Yo dog, we heard you like rockets.....

glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
so we put some rockets on top of your rocket......

  1. To mitigate the risk to astronauts of a Challenger type catastrophic event during launch, both of the upcoming US based systems to launch astronauts to the ISS from the US have to demonstrate the capability for the crew capsule to escape from the first stage booster during launch.
  2. Boeing did theirs with a combination of physical testing (pad abort, launching the capsule from the earth by itself, and dropping the capsule from a helo to test the parachutes repeatedly), combined with analysis.
  3. SpaceX did both of the above, but also included a launch escape on Sunday. Below is the video. the capsule has eight liquid fueled rockets built into it. When commanded, it fires those rockets and leaves the first stage behind, accelerating away at over 2gs. The massive fireball was the first stage, made unstabel by that event, tumbling enough to rip apart.
  4. After escape, the capsule jettisons the "trunk" that contains equipment it uses to keep it powered up to the ISS, and then uses it's Orbital Maneuvering System thrusts to spin so its facing back first as it would during reentry. Deploys drogue chutes to slow it some, and then four main chutes that are cut free right at splashdown.

All of this happens autonomously.

 
Yooper

Yooper

Up. Identified. Lase. Fire. On the way.
We're launching rockets and astronauts at ISIS? Oh wait, my bad, ISS.

Sorry. Never mind.

--- End of line (MCP)
 
TPD

TPD

the poor dad
glhs837 said:
  1. SpaceX did both of the above, but also included a launch escape on Sunday. .

Click to expand...


we were flying home from Florida on Sunday morning when the pilot announced that we were flying off the cost of Cape Canaveral about the time of the launch and could possibly see it from the plane. Unfortunately we were about 5 minutes too late.
 
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