[AR] Re: starship abort?
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket list <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2023 17:54:26 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 20 Apr 2023, James Fackert wrote:
It sure seems that flight termination was very clean and deliberate. Two
clean explosions a few seconds apart. Is it possible that the loss of
several engines meant that altitude and velocity was not adequate to
satisfy successful flight parameters, the safety system would not allow
separation, but instead, demanded explosive termination ... ?
Destruct systems don't usually blow the vehicle up *automatically* -- that
decision is normally left up to a human(*). If you see ten or fiften
seconds of gross vehicle misbehavior followed by kaboom, that typically
means that the range-safety guy decided he'd had enough -- that the
vehicle was not going to recover control -- and pushed his button.
(* One exception: if some destruct-system charges are located well away
from the destruct receivers, the system may blow automatically if there
are clear signs of impending structural failure that might disconnect the
charges from the receivers. )
...I dont think it was a rapid unanticipated dissasembly- it seemed
clean and clearly deliberate.
If it wasn't in the flight plan, it still qualifies as unexpected. :-)
If the second stage had inadequate velocety and was separated and ignited,
it might have ended up .... anywhere? and that would not be good.
Almost certainly the two stages had separate, independent destruct
systems. That's pretty much unavoidable when both are reusable.
Henry
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