From: Bret Kulakovich (bret@bonfireproductions.com)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 14:26:26 MST
Hello again,
"escape pods"
The STS system as it currently exists has a 1 in 200 chance of a
"show-stopper" event occurring. Not what that fellow said on NPR this
weekend - not 1 in 200 of catastrophic failure, it's simply that
whatever was going to happen is not going to. We saw this a few times
on our way to launch this January: 1 in 200, Columbia sits on the
pad, again, again. Unfortunately, this time it appears that our 1 in
200 for this mission was the functioning of the two port elevons.
What stopped them from working is unknown.
What does this have to do with escape pods? You add something with
explosive bolts that is supposed to shoot part of the shuttle
outwards, and that number becomes 1 in 195? add seven of them 1 in
150? Oh, and half the people sit upstairs, and half downstairs during
atmospheric operations? 1 in 100?
"black boxes"
The shuttle has a "cockpit voice recorder" on board. It's just not a
"black box" - it wasn't meant to survive serious maltreatment. I will
add at this point that the two story crew cabin is meant to withstand
horrific (to a human) force along the line of 20gs, from more than
one axis I believe. So the whole contraption is sort of a black box.
Though I doubt it survived the cooked off RCS, fuel cell and OMS
systems.
Bret Kulakovich
>It's not just the shuttle. I've often wondered why planes don't have
>video input into black boxes when every gas station has one.
>
>I bet the only reason they don't have an emergency escape/landing
>pod is cost and weight. They should have one for obirtal problems
>that are immediate (too quick for rescue). It's the mighty $ or lack
>of it. The TV news claimed today that NASA's budget was down 40%
>from the mid 90s. Meanwhile the US B2 fleet is five times the size
>and each B2 costs the same as a shuttle.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:Artillo5@cs.com>Artillo5@cs.com
>To: <mailto:extropians@extropy.org>extropians@extropy.org
>Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 9:10 AM
>Subject: Re: shuttle breaks up on re-entry
>
>In a message dated 2/1/2003 12:43:24 PM Eastern Standard Time,
><mailto:thespike@earthlink.net>thespike@earthlink.net writes:
>
>>Well, hmm, that sounds implausible.
>>Is this just an attempt to prevent looting/souveniring of the flight
>>recorder etc?
>>
>
>
>I was watching yesterday and a reporter asked about if the shuttle
>had a "black box" flight recorder and the official said that it
>didn't have one. How many millions of dollars the thing was worth
>and they don't have BLACK BOXES??? That seems very strange to me,
>and I know that they have a continuous stream of data coming down
>through telemetry, but STILL?
>
>Also, doesn't the shuttle have some sort of emergency eject system?
>Of course, if they were at too high an altitude, or the explosion
>was too sudden for a crew reaction, this wouldn't be useable in any
>event, but I would think that the designers would have tried to
>account for such occurrances. Maybe making the entire crew cabin
>explosion-proof, sealed off from the rest of the craft during
>liftoff and reentry, and maybe a redundant chute/airbag kind of
>system? Does anyone have info on this?
>
>Arti
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