33 ms·
May not be what we wanted to happen, but everyone got home safely. That's a win in my book, glad the emergency systems are working as intended.
by tfha 8y ago
May not be what we wanted to happen, but everyone got home safely. That's a win in my book, glad the emergency systems are working as intended.
- martin-adams 8y agoI agree. Knowing and trusting the fail safes is a good thing.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoI guess I've watched too many movies and TV shows where "activating the failsafe" means everyone gets killed.
- rory096 8y agoWorth noting: launch escape tower was jettisoned nominally moments before the failure. Escape was via the capsule separation mechanism followed by ballistic then parachute descent. If the booster had exploded, the crew would have been in extreme danger.
- village-idiot 8y agoWas jettisoning the escape tower at that moment planned, or was that a failure?
- rory096 8y agoPlanned (nominal). See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxkVAXPYPc&t=134 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxkVAXPYPc&t=134
- theoh 8y agoIt's so bizarre that in NASA-speak the word nominal means not the value that a parameter should have ("in name") but the fact that the parameter is within a specified tolerance of that value. It's like a contraction of "<value> is what it should be, according to its formal definition". https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-did-nominal-come-to-mean-within-acceptable-tolerances https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-did-n...
- MPSimmons 8y agoSNAFU, so to speak.
- dogma1138 8y agoNormal the tower is used for launch pad abort and for a very short window afterwards. The Soyuz launch abort system is actually quite robust probably the best launch abort system that has been implemented for manned flight so far with the Orion and Crew Dragon only marginally improving on it and even that is still not clear given those haven’t been flown yet alone actually used in practice yet.
- coob 8y agoIt hasn't flown any missions, but Crew Dragon has had its launch pad abort tested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHD9AmkxA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHD9AmkxA0
- _Tev 8y agoBoosters don't really "explode". When ruptured they burn really fast, but (assuming engine shutdown and non-malfunctioning capsule separation) at such high altitude there is not that much danger from simple conflagration. Sure, in _very_ rare case engines might not shut down or something else might get broken, but "If the booster had exploded, the crew would have been in extreme danger." seems too over the top. Launch escape tower is jettisoned for a reason ...
- mikeash 8y agoI wonder what it’s like for the astronauts. One moment you’re sitting in a rocket ready to spend the next six months in space, you’ve said your goodbyes, you’re thinking about what it will be like, what sorts of pictures you want to take, what you’ll say when you make that first phone call home from space... and then ten minutes later you stumble out into the Kazakh wilderness and start scanning the sky for rescue helicopters.
- phyller 8y agoYea, wonder if they felt disappointed or relieved. Regardless, they are part of a very small club of "astronaut's whose rocket broke during launch and are still alive". I wonder who else is in that club?
- dba7dba 8y agoI honestly cannot think of any such incident happening in all the years of space exploration. Crewed or not-crewed capsule. And I've watched enough documentaries on Apollo and other space programs. It's the beginning of a very very small, exclusive club, one that will hopefully not be too big.
- avmich 8y agoSomething similar happened with another Soyuz in 1983, right?
- docbrown 8y agoThe Soyuz T-10-1 launch in 1983, maybe? The escape system launched minutes before the explosion on the launching pad happened.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L
- jpatokal 8y ago2 to 6 seconds before the explosion, not minutes.
- andys627 8y agoCheesy aviation idiom: "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, any landing you can use the plane again is a great landing."
- sideshowb 8y agoYOU WILL NOT GO TO SPACE TODAY https://xkcd.com/1133/ https://xkcd.com/1133/