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NASA to Test Emergency Ability of New Spacecraft
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Mar 06, 2008 01:10 AM
from the get-out-quick dept.
from the get-out-quick dept.
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."
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Hopefully (Score:5, Funny)
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three solid rocket motors as well as separation mechanisms and canards
He won't be alone they are sending along some ducks for company.
One man, one way mssion to mars (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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I think that's a typo, they must mean "canary". The thing doesn't look big enough for ducks!
>ducks<
It was Nasa's picture of the day [nasa.gov] yesterday.
The real story... (Score:2)
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But was it hubris, callousness, or bean counting? One from each column?
I'm somewhat embarrassed for NASA that they feel the need to press release this. It should be right up there with "NASA To Tighten All Screws On New Spacecraft". Of course you're going to do that.
Re:The real story... (Score:4, Interesting)
--ScottKin
Parent
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Do you have a reference for this? I'm a mild space geek and I've never heard it before.
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Urban Legends [snopes.com] comments
Straight Dope [straightdope.com] comments
MSNBC [msn.com] comments.
All three sources say the same thing: 3 of the 4 air packs were activated which can only be done manually.
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Well, no. The Shuttle is a lot heavier than the Orion capsule. The escape system described here is designed to pull the little capsule away from the booster quickly. In the case of the shuttle, the whole thing is way to big for that.
However, in the shuttle, it is a -lot- roomier than the Orion is on the inside. The shuttle is basically a re-usable station. The orion, on the other hand, is basic transportation. Think, inside of 737
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That cargo bay is pretty roomy though, and it can be closed and pressurized, if the astronauts feel a need to do jumping jacks in orbit, and what not.
Re:The real story... (Score:4, Insightful)
The shuttle should have been an evolution from Apollo. Make the orbiter a stretched, winged service module. Install a hatch in the command module heat shield (this was trialled for the Gemini wet lab). For launch and landing pack the crew into the CM using the rescue mode layout. During launch use a launch escape system. This will get you past the Challenger failure mode. During reentry the LES won't be there but you can use the reaction control system to achieve separation.
Parent
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It's 1963 all over again! (Score:5, Insightful)
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On the side wouldn't have been so bad if it would have been in a vehicle with emergency escape capability. After all "The US Space Shuttle has a lower failure rate (1.6%) than the other launchers. The failure rates range from 5% for the Russian R-7 Soyuz and European Ariane 1-4 to 14% for the US Atlas." [futurepundit.com] Perhaps in this round of launch design we can manage to cut th
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When we built the previous generations of spacecraft we didn't know WTF we were doing -- Especially with the earliest attempts (made by the US) after the launch of Sputnik; We were trying to get something up fast, not something up safely.
The shuttle has been a compromise since its very inception. It was designed to be able to intercept/capture (as well as launch) satalites. Because of this, it doesn't real
Re:It's 1963 all over again! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now consider that the Soyuz is likely flown/managed by people whose attention to safety would give NASA managers heart attacks and just how much of a fuck up the shuttle is become evident.
Parent
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thought so.
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A quick look at Wikipedia shows there have been 98 manned Soyuz missions to date and 121 Shuttle missions. Additionally, you could include the Progress missions which have been used to supply both Mir and the ISS - Progress is an unmanned spacecraft based on the Soyuz design. There have been 114 Progress flights.
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There have been a few variations of the Soyuz manned spacecraft as technology has improved. The current version can support a 3 person crew for 30 days. When docked to a space station it can survive for 6 months in space and safely re-enter with a crew.
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It might be a good point to note here that the crew all survived.
In 1975, Soyuz 18a aborted its launch before reaching orbit due to a major booster malfunction. The Launch-Escape-System automatically triggered when the rocket left what was considered a "safe" trajectory, and the crew also survived.
Soyuz capsules have also survived landings in virtually every sort of terrain known to man. Although subsequent re
Soviet attitude to safety (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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You don't [wikipedia.org] know anything about the history [russianspaceweb.com] of the Russian space program, do you? Oh, and this [wikipedia.org], which killed 48 people. It's hard to find stuff on it though, because it was at the height of the cold war, and the USSR kept it secret.
Further, It's apples and oranges. T
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Rockets used for cargo routinely have a higher failure rate than rockets used for manned spaceflight. And the article you quote is misleading in a number of ways. For example, the Atlas V (not the entire Atlas program which has a failure rate around 2%) is a new design with some failures in the begining. Similar thing for the Ariane 5. Both vehicles have a better safety record now. And the manned Soyuz has a failure rate around 2% with both accidents occuring by the early 70's (and the 7th launch IIRC) and
Project Orion? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all misleading (Score:2)
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do what now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:do what now? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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If something goes wrong, the astronauts don't have to go anywhere; the bolts holding the capsule onto the main Ares launch vehicle blow, and the escape rocket fires, lifting the entire Orion capsule off the Ares rocket and high enough into the air to get clear of the launch pad and any unpleasant explosions.
Most of the thrust from the LES is needed to get the capsule high enough to land by parachute. Normal RCS thrusters could do the job with less mass overhead if you assume that the capsule will normally land by rocket power.
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Re:do what now? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:do what now? (Score:4, Informative)
It is the same sort of escape system attached to the top of the
capsule as the soyuz spacecraft has. If you do some searching it
is a tried and proved emergency escape system. Look for Soyuz T-10,
a fire on the pad occurred during launch causing a explosion that
destroyed the pad. The cosmonauts where launched to safely by their
emergency escape rockets.
Parent
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Stupid frickin' comment submission system...
The CLV is a /capsule/ (Score:2)
Why? After the Shuttle, manned flight is over (Score:2)
And oh, in case you were wondering, manned spaceflight past Earth orbit is dead, buried over and out through at least this entire century.
The apollo abort tests were interesting (Score:2)
ObTrek (Score:2)
Little Joe III (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Joe_II [wikipedia.org]
There was one la
funny difference between perception and reality (Score:3, Insightful)
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.