ICES was not a launch abort system. It was a way for the astronauts to bail out of the shuttle after re-entry if they weren’t going to be able to land the shutt

ICES was not a launch abort system. It was a way for the astronauts to bail out of the shuttle after re-entry if they weren’t going to be able to land the shuttle safely. The only shuttle to ever was anything resembling a launch abort system were the first few flights of Columbia. It had ejection seats for the pilot and commander. However, later statements by NASA and the astronauts said that using them probably would’ve resulted in the death of the astronauts due to descending through the extremely hot exhaust of the launch.