[AR] Re: Orion Abort Test Failure...
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 20:02:53 -0400 (EDT)
On Wed, 10 Jul 2019, dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
The Orion shape is based on the Apollo shape with small changes. The
center of gravity is also similar. Thus it has many of the
characteristics of Apollo capsule. I’m sure I can find some tumbling
Apollo capsule footage...
The Apollo escape system was deliberately designed to take the spacecraft
off to one side, rather than straight up -- you don't want to drop it back
into the fireball of an exploding booster! So it did induce a bit of
rotation for that reason.
Moreover, there was another reason: a high-altitude escape meant reentry
before chute deployment... and even with the escape tower still attached
and its canards deployed, the capsule was weakly stable nose-first. The
escape system *deliberately* produced a slow tumble (and a later abort
using the SM engine would have been immediately followed by a thruster
firing to produce such a tumble) to ensure that the capsule would
stabilize only base-first.
Henry
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