The setup pilot was spring loaded to the FIRE EXT position, and when he
heard the bang, he looked over at the plumecam. He saw flames in the
plumecam, so he hit the onboard fire extinguisher. Less than a second.
(Probably a lot less than a second; this was the same guy who shut down the
5M15 1/4 second after seeing something unusual in the plume.)
You can't hear the handhelds over the honk of the onboard, but the last of
the discharges was at 14 seconds.
I must be truly hard to impress. I'm always ready for the thing to go bang
- in my first career, the thing was supposed to go bang - so when it did, I
wasn't surprised. "OK, nobody's down, fire's not spreading, they're
knocking it down, what's that stuff on the ground burning? Well, I better
go wander over there and see how they're doing." By the time I walked from
the wingtip to the tail, the crew had the fire out.
On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 3:07 PM Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 4/26/2016 2:49 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 26 Apr 2016, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
- If you see a significant runtime anomaly in the video after an
engine test, stop and do a thorough engine inspection, with teardown
if necessary. Chances are there's a reason for the anomaly.
A related observation for systems with LOX or other cryo fluids: if
frost appears on a part of the plumbing where it's not expected, find
out why.
That's good rocket-test advice in general. If during a test, something
behaves in a way significantly different from previous experience with
that system, if at all possible stop and figure out why before
proceeding. Something's changed. It may be an inconsequential change,
it may not. (Either way, figuring it out may give you new and useful
insight into your system.)
In the case Henry mentions, it may be something as simple as a
high-humidity day after your previous tests were low-humidity. Or it
could be something serious. (Or, unexpected high humidity itself might
end up serious, leading to jamming some mechanism assumed functional.)
(That last is a classic problem when following desert testing with
coastal operation.)
Henry
