posted
For forty years, the NASA launch complex has used a system of cable cars to escape the launch tower should something go wrong - you hop in a basket and ride a wire down to a bunker. As fun as that is to train on, NASA is planning something even better for the upcoming Aries/Orion spacecraft - an escape ROLLER COASTER!
This time, a series of coaster cars fly down the tower itself, then the momentum whips them out to the bunker. It's a solid track instead of a flimsy wire, and the cars are fully enclosed to protect them against harm on the way down.
I wonder if they'll need volunteers to test the system...
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say "What the fuck?"
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
I've read the RFP. Oddly enough, you can probably expect the same design companies responsible for the big roller coasters to respond with valid project proposals. They DO have all the experience in this sort of thing, after all. But will they put in a vertical loop at the end mostly for the hell of it, to give the astronauts something to smile about besides surviving a gigantic fireball?
posted
Huh? What's the point of gigantic fireballs if you can't watch them?
I can appreciate the need for the basket ride in the shuttle, which had no realistic escape mechanism of any other sort (or the comparable slide system for Buran). But why have the roller-coaster on something that comes with a built-in escape pod? Or is the escape rocket not cleared for zero-zero? (The Soyuz one is, and has served in that duty admirably once already.)
And if it is for personnel other than the strapped-in astronauts, is it reasonable to assume these personnel would be at the top of the service tower, where these cars depart?
posted
Yup, it IS designed for the tower crew plus the astronauts, in the event of capsule escape failure or something happening on the pad prior to launch (which would typically involve something with main fuel loading on launch day, or hypergolic loading before that). The escape coaster is covered for that reason, as it may concievably need to escape through a cloud of toxic gasses.
And the Buran slide system never worked properly - people kept getting stuck or caught on something on the way down. Eventually they installed a bag of lubricant that the first person would pierce as he went down, lubing the tube for the following passengers. You heard it right: the Soviets had K-Y.
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