Slashdot Mirror
NASA to Test Emergency Ability of New Spacecraft
coondoggie writes "NASA this will show off the first mock up of its Orion space capsule ahead of the capsule's first emergency astronaut escape system test. NASA said it will jettison the full-size structural model off a simulated launch pad at the US Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The launch escape vehicle sits atop the Orion capsule which is slated to be bolted on an Ares rocket. The escape vehicle is made up of three solid rocket motors as well as separation mechanisms and canards, and should offer the crew an escape capability in the event of an emergency during launch, according to NASA."
they'll have this whole thing ironed out for when that one guy has to go to Mars alone
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
The shuttle had no escape system.
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4205/app-c.html#section2 Ah, Saturn V... good times. Glad we've once again remembered it's a better idea to have the astronauts at the TOP of the stack rather than stuck to the SIDE of the stack.
All they needed to think was couple of parachutes....oh wait..
hilarious
Somewhat offtopic, but I still don't think you should name any space project "Orion" unless it involves nuclear propulsion! It's... misleading.
Excuse me? During launch? They're supposed to get into an emergency capsule if something goes wrong during launch? Okay let's just ignore the whole idea of how fast they'd have to be and say they're really, really fast astronauts...how the hell is anyone going to get up out of their seat and into a capsule while they're pulling what like 7 Gs? I'd like to see someone even lift their arm up let alone get up.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Perhaps a little off topic, but why are US space programs named after Greek mythology? It's not like it is appropriate. Apollo, Nike-Zeus, Atlas,Orion, Ares - what was wrong with names like Redstone, Columbia etc.?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I skimmed the article looking for details on the ejection system itself, but nothing stood out.
I'm guessing this is an ejection system strictly for non-moving spacecraft, right? I mean I can't imagine the speeds those shuttles reach, and having a piece of it suddenly pop open and eject the crew. Debris would be flying for miles.
Everyone knows that NASA will be pressured to end manned spaceflight after the Shuttle program and it will be respun as some kind international friendship effort to have all American astronauts put into orbit by Russian, Chinese and Indian systems.
And oh, in case you were wondering, manned spaceflight past Earth orbit is dead, buried over and out through at least this entire century.
like Apollo. The Astronauts ride inside it, the tower is attached to the top. When they eject, the tower pulls the capsule away from the rest of the stack.
Best Slashdot Co
In the article they actually admit that it's an Estes rocket. OMG, I built models bigger than this thing when I was 12! And they came back in fewer pieces (by law), all of which were reusable, than NASA is going to get. Where the hell is my money going!?
Maybe that's what we need - A LAW! Oh...wait...
----------
Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
Orbital Science is the manufacture of the Orion CEV Launch Abort System
Nice to see NASA try to give the Astronauts a way out of a potentially deadly situation. Please give them credit for that much.
This is also good for the people in Southern New Mexico that live and work near White Sands Test Facility and White Sands Missile Range . As well as Tuscon Arizona, where Orbital is located, as it helps the economies of both regions.
Here's a picture of one of the apollo abort tests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pad_abort_test_1.jpg . The wiki has a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_Abort_Test-1_%28Apollo%29
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
We'll never be ready for a spacecraft emergency until they've perfected that "Red Alert" klaxon/flashing light combo, and properly choreographed the entire crew to lean toward one side and then the other in unison.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
People who have investigated the ejector seats on Soviet military aircraft have commented that in some ways they were better than ones used on many NATO planes,and the armor on Soviet helicopters was truly impressive. After all, who do you think worked on the Soviet space and military aircraft programs? Hint: they weren't heroic Stakhanovite peasants. They were the sons and daughters of Party members, the people who were on top in the Soviet Union. And middle class people are notorious for caring an awful lot what happens to their children.
So I guess what I am saying is, there is no a priori reason for believing that the US and USSR attitude to space flight safety was significantly different, but, as Arthur Clarke once commented, the Russians preferred to go with solid, proven, perhaps over-engineered systems even if they were bigger and heavier.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The Little Joe series was a set of clustered solid two stage boosters designed to test the Mercury and Apollo capsules. Little Joe I was initially had clusters of four Sergeant solids, later the addition of Recruit motors for added "kick". Little Joe II had a bigger kick though, using 2 Algol 465 Kn motors in each stage.
I can see a new Little Joe being built to loft Orion "boilerplates" on a new series of tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Joe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Joe_II
There was one last Little Joe II on display at JSC in Houston. Situated beside the Saturn V display building, sitting on its transport jig, rusting from the inside out, in dire need of restoration.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
First came the lighting tower - designed to "divert" lighting.
Now they're building an "emergency" rollercoster to "quickly" move people away.
Just add a flux capacitor and I think they're good to go.
Very interesting how that are adding a lightning arrest system. From description it looks like systems I have seen for smaller launch sites. Wonder why it took them so long to add one here? I for one do NOT what to meet our Electrically charged overlords ...
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
Basically, the "escape system" they describe is a series of small retro-rockets and some explosive charges that will detach the capsule from the launch vehicle in the event of an emergency. There is no separate escape module.
The overall launch vehicle differs in a few critical areas from the old Mercury/Gemini/Apollo setups in that all of those capsules were on rockets that could be shut off after ignition. If there was a problem on a Saturn, or Atlas, or whatever, they would tell the engines to shut off and the flight path would then become a ballistic flight. This is important in that the capsule and launch vehicle would then be traveling the same speed and have zero relative velocity. It becomes a simple matter to then have some rockets that would move the capsule away from the rocket. While rough on the occupants, from an engineering perspective, it is much easier to achieve separation between two bodies traveling at the same speed than if one of them remains accelerating.
With Orion and Ares, the issue is complicated by the use of a solid rocket. You can not shut down the rocket after ignition. It remains under constant thrust. The most likely failure mode in an SRB is loss of control. An SRB is not as likely to explode as the fuel burns at a fairly constant rate. But, loss of control is a different set of problems. You can not eject forward of the flight path as the rocket is still accelerating and will likely run into the capsule. Similarly, it can't just detach and have rockets kick it away a short distance either. It has to be ejected a certain distance away perpendicular to the flight path and far enough away that it would not be in the path of an out-of control SRB or its exhaust.
I have to admit, I get a burst of geek pride when I see the shuttle actually building something in space, even if it's the deeply flawed space station. Back in the 90's, it burned me up to see the shuttle just dicking around in low earth orbit, not doing much but performing breeding experiments on fruit flies and floating around in the cabin. $500 million a launch and the damn thing isn't doing much on orbit when it's there! But building the space station, that's one of the original meat and potato missions planned for the shuttle. Neato! And to see that sucker in space, then see it come down through the atmosphere and land like a plane, oh so cool.
But you know what? None of that stuff was really necessary. There's no financial sense in retrieving satellites from orbit. The servicing of the Hubble was a very unique situation, it's almost always easier to treat each satellite as an expendable unit, send another one up when the last one wears out. The cost of launch is so high that "servicing" missions to install new components, refuel the thrusters, etc, all would end up significantly more expensive than sending up a brand new satellite.
As for building space stations, it really does make more sense to have a light man-rated vehicle that has 99.9999% reliability and a big dumb booster with 99% reliability sending up the big pieces. A shuttle really isn't needed for building anything in space -- things like the cargo bay arm should be a part of the station already. I believe one of the cut modules for the station would have been a super-arm, a multi-segmented robot that could walk it's way around the station, anchoring itself on special pads that would provide support and power. One or two of these arms could move anywhere on the station and help attach incoming modules every time they're boosted.
What we really need for a revolution in space, we need bigger boosters. Why did pepper used to be worth more per ounce than gold? Because getting to the far east was so damned expensive, caravan or ship, it was a dicy proposition. Why is pepper cheap as dirt now? Affordable transportation. Lower the cost of transport and whole new worlds of possibility are opened.
I remember reading about the Orion drive for the first time and smacking my head in awe. They weren't talking about building finnicky paperweight rockets, they were talking about constructing true spaceships in frickin' shipyards, launch weights that dwarfed naval destroyers! Ok, so maybe using open fusion explosions to propel the ship ain't politically correct but I've seen some very intriguing theoretical designs for clean nuclear propulsion, the kind of stuff with ehough ISP to get big, heavy things into earth orbit. Screw rockets and capsules, I want to see us launching stuff that looks like Battletech DropShips. Let's have some goddamn ambition, for chrissake.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Once again, we somehow end up having the same discussion...
First of all, you're wrong about the fatality rate. The soyuz has had 2 fatal missions in 98 flights (2%), killing 4 crewmembers (Soyuz 1 only carried a single crewman) out of 260 (1.5%). Only a serious miracle and herculean rescue effort kept Soyuz 23 from being fatal. It was a pair of small miracles that Soyuz 18a and Soyuz T-10-1 (which exploded on the pad 2 years after the first shuttle flight, contrary to your assertion) weren't fatal.
The shuttle has had two fatal missions out of 120 (1.7%), killing 14 out of 830 crewmembers (1.7%). The difference isn't even remotely statistically significant. And one would hope that as long as the Soyuz has been in operation they'd have ironed out the bugs...which they mostly have, but not entirely. A mission returning from the ISS several months ago had a navigation issue that resulted in them landing several hundred kilometers off target and experiencing higher than normal g-loads.
Secondly, the shuttle isn't quite directly comparable to Soyuz. It's a far more complex system (for reasons that admittedly are not entirely free from criticism) that provides a unique in-space work platform, cargo capability, landing precision, and down-mass capability. You can fit a fully fueled and loaded Soyuz TMA spacecraft with three crewmen in the shuttle's cargo bay, plus a moderate additional payload and the robotic arm, along with the 7 shuttle crewmen.
Third, we're all painfully aware of the particular delicacy of the shuttle's thermal protection system and it's exposure to launch debris. This isn't pure folley. Most of the risks of a side-stack configuration were known beforehand, and a design tradeoff was made. Furthermore, the shuttle is being retired in 2 years, making the criticisms largely moot in the present context.
So give criticising the shuttle every time an article on spaceflight comes up a rest.
CHIEF PILOT: There goes another one. CAPTAIN: Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have been short-circuited.
mod down kthx