NASA Will Man Destruct Switch Just In Case

Ant writes "Popular Mechanics reports if the looming Discovery mission or any other between now and the spacecraft's retirement loses control, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is prepared to ditch it in the Atlantic ocean — or blow it up. The article also shows complete no-fly-zone maps and a photograph of the switch."

Comments

I hope their communication channels are secure

[The Fanta Menace]

...would be pretty nasty if someone if someone figured out how the radio comms for this function worked.

Re:Space Shuttle Discovery

[Jesse_42]

The other issue, just as important as the explosives, is all the other chemicals on board - many of which are highly toxic. This includes chemicals like monomethyl hydrazine (MMH) used in the Orbital Maneuvering Subsystem (OMS) and in the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) for control. It is great stuff, you mix it with nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) and they ignite with no spark or air required. At the same time, by the time you can smell it, you have been exposed to ten times the lethal dose. Remember when Columbia crashed and they told everyone not to go near the wreckage? this was one reason why.

As the parent said, remote destruct capabilities are simply par for the course when your strapping things to that much explosives and toxic chemicals. Really it should make us feel safer that NASA is honest about the risks and is willing to do what it needs to do to insure (as best as possible) public safety.

Re:Four Buttons?

[MoonBuggy]

I had also heard that the astronauts would visit the RSO before their flights with pictures of their families, just to be sure he knows exactly whose lives he would be affecting if he had to destroy the shuttle. That's interesting, I'd actually heard the opposite - that the RSO is not allowed to meet the astronauts at all in order to ensure that they make rational, not emotional, decisions if it comes down to it.

Re:Encoded Signals

[Rorschach1]

Oddly enough, I've seen the hardware specifications for at least one of the command destruct transmitters. That part wasn't classified, but I'm not sure where I came across it - might have been in some old Range documentation I found in the office I inherited. I don't remember much, but I'm pretty sure there were at least a couple of different designs in use. I think one was a redundant 68HC11-based system. All I really remember is that the design struck me as very conservative and architecturally simple. I don't recall any mention of crypto procedures and protocols - what I read only concerned getting the destruct message from its origin to the vehicle.

I'm sure the codes are tightly controlled. It's really not hard to design a very secure system, when it only needs to send one message, and that very rarely. An arbitrarily long, purely random key generated and distributed to the transmitter and receiver under tight security would do it. Denial-of-service would be a more difficult problem to address, but then jamming the signals isn't exactly easy when you're competing with some fairly high-power transmitters on high-gain dishes aimed right at the receiver. And they've got RF measurement vans that I assume patrol for interfering signals, malicious or otherwise.