How Do Astronauts Escape When a Space Launch Goes Wrong? (wired.com) 60
On May 27, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are expected to become the first humans to ride a Dragon. The two astronauts will catch a ride to the International Space Station in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule as part of the Demo-2 mission, the final test before NASA officially certifies the vehicle for human spaceflight. It will be the first time in nine years that NASA astronauts have launched to space from the US -- and the only time they've ever flown on a commercial rocket. Engineers have spent years planning for what happens if things go awry. Here's a look at what happens if for some unfortunate reason, something goes wrong in space: There are several events that might cause Behnken and Hurley to abort a mission once they're already in orbit. These range from depressurization to a cabin fire, both of which have occurred on previous crewed missions. In fact, depressurization was the cause of the only deaths known to have occurred in space. In 1971, three cosmonauts returning from a mission to the Salyut 1 space station were killed after a pressure valve in the capsule failed and the cabin turned into a vacuum within seconds. The Crew Dragon has multiple lines of defense against this kind of disaster. In the event of a small leak caused by a faulty component or impact from space debris, the capsule can pump more oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin to maintain pressure until the crew either returns to Earth or arrives at the space station. But if the breach is too large to plug with more gas, Behnken and Hurley's flight suits can be pressurized and fed oxygen, effectively turning the suits into single-occupant spacecraft. Depending on where they're at in the mission, it's possible they could continue on to the space station even if the cabin is a total vacuum.
"The suit is kind of like an escape system, and is designed to be used only if you're having a very bad day," says Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who also spent several years as the director of SpaceX's crew operations. "It's nice to know it's there, but you hope you never have to use it for its intended purpose." If NASA decides to abort a mission once Behnken and Hurley are in space, they'll trigger the capsule to perform a deorbit burn that pushes it back into the atmosphere. At that point, drag will start to take effect and pull the spacecraft back toward terra firma. If it's a dire situation, NASA might choose to deorbit the capsule immediately, even if it means landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Otherwise, mission control will take the time to evaluate the best emergency landing location based on weather and the location of rescue teams. Behnken and Hurley have enough food, water, and oxygen for four days on orbit, so there's no reason to rush unless the situation demands it. "More often than not, when you feel that you're rushed, you need to slow down to avoid making a mistake and driving yourself into a difficult situation," Scoville says.
"The suit is kind of like an escape system, and is designed to be used only if you're having a very bad day," says Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who also spent several years as the director of SpaceX's crew operations. "It's nice to know it's there, but you hope you never have to use it for its intended purpose." If NASA decides to abort a mission once Behnken and Hurley are in space, they'll trigger the capsule to perform a deorbit burn that pushes it back into the atmosphere. At that point, drag will start to take effect and pull the spacecraft back toward terra firma. If it's a dire situation, NASA might choose to deorbit the capsule immediately, even if it means landing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Otherwise, mission control will take the time to evaluate the best emergency landing location based on weather and the location of rescue teams. Behnken and Hurley have enough food, water, and oxygen for four days on orbit, so there's no reason to rush unless the situation demands it. "More often than not, when you feel that you're rushed, you need to slow down to avoid making a mistake and driving yourself into a difficult situation," Scoville says.
use left hand (Score:5, Funny)
It's the key to the left of F1
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Nah, it's bound to backspace by default. Not that I ever save my Kerbals.
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It's the key to the left of F1
That must have been uncomfortable on the Saturn V.
Escape? To the next life (Score:2)
The most well known would be the space shuttle which blew up in front of a zillion news cameras at relatively low altitude on launch. You can see on the footage it goes in a few seconds from "what's the flame on the fuel tank?" to catastrophic explosion turning the whole thing into flaming wreckage. Totally unsurvivable no matter what system was in place.
So, the answer is, "it varies but they're proba
Re:Escape? To the next life (Score:5, Informative)
It would have been somewhat survivable if there had been some sort of ejection or abort mechanism: at least some of the crew of Challenger survived the breakup of the vehicle (several emergency air supplies were activated after the breakup), and likely survived in the mostly intact crew cabin until it impacted the water. Had the crew cabin been designed to eject from the vehicle and make a soft landing (perhaps by parachute), some or all of the crew may very well have survived.
Capsules like Crew Dragon, however, are designed to do just that. In the event that something should go catastrophically wrong with the first or second stage of the rocket, the capsule's abort motors can pull it to safety. This has been demonstrated in practice, with the in-flight abort test (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhrkdHshb3E launch is at around 18 minutes, abort is around a minute and a half later).
This doesn't necessarily help if there is a catastrophic failure in the capsule itself, but in general, a much larger percentage of catastrophic failures are survivable with a capsule design like Crew Dragon than they were with the space shuttle.
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Gonna need a citation on that, 15 seconds on Google shows, that the conspiracy theory is very much alive and well and I'm not seeing any claims that it is incorrect.
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https://history.nasa.gov/kerwin.htm [nasa.gov]
From the document:
Re: Escape? To the next life (Score:2)
So this debunks the debunking. Does that mean the theory has be re-bunked?
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The conspiracy theory was that NASA had recordings, not that the astronauts survived the explosion. It's generally accepted that some or all of the astronauts likely survived (albeit probably unconscious) until impact.
Somebody else attempted to link to NASA's copy of Joseph Kerwin's letter, but that URL is a 404. Here's another copy:
https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/s... [nasa.gov]
Relevant bits:
The forces on the Orbiter at breakup were probably too low to
cause death or serious injury to the crew but were sufficient to
separate the crew compartment from the forward fuselage, cargo
bay, nose cone, and forward reaction control compartment. The
forces applied to the Orbiter to cause such destruction clearly
exceed its design limits.
The range of most probable
maximum accelerations is from 12 to 20 G's in the vertical axis.
These accelerations were quite brief. In two seconds, they were
below four G's; in less than ten seconds, the crew compartment
was essentially in free fall. Medical analysis indicates that
these accelerations are survivable, and that the probability of
major injury to crew members is low.
The separation of the crew compartment deprived the crew of
Orbiter-supplied oxygen, except for a few seconds supply in the
lines. Each crew member's helmet was also connected to a
personal egress air pack (PEAP) containing an emergency supply of
breathing air (not oxygen) for ground egress emergencies, which
must be manually activated to be available. Four PEAP's were
recovered, and there is evidence that three had been activated.
The nonactivated PEAP was identified as the Commander's, one of
the others as the Pilot's, and the remaining ones could not be
associated with any crew member. The evidence indicates that the
PEAP's were not activated due to water impact.
The crew suffered 10-20 G of acceleration during the breakup, but 200 G on impact. The former is survivable. The latter is not.
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Had the crew cabin been designed to eject from the vehicle and make a soft landing (perhaps by parachute)
With the materials and technology of the 1970s that wasn't even on the horizon of possibility. Additionally, even if they had miraculous access to modern materials the configuration would have increased the mass of the vehicle by an unacceptable amount. If NASA had been allowed to build their original design of the Space Shuttle it would almost certainly have been safer and more usable, but after the beancounters in The Office of Management and Budget (appropriate acronym is TOMB), the lawyers in Congress
Re: Escape? To the next life (Score:1)
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The space shuttle had large parts of its launch and landing phases which were in the "yeah, you are going to die" area on the "chances of survival" graph.
Thats in comparison to Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Soyuz, which all have full escape systems during launch which are intended to provide survival even if the booster detonates on the launch pad like the case of Soyuz 7K-ST [wikipedia.org] - you might still be at the mercy of a technical malfunction on reentry, as per Soyuz 11 and its faulty valve, but things like that lea
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The space shuttle had large parts of its launch and landing phases which were in the "yeah, you are going to die" area on the "chances of survival" graph.
If only the glider was on the top of the launch stack. It's a good idea, but implementation meant a much taller vehicle and that meant a bigger VAB, that meant more money.
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Many examples of things going wrong and the crew instantly die (or close enough to instant in some cases).
The most well known would be the space shuttle which blew up in front of a zillion news cameras at relatively low altitude on launch.
The crew cabin survived, and the crew may have been alive when it hit the ocean, though there were some fierce g forces before then.
Elon has talked about the design of the launch escape sequence a bit. You can't outrun the explosion, but you don't need to, as the crew is inside a pressure vessel to begin with. It's important to escape the debris, though, and of course to land safely.
Starship doesn't have a launch escape system at all. If the super heavy booster blows, Starship will just fly off and land
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We can continue to focus on what was or we can start planning what will be. At least Trump was partly right in setting up a space force but a complete blunder in aligning it with the US Air Force, rather than the far more appropriate US Coast Guard https://www.uscg.mil// [uscg.mil], although still military, they main focus of expertise was in rescue services out at sea and of course policing activities.
Before space can be commercialised for access by lots of people space rescue abilities need to be established, as we
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The only "setting up a space force" Trump did was to move the existing organization (we've had it for 50 years or so) out from under the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force. Sort of like when they moved the Army Air Corps out from under the Army Chief of Staff to create the US Air Force.
The only meaningful change for the guys who've been
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Starship doesn't have a launch escape system at all. If the super heavy booster blows, Starship will just fly off and land on it's own.
How does that work if the booster blows on the pad? Starship's six engines have 1200 ton total of thrust, but fully loaded it weighs 1320 tons, according to recent numbers. Too fat to lift itself. (And can the raptor rockets start fast enough?)
One solution might be some high-thrust, short-burn escape rockets in the interstage, that could lift the second stage off in an emergency, but normally return to earth with the booster, so as not to take too much from the payload.
If the landing rock
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How does that work if the booster blows on the pad? Starship's six engines have 1200 ton total of thrust, but fully loaded it weighs 1320 tons, according to recent numbers. Too fat to lift itself. (And can the raptor rockets start fast enough?)
Not sure about the weight. Perhaps higher thrust is planned before a manned Starship launch. Musk has stated that the raptors can spool up very fast, fast enough to serve the purpose. That's new for liquid fueled engines, but raptor is a lot of firsts.
If the landing rockets are damaged on de-orbiting, there are a few minutes of sub-sonic belly-first vertical descent where they could potentially eject the crew.
I don't think there's a worry about normal de-orbiting, except for a moon landing and the Starship moon lander (Moonship?) will have aux engines just for that. But if super heavy blows up while Starship is sitting on it, seems to me like the risk of engine
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As far as I know, the latest information from late 2019 was that pad abort support is not planned for early Starships, but is planned for later ones. Perhaps using additional hypergolic thrusters, as are planned for the lunar landing variant, or perhaps using an uprated version of the engine. Most of the initial launches will be unmanned (even the manned lunar landing variant will be unmanned when launched from Earth), which is why they may not be focusing on pad abort capabilities for those launches.
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Challenger disaster changed NASA's procedures though, because it was found out the astronauts survived the explosion, but subsequently asphyxiated or drown
I wonder how all the displays will go in vacuum (Score:3)
Crew Dragon has some pretty fancy displays. They look like LCD touch panels, but they're probably OLED or some such. I wonder how they take a sudden loss of pressure?
Apart from displays there's a bunch of other electronics that wouldn't appreciate a full vacuum. Electrolytic capacitors, for example, have a burst disc on top of them in case the pressure in the can gets too high - these would also have to be rated for vacuum. Crystal or MEMS oscillators might shift frequency in vacuum (iPhones will actually stop working in helium contaminated atmospheres because of this). Backup batteries with semi-solid or liquid electrolytes will suffer.
I know that all of this would have been looked after already, I'm just curious as to what they're using.
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Probably not OLED, too many disadvantages and not ideal for displays with a lot of static images like HUDs and UIs. Also LCD is already proven in space.
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LCD panels aren't vacuum rated though - the liquid part boils off. So they'd need to be sealed or encapsulated somehow.
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Electrolytic capacitors, for example, have a burst disc on top of them in case the pressure in the can gets too high - these would also have to be rated for vacuum.
The pressure difference in vacuum is not that high at only 14 PSI so electronic parts will handle it just fine. At worst, operating life will be shortened.
Matter of physics and chemistry (Score:1)
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The first (and so far only) flight of Boeing's Starliner (their equivalent to the SpaceX Crew Dragon) recently failed for exactly the same reason as the 737 Max: serious software problems that resulted from insufficient testing. There were also two other software errors that occurred during the flight that would have destroyed the vehicle had they not been caught and stopped by ground controllers in the nick of time.
They study film Gravity (Score:2)
Sandra Bullock explains everything well.
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I remember, you need to learn to read Chinese! That part was pretty hilarious...
Re: They study film Gravity (Score:2)
Russian thought process: "I want a meat".
This was done before (Score:2)
During Project Manhigh [wikipedia.org]
Generally, they do not (Score:3)
This is a high-risk job. If something goes really wrong, these people die. That is known and reliably preventing this at this time is only possible by not doing space-launches with people. Not a surprise, every new transportation method takes a while to become less lethal on problems.
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That is known
I imagine lots of "known" things need to be explained to Msmash.
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The astronauts of Mercury Seven were brought to the launch pad to watch a rocket take off. Their guide proudly told them that this was the ship that would take them to space, and then watched as it blew up on the pad in front of them. None quit, although John Glenn did tell a reporter later that his last thought before liftoff was, "I wish this hadn't been built by the lowest bidder."
Atlantic splash down (Score:2)
If all goes well, after the mission to the space station is complete, astronauts will return and splash down off the Florida coast. As far as a I know this will be a first for an American rocket capsule. Pretty much everything before splashed down in the pacific. Not sure all the reasons for that. During the Apollo 13 mission, controllers debated an Atlantic splash down, but chose to make the astronauts wait a bit longer in space in their cold, dead ship, (half day if I recall correctly) so they could land
Nope, wrong. (Score:2)
Nope, there were quite a few splashdowns in the Atlantic, two from Apollo and quite a few from Gemini.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Umm, no. Apollo wasn't designed to return to Earth orbit from the Moon - it reentered directly from the Moon-Earth transfer orbit.
Just like every other Apollo Lunar mission....
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Correct. I didn't say it was. The reality is that controllers were debating three return trajectories. One of them would have brought them back to a splashdown in the Atlantic ocean on Thursday. That involved a very long and dangerous burn (using almost all their fuel). In the end they chose the safer route that brought them home on Friday, and in the Pacific ocean.
So, umm, yes there was a debate over Atlantic vs Pacific splashdown, and yes they chose to make the astronauts wait a little longer in spac
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To add some context, the five options considered were:
1) No burn (free return): 155 hours, Indian Ocean. Dropped because there was no reason not to use the LM motor.
2) Burn all LM prop: 118 hours, mid-Pacific. Dropped because it left no fuel for course correction.
3) Jettison SM and burn most LM prop: 118 hours, mid-Pacific. Dropped because it exposed the heat shield to space for 40 hours.
4) Burn most LM prop: 133 hours, South Atlantic. Dropped because no recovery assets in the Atlantic.
5) Burn most LM prop,
Not only depressurization (Score:2)
"depressurization was the cause of the only deaths known to have occurred in space"
The Columbia disintegrated during re-entry which was still more in space (certainly on a space flight); the deaths of the crew were not due to depressurization.
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I think they meant Soyuz 11 [wikipedia.org].
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That was before they wore pressure suits during flight. Depressurization isn't really the worry. The event that caused the depressurization is.
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If it was destroyed by atmospheric reentry, it must have been within atmosphere substantial enough to cause the disintegration. Thus, not in space any more.
Turning them into what? (Score:2)
"...effectively turning the suits into single-occupant spacecraft."
That's an awkward phrase. How about this one: "spacesuits"?
water (Score:2)
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If the specs are similar to the previous suits worn for shuttle launches, they only have 10 minutes of backup life support. Everything beyond that must be provided by the vehicle via ports on the suit.
Similiar incident (Score:1)