Safely evacuating: A production model of NASA’s new launch abort system.
Orbital Sciences
Multimedia
The next vehicle to carry humans to space will let astronauts safely abort in case of an emergency.
In building a successor to the space shuttle, NASA has made one component a necessity: a system to let the crew escape should a catastrophe occur on the launch pad or during the first few seconds of flight.
For this reason, a completely new launch escape system is being developed for the Orion crew exploration vehicle, which NASA plans to send into space aboard the Ares rockets in 2015. Both are part of NASA's Constellation Program to send humans to the moon and, eventually, to Mars.
The new escape system would separate the crew module from the launch rocket in a fraction of a second with a small, controlled explosion. Almost simultaneously, a solid rocket motor would fire, providing a million pounds of thrust to accelerate the module from 0 to 600 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds, pulling the astronauts to a safe distance before the module's parachutes deploy.
An escape system was judged an unnecessary addition to the space shuttle, which was originally designed to fly frequently, carrying huge payloads such as large satellites into orbit. "There were so many safety elements designed into the shuttle, people thought the safest thing was to just make sure the shuttle could always get back to the runway in case of engine shutdown," says Jeffrey Hoffman, a former astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. "In retrospect, people would agree we need an escape system."
This point was proved tragically in 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into flight due to a failure in one of its solid rocket boosters. "If the crew had a launch abort system, there may have been an opportunity for them to escape," says Henri Fuhrmann, program manager of the new launch abort system at Orbital Sciences, an aerospace company that has partnered with NASA to design and develop the escape system. The space agency has also partnered with Lockheed Martin, Aerojet, and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) on the project.
The design of the new system is based on the launch escape system built for the Apollo capsule; it also has similarities to Russia's abort system on the Soyuz spacecraft. The Russian system was used successfully in 1983 when a fuel spill caused a fire on the launch pad seconds before liftoff. But NASA's new system will also feature novel technologies, including a motor for steering the crew module and nozzles to reverse the flow of hot gases. The system is the "first of its kind," says Kevin Rivers, project manager at NASA's Langley Research Center, in Hampton, VA. Unlike its predecessors, the system will function at an altitude of up to 91,440 meters during phases of the flight when the rocket is most susceptible to failures.
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I still imagine they are saying the rocket has to blow up...
Wouldnt it be easier to incorporate a material that immediately stops combustion, like a giant foam that expands and some sort of incorporated return to ground safely technology? Like the usual shoots.
Im taking it they have already evaluated and dismissed this idea?
Would this be because lots of smaller pieces would do less damage falling on people... and they like spending years putting them back together again to find out what failed.
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338 Comments
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but a couple months after the shuttle blew up I wrote a letter (snail mail back then, don't think they even had a website back then) to NASA. My idea was that an escape system should be incorporated into any launches.
How to detect problems? Other sensors would likely work (such as sudden uneven drop in fuel tank pressure) but my suggestion was to incorporate a 2-D grid into the booster outer skin during manufacture.
The grid could be optic fibers, fine electrical wires or anything else that would work. I recall a few years later in aviation week mag that some booster company was testing options to do just this. and this aligns previous articles I've seen with having 'smart materials' that do similar things in houses - detecting breaches, fires, energy use...
Regular pulsing of this 2d grid fabric from the ends and sides during launch would reveal any breaks and exact location of break as you're pulsing from both sides like rows and columns in a spreadsheet. In particular more than one break at nearby intersections would indicate booster fuel tank outer hull breach of the booster. (wow sounds like star trek with 'outer hull breech').
This would feed into simple logic circuits that would trigger breach reactions if one or possibly starting at two or more breaches indicated, to avoid false alarms.
The breach actions would be whatever was programmed into the flight computer, blowing explosive bolts to separate shuttle from booster like an ejection seat, and then righting the shuttle like a cat falling for coasting down to earth.
We were watching the apollo movie last night and was kind of funny as the astronauts were insisting on 1) a hatch ,2) explosive bolts to blow it in emergencies. A hatch tho won't separate you from the vast bomb that the booster is or land you.
the additional options are the obvious and sensible actions that can be taken. It's taken 23 years but looks like they're making sense now for the shuttle replacement. Wow that makes me feel old!
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