to do years of engineering and requalification to replace them with modern equivilents. You'd completely shift the weight and balance of the original design.

Overall, it'd take more time and effort to make a modern Saturn V stack fly today than to just engineer a completely new stack with modern engineering and the lessons learned from the last 50 years of manned space travel and avionics engineering.

Re:WTF?

[MichaelSmith]

Heck, they might as well build a loop-d-loop at the bottom so tourists can pay to ride it.

My idea for an escape system in very tall (WTC) buildings is to construct vertical drop tubes inside the buildings. At the bottom it would depart the vertical and follow a parabolic curve for a couple of hundred metres to bleed off speed.

In normal operation users would pay for the jump and would wear protective clothing. In emergency operation water would spray into the tube to reduce frictional heating when you hit the sides. A simple traffic control system would try to prevent collisions with people who enter the tube part of the way down.

Re:Safer in or out?

[cyclone96]

I think some of the comments are missing a critical point here...

Not all emergencies requiring rapid pad evacuation necessarily involve just the crew in a capsule on a fueled booster ready to go. During the final count, the normal method of escape is going to be to fire the escape tower and pull the whole capsule off the booster.

However, before the crew is strapped in and the access arm is retracted there is the possibility of an emergency arising where they (and the closeout crew) need to leave in a hurry. In fact, that possibility is there days and days before launch for the the folks that work out on the pad. That's what this system is designed for.

I have been out on the shuttle pads when routine pre-flight work was being done, about 2 weeks before launch. Before I was given access to those areas, I had to be trained in escaping from the pad if an emergency like a fire or chemical leak arose (not a simple matter, the pad itself has hatches and a labyrinth of internal passages not unlike a ship). One part of that training was learning how to operate the slide wire baskets to rapidly get from the the access arm level to the ground. As I recall, you follow the big yellow arrows, get in facing backwards, pull the release handle, and pray.....

At that time the crew was about 1000 miles away from the pad, but the baskets were there to protect the pad workers in what is essentially a hazardous industrial area not unlike an oil refinery.

Apollo solution...

[Hamster Lover]

I couldn't tell you if this system was developed before or after the Apollo 1 fire, but there was a launch tower escape system that consisted of a guy wire to the ground. In an emergency the crew would evac to a tower platform and into a harness, down the guy wire and into a block house. While not as sexy a high tech roller coaster, thanks to its simplicity probably more reliable. Why make things more complex than they need to be? I tried to find some information on the web but came up empty handed.

This system is not to be confused with the Launch Escape System that sat atop the capsule, which was a couple of small rockets intended to pull the capsule away from the main rocket assembly either on the pad or in flight if there was a catastrophic failure.

Re:Apollo solution...

[Keebler71]

The system you describe is still in use for the shuttle. The problem is that the launch tower for Ares I will be at almost double the height and the crew escape level will be so high that a simliar guy-wire solution would deliver the crew outside the radius of where the bunker is. NASA will need to either move the bunker radially outward, or come up with an alternative escape system. (This is a proposal for the latter).

Re:What's the point of this?

[ityllux]

Passive magnetic = magnets, with like poles repelling each other
Friction braking = hand brakes

They are keeping it simple, stupid.

Re:WTF?

[CommunistHamster]

Beanbags

Re:Not the right approach IMHO

[DerekLyons]

I mean, 'cmon... We've been doing ejection seat type systems for what, 40 to 50 years now? These kinds of systems are very, very reliable.

Not particularly. It's not unheard to fail to eject, or to have the ejector fire without being commanded to do so.
 
 

Other spacecraft have used similar systems. The F-111 had/has such a system if I remember correctly.

The FB-111 capsule escape system has been used (IIRC) 20-25 times across its history in US service - and one or both of the crew was severely injured each and every time. In the aviation community ejecting from an aircraft is reffered to as "attempting suicide to avoid being killed".

Re:Not the right approach IMHO

[ScentCone]

You've also got another scenario: big ol' nasty fuel/oxidizer leak. You could hop in a passive (enclosed) car for a 32 f/s/s-quickening ride out to a bunker, or, you could use the ejection method, and light a big ol' ejection rocket right on top of the giant leaking tower of flammable stuff. I think you'd want both options, so that you can react to a range of hazards. If they need to bug out, they'll usually know why... and they may very well not be in the capsule (yet) when they see they need to. For that matter, the pad workers may have the need hours before the crew even saddles up.