NASA Successfully Tests Orion's New Crew Escape System

Boccaccio writes "NASA on Wednesday successfully tested its MLAS alternative launch escape system designed for the new Orion Crew module. MLAS, or Max Launch Abort System, is named after the inventor of the crew escape system on the Mercury program, Maxime (Max) Faget and consists of four rocket motors built into a fairing that encloses an Orion module during Launch. MLAS is designed to pull the crew away from the main rocket stack during the critical first 2.5 minutes of flight in the event of a catastrophic failure. The advantage of the MLAS system over the more traditional LAS (Launch Abort System) is that it reduces the total height of the rocket, lowering the center of gravity and adding stability, and potentially allowing higher fuel load. You can watch a video of the launch at the NASA website, and there are also a bunch of pictures."

Satire?

[siloko]

You don't want to trust Onion's news Crew Escape System, it's probably a hatch to infinity. Don't they know it's a satirical magazine and not a space exploration tech company?

Oh the possibilities

[yerktoader]

They shoulda ran with it. Awesome names and acronyms have come out of stranger places. For example, my Dad knows one of the engineers that built the San Diego Wild Animal park. They were trying to decide a name for the park's monorail, now known as Wgasa. Apparently, after they had been at it for days one of the engineers coworkers said "Who gives a shit anyway?" :D The story has no official evidence to back it up, but Snopes still believes it to be true.

So I say honor that Faget and give this device a proper name.

Futile attempts go exit there?
Finally a great ejection technology?
Faget's automatic gravity enhancing technique?
Fuckers are gonna egress tonight!

Discuss.

There goes another one...

[PinkyDead]

Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have been short-circuited.

Re:Quite complex

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it may be a Russian design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll

Re:There goes another one...

[drachenfyre]

What are we, paying by the laser beam? You don't do the budgets around here....