Florin:
You appear to be assuming the capsule is in front of the failed rocket
after LES activation.
All human-rated LES drive the capsule away from the failed hardware asap. A
decade ago the software was smart enough to always fly crossrange (north or
south for an east bound launch vehicle). Today I’d expect commercial
systems to consider where on the vehicle the failure occurred and choose
the cross (or up-) range direction accordingly.
Bill
On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 8:22 AM <Nels.Anderson@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 08. Februar 2018 um 05:09 Uhrfrom a liquid booster?
Von: "Florin Mingireanu" <florin.mingireanu82@xxxxxxxxx>
Can you iterate on what you mean that the escape is more difficult than
The first thing I would want to do escaping a malfunctioning booster would
be to shut it down so it doesn't chase me. That's easy with a liquid but
tricky with a solid. If shutdown is not feasible, then, other things being
equal, I'll need an extra powerful escape system to outrun the
still-accelerating booster.
An Apollo-era escape analysis I've seen assumes that the failing Saturn
would continue on at constant velocity, describing this as a conservative
assumption. I presume that means it was assumed the engines had been shut
down but no assumptions were being made as to how fast the Saturn would
decelerate. Apollo aborts, according to this analysis, required 2-3
seconds' warning, depending on which stage was exploding, if the escaping
CM was to outrun the over-pressure wave until it had dispersed sufficiently
as to be non-hazardous.