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Fire in the hole: The abort motor for the new launch abort system was successfully tested in October 2008.
ATK
It will be possible for an abort command to be initiated by the crew, by ground-control personnel, or by the flight computer. Once the crew module and launch abort tower, which sits on top of the module, have been detached from the rocket, a second motor will steer the vehicle into a safe orientation. If activated on the launch pad, the crew module and abort tower will fly one mile into the air and three miles downrange relative to the rocket; during ascent, these distances would vary depending on flight conditions. Once the vehicle is oriented so that the heat shield is facing forward, a third motor fires to separate the launch abort tower from the crew module, parachutes deploy, and the capsule safely splashes down in the ocean for recovery.
The abort motor, the first motor to fire, has a unique design: its four nozzles turn the flow of the hot gases it produces away from the crew module. The second motor, which is located at the very top of the tower and used to control and steer the vehicle, is the most complex and consists of eight small thrusters that fire differentially to point the nose of the launch abort system in the direction that is determined the safest.
Apollo used a simple system that was passively controlled like a large dart, says NASA's Rivers. "But because of the mass properties of the [new system], using a passive system was deemed to be aerodynamically unstable," says David McGowan, lead engineer at Langley. "Without attitude control, the vehicle would just flip over."
"The steering thrusters are pretty fantastic," says Scott Uebelhart, a postdoctoral associate at MIT who studies human spaceflight. "And no one has tested a new rocket engine like this in almost 40 years. It's a big leap forward."
Last week, NASA tested an alternative launch abort system called the max launch abort system, which is based on some of the original concepts studied for the Constellation Program. The test demonstrated a stable trajectory, reorientation, and separation of the crew module from the abort system, and parachute recovery of the crew module simulator, but it was mostly designed for gathering data. It did not have to follow the same criteria as the newer system. "It was just a quick try and turn-around approach for research," says Rivers.
The launch abort system for Orion will undergo its first flight test later this year and several more tests before it is ready for launch by 2015.
"We know we are building a system that is going to save lives," says Fuhrmann. "It is something that we hope we never have to operate, but if it is called upon, it has to function flawlessly."
Engineers put the electric rover through its paces in the Arizona desert.
The U.S. space agency readies the first test flight of the vehicle destined for the moon.
Independent review of human-spaceflight plans gets under way today.
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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erbium
340 Comments
I'm not Topper
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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