Early Abort of Ares I Rocket Would Kill Crew 414
FleaPlus writes "From studying past solid rocket launch failures, the 45th Space Wing of the US Air Force has concluded that an early abort (up to a minute after launch) of NASA Marshall Flight Center's Ares I rocket would have a ~100% chance of killing all crew (report summary and link), even if the launch escape system were activated. This would be due to the capsule being surrounded until ground impact by a 3-mile-wide cloud of burning solid propellant fragments, which would melt the parachute. NASA management has stated that their computer models predict a safe outcome. The Air Force has also been hesitant to give launch range approval to the predecessor Ares I-X suborbital rocket, since its solid rocket vibrations are violent enough to disable both its steering and self-destruct module, endangering people on the ground."
Re:100%? (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the survival rate of exploding space shuttles is currently 0% as well... At least the Ares as a mechanism to even allow for an early abort.
Slide 2 Lower Right (Score:3, Informative)
Feel free to draw your own conclusion.
Re:IANARS but... (Score:1, Informative)
I believe you're reading it right. They're not saying all possible emergency abort scenarios. Only those that occur in the first minute of flight.
I think the reason they're being so pessimistic is that any sort of failure during such an early stage of the flight is basically going to result in the range safety officer having to send a self-destruct signal to the rocket which in turn leads to a high temperature debris cloud which in leads to a melted parachute which leads to zero survivability for the crew when the crew capsule slams into the sea.
The Air Force is right. (Score:0, Informative)
By contrast, NASA is a highly political organization. It hires on the basis of affirmative action. An African-American with a degree from Texas Southern University (which is barely better than a typical ghetto high school) will be promoted before an Asian-American or a European-American with a degree from Caltech. The quality of reports and studies issued by NASA is quite low.
Re:Ares Rocket less safe than a Space Shuttle? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sometimes /. is so fatalistic (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Air Force is right. (Score:1, Informative)
You made the exact same comment in comment number (#28744649). Do you have some sort of agenda?
Actually (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Risk? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Air Force is right. (Score:4, Informative)
The armed services ... promote solely on the basis of merit.
As a former member of the armed services, I find that hilarious.
Re:100%? (Score:4, Informative)
It wasn't the explosion that killed the Challenger astronauts but impact with the sea. [wikipedia.org]
Re:IANARS but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IANARS but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Air Force is right. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A possible solution (Score:2, Informative)
Why not just equip the crew capsule with retro rockets?
It is. That's the thing that looks like an antenna on top of all manned expendables, including artists' impressions of the Ares I/Orion stack. The escape tower. It has a bunch of solid rockets (oh the irony) that lift it away from any explosion.
That's not the problem. The problem is they then parachute back through their own debris cloud. Which, in the case of solid rocket based launchers, is on fire.
Escape Towers [wikipedia.org]
Escape Launch Systems [wikipedia.org]
Re:100%? (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the survival rate of exploding space shuttles is currently 0% as well... At least the Ares as a mechanism to even allow for an early abort.
Allow me to present a little bit more context. Back in 2004, NASA received several competing designs for lunar launch architectures, most/all of which involved using liquid-fueled EELV rockets. In 2005 the (now former) administrator Michael Griffin came in, tossed out all the EELV-based designs, and focused the agency on implementing his own solid-rocket design which eventually became the Ares I. A big part of the justification is that the EELV-based designs would have "black zones" during which a rocket failure would be non-survivable, while the Ares I supposedly had no such black zones and was therefore the only legitimate solution. Ironically, since that time the EELVs have been shown to have no such 'black zones," while this latest report indicates that the Ares I has a huge black zone which covers the entire first minute of flight. That means that what was thought to be the main justification for the Ares I is actually a huge deficiency.
Curiously, the other main justifications for the Ares I were that it would be finished faster and cost less than EELV-based designs. As it turned out, it's taking far longer than the EELVs were expected to take, and the cost has ballooned by almost an order of magnitude. With any luck Barack Obama will take the upcoming report from the Augustine Commission and end the Ares I program before it does any more damage.
Re:Ares Rocket less safe than a Space Shuttle? (Score:4, Informative)
Soyuz. The rocket exploded twice, in 1975 and 1983, and each time the crew survived. See http://www.janes.com/aerospace/civil/news/jsd/jsd030203_3_n.shtml [janes.com]
Re:Sometimes /. is so fatalistic (Score:3, Informative)
Rather than investing more in escape systems, it might make more sense to spend the same amount of money making rockets that blow up less...
Well the ones that blow up less probably won't be the same design as SRBs, so they won't be made in the same congressional district as the SRBs so they won't get certain congress critters' approval.
That's my understanding of why they went solid instead of liquid and accepted the resulting vibration problems not realizing that the shuttle has a giant liquid damper on it...
Re:The Air Force is right. (Score:5, Informative)
It takes a modern computer far less than six days to computationally model the behavior of the large belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter using Newton's law of gravitation.
If you do that, you'll see large gaps ("Kirkwood gaps") develop at radii corresponding to orbital resonances with Jupiter. These gaps take far more than six thousand years to develop.
If you look at the asteroid belt, such gaps actually exist. If the Universe is six thousand years, how did they get there? (No credit for "The universe is young but God wanted it to look old".)
***
There are celestial bodies far in excess of six thousand light years away. Anyone building spacecraft surely ought to know about them.
Then there's the georadiological evidence that I'm not going to go into because it's less applicable to astronomy.
Re:100%? (Score:4, Informative)
Without that last qualification things get a little hairier [wikipedia.org].
Re:Not surprised (Score:1, Informative)
That's a pretty ignorant remark.
The industrial base for large scale solid rocket motors has shrunken to where there is only one company capable of making the solid rockets for Ares. The same company that makes the solid rockets for the space shuttle - ATK. So I'm guessing there wasnt much of a bidding war between manufacturers since there is only one manufacturer left in north america who does this kind of work...
Likewise it's not like you're getting the dregs with the 'low bidder' on the other systems.
The aerospace industry is so consolidated now, the low bidder doesnt end up being Joe-Bob's Rocket Co. It's pretty much the usual suspects, Lockheed, Boeing, ULA, ATK...
Do your homework, or just be a troll.
This isn't the only technical problem with Ares I (Score:4, Informative)
First [spaceref.com], they discovered an oscillation issue from the SRB that could cause damage to the upper stage and the orion capsule. Last year [discovermagazine.com], they found out that with a slight wind gust, the vehicle might collide with its launch tower.
Incidentally, both of these problems and the current one are all related to the SRB. President Obama needs to do the right thing here and kill Ares I before it has the chance to kill anyone.
You are unambiguously WRONG (Score:3, Informative)
This AC is unambiguously WRONG about DoD policy regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity.
I normally ignore these racist rants from ACs but since it has been modded up as informative by unsuspecting mods, I will respond in brief.
ALL branches of the military have policy and guidelines in place for recruiting, retainment and training of disadvantaged minorities. This is unequivocal FACT.
These policies and guidelines are open and fully available to the general public:
Army: http://www.aschq.army.mil/supportingdocs/p600_26.pdf [army.mil]
Navy: http://neds.nebt.daps.mil/Directives/5354d3.pdf [daps.mil]
Air Force: http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/pubfiles/af/36/afpd36-D2/afpd36-D2.pdf [af.mil]
Marine Corps: http://www.29palms.usmc.mil/base/safety/eo/pdf/EO%20Terms%20and%20Definitions.pdf [usmc.mil]
Some of these are not the official policy/plans but are official documents that do refer to them. I'm not going to burn up the rest of my Saturday night looking wasting time responding to this AC but hope this is enough for those who might believe there is even a shred of truth to this AC's post.
The fact that so many who have served are not aware of the existence of these policies is a testament to the policies' effectiveness. This is one of the few policy level implementations that the military has done right. By the time promotion boards roll around, it is either transparent or nearly transparent to the board members.
I will remind those that care that the "Military" amicus brief filed by military leaders in 2003 during the Grutter vs. Bollinger (University of Michigan) was cited by the Supreme Court as being one of the strongest arguments in favor of affirmative action in higher education.
Re:That's OK... (Score:3, Informative)
GD made a few key mistakes in their attempt to get government contracts. Mostly that they hired engineers instead of lobbyists and spent the money on research instead of kickbacks.
Re:Ares Rocket less safe than a Space Shuttle? (Score:3, Informative)
Annnnd that the idea of a capsule that could only be opened from the outside was ideal, along with a 100% oxygen atmosphere, and that properly insulated wiring was a "luxury option". They learned that REALLY fast. But that actually had nada to do with actual launch safety.
Now if you were to compare the launch proven Saturn V rocket to the Russian M2 rockets, THERE is the big difference:
The Saturn V was designed by Werner Von Braun, who found that several large engines were safer, because you could build in redundancies, if one out of 5 motors failed, the remaining four could get the job done.
The N1 was designed by an aircraft designer who had no previous experience building rockets, let alone rocket engines. His solution was to build dozens of engines into it, hoping for the same ratio. Of course, the fueling systems were also flawed. The Saturn V used standard hydrogen/oxygen propellents. The N1 used hydrazine/oxygen, IIRC. Hydrazine is highly corrosive, and as they didn't keep that in mind, it ate through seals like a cop at a donut shop. Whenever it did, the rockets exploded, often during fueling, in which case, anyone on site was eaten alive.
It was simply a BAD design.
Now some stuff that WAS well designed: The spacesuit. That lived on to Mir, through the ISS. A part hardsuit/softsuit, that works very nicely. But frankly, the Soyuz design is best for capsule travel. Simple launch system, simple delivery, simple, carrying capacity. Which is why it's used by two countries.
Destruct of Solid rocket boosters (Score:2, Informative)
Re:IANARS but... (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't matter how the Challenger actually failed. The shuttle has no survivable launch abort scenarios.
Challenger carried an Inertial Upper Stage booster in an active cradle. NASA provided several launch abort scenarios to contractors and required the contractors to analyze the active cradle's behavior in the abort scenarios to demonstrate that the active cradle would not make a bad situation worse. The Rogers Commission found all of the NASA abort scenarios, such as early separation of the boosters, or an abort to Spain, or once-around abort, would not actually work, and would result in the loss of the vehicle.
Whether you think NASA conspired to cover-up the lack of survivable abort modes, or they just incompetently succumbed to wishful thinking, they will have no creditability until they actually do an expensive full-up test of a launch abort to demonstrate the safety system work. If the escape systems don't work, then NASA needs to re-design the rocket until it does.
Re:100%? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh please, you can't compare the missed milestones of one program against another program that never missed a milestone because it never started.
Actually, since the other designs used already-existing EELV rockets, there were essentially quite a few milestones already finished.
As for the safety argument, IMHO it's so hypothetical I don't even care. I still don't think anybody knows how safe the shuttle now is, or isn't.
Yeah... it's also kind of interesting how the supposedly safer "man-rated" systems seem to have a pretty similar failure rate to the non-man-rated launch vehicles. IMHO, the only way you can really get a good idea of the safety of a system is through repeated unmanned testing, which coincidentally the EELVs have quite a few flights worth of already.
However, if costs on a program have actually exceeded plans by a factor of 10, I think you have a good argument for developing both in parallel in a big programmatic deathmatch.
Coincidentally, this was pretty much what the original plan was back in 2004: The top two design proposal teams (one headed by Lockheed Martin, the other headed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing) would receive initial funding of $1 billion and compete against each other in an unmanned "fly-off" test of their EELV-based in 2008. Former administrator Michael Griffin was convinced his design was safer/better/faster though, so he tossed out the existing designs (and the whole idea of competitive parallel development) and focused NASA on his Ares I.
Re:100% (Score:2, Informative)
loose?
Re:100%? (Score:3, Informative)
The Russian/Soviet space program has never had a launch failure that resulted in fatalities to crew aboard the ship.
True. Of course, there was the small matter of the 120 or so people incinerated in the Nedelin disaster, but they were on the ground.
When I visited the Kennedy Space Center a couple of years ago, they explained that NASA was extremely proud to never have lost an astronaut in space. Apparently, astronauts lost while on their way to space, or coming back from space, or just rehearsing going to space, don't really count...
Re:100% (Score:2, Informative)
Those three were Apollo astronauts. And only one on them had been part of Mercury.
Solid vs liquid rockets (Score:4, Informative)
"100% liquid fuel was always the right way to do. Loose the solids..."
When someone says "solid rocket" most people think of Challenger. The problem there was that the rocket was operated in conditions outside of design specifications. Liquid fuel rockets tend to fail when pushed beyond their limits, too. I've certainly seen plenty of footage of both types exploding.
I asked about this question to an actual rocket scientist not long ago. My take was that liquid fuel seems safer because you can control it off after ignition. His response, in part: "Offhand I know of at least several cases of a liquid fuel engine going 'BOOM!' and everyone being surprised." Apparently many of the failure modes don't allow for any warning; it just explodes before you can do anything. Further, reportedly, simply "turning off" a rocket engine in flight is not as simple as it sounds; the dynamic loads are complex, and doing it wrong can cause the vehicle to break-up. He said that solid rockets are typically more reliable than liquids, because of their simple design. Liquid fuel motors are very complex, and thus cost more to make, and to make reliable.
He also described an aspect of flight dynamics: Rockets launched vertically go through two phases. The first is overcoming the force of gravity to get it airborne; the second accelerates it downrange and into orbit. Solids lend themselves towards the first phase, because they have a high trust-to-mass ratio. In the second phase, propellant efficiency matters more, and then liquid engines are a win.
He did say that the choice of a solid rocket for the first stage of Area was driven entirely by time and cost constraints. There's no way NASA could have designed and tested a liquid-fuel rocket motor of sufficient thrust and reliability within the time and money allotted.
Now, this is just one guy's take, so I'm not accepting it as ultimate truth. But he knows more than I do.
I, too, have a rather romantic vision of the Saturn V, but given that it was only launched about a dozen times, I'm not sure how realistic that vision is.
Nuclear reaction (Score:2, Informative)
As an aside the specific impulse of the nuclear rockets designed and tested in the 50's and 60's achieved well over 800 s. This is nearly twice that of the ~450 s that is the theoretical maximum of the H2 and O2 solid rocket designs.
In fairness the reliability of the reactor core of the nuclear rocket achieved in the 50s and 60s was not outstanding, but they made incredible progress. Also the nuclear rocket was typically only considered for missions that started in Low Earth Orbit is. As a shuttle from LEO to the moon and mars and such.
much easier forty years ago, but not 42 years ago (Score:2, Informative)