The Space Shuttle’s Controversial Launch Abort Plan

[Pinckney]

Still not as crazy as the planned Lunar Escape Systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Escape_Systems

"There was no mass or power available in the LESS for an Inertial Measurement Unit to measure acceleration and tell the astronauts where they were, where they were going or how fast they would be getting there, or even for a radar altimeter to show altitude above the lunar surface."

[bpowah]

In the same vein, there was the proposed MOOSE reentry system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

[dlgeek]

Wow, I've never heard of that before; you're right, it's COMPLETELY insane. That being said, the LRF version of that would have been amazingly cool.

[Ankaios]

If I had a spare billion bucks laying around when the shuttle program ended, I thought it would been fun to actually try out an RTLS. Tie up the necessary loose ends on the autopilot, stack up an empty shuttle, invite a lot of people, and let it go. No real use to it, but it would have been a great "Hey y'all, watch this" moment.

[Shivetya]

I get images of Topgears Renault Robin space shuttle clone in my head. While obviously not hitting the heights the shuttle can it was an impressive endeavor that might satisfy your curiosity; http://youtu.be/pJdrlWR-yFM

[conradfr]

No offense but I prefer the current situation of space shuttles in museums :)

[gonzo]

Hold my beer

[shirro]

Almost as good as sliding 200ft from the base of an exploding Saturn V to a rubber room, a quick crawl to the blast room, slam the door shut, cover yourself in a fire blanket and if you survive long enough light oxygen candles until the rescuers arrive. http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1211/19rubberroom/

[z3ugma]

This photo from that series http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1211/19rubberroom/full15... looks like something straight out of Half-Life. After reading the article on STS-1, that doesn't seem too far off.

[gedmark]

Insane is a better word for it. Although to be fair there are a lot of aspects of the shuttle's design and operation that will be remembered that way.

He even glosses over the SRB issue. Thanks to the SRB's, there were no abort modes for the shuttle during the first 123 seconds. Until they had expended themselves any abort would have required separating the SRB's while they were still firing at full thrust. They would have accelerated forward of the stack, their hot exhaust impinging directly on the external tank while it was still full of fuel.

The RTLS was insane, but I don't think it comes close to the madness of STS-1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-1

That flight will go down in history as the only time anyone was dumb enough to put people on top of a rocket on its very first flight.

[mrbill]

Also related - "Shuttle Down" by Harry Stine:

"In the book, the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on a polar orbit flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. During the launch, the main engines cut off prematurely and the shuttle is forced to make an emergency landing on Rapa Nui, better known to most of the world as Easter Island."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Down

[mrbill]

"In addition, astronauts now carry passports and other documents, including traveller's cheques, in case of emergency landings."

[jloughry]

Maciej Ceglowski put it best:

"You know you're in trouble when the Russians are adding safety features to your design." [1]

[1] http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm#5

[Narkov]

Surely more controversial would be the range safety "Flight Termiantion" (i.e. self destruct) option?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/nasa/4262479

[dlgeek]

Not really. The controversy here is over whether or not it would work if they needed it. Range safety is something everyone agreed with the necessity of, and there wasn't a lot of concern that it wouldn't work. (It was basically a small explosive charge sitting on the SRB and a radio control - very well understood).

The RTLS abort mode, everyone agreed was necessary (in the "no other options" sense, but as the article explains, no one can be sure it would actually work.

[Sanddancer]

Range safety is a necessary evil. RTLS is doing a bootlegger turn in a very large, very fast vehicle without even a horn that can blow dixie while doing so.

[drpancake]

I grew up in the English countryside a few miles away from a US airbase which was designated as one of the possible landing sites in the event of an aborted launch, due to it's long runway.

There was an American couple living in our village and the guy's job was to be on call during a shuttle launch. Suffice it to say he and his buddies spent most of their days playing poker.

[ZoFreX]

Which airbase, out of interest?

[jpdus]

Somewhat related and another great read - the detailed plan for a never-launched Columbia rescue mission (including a space shuttle rendezvous):

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-...

[boxcardavin]

I wrote a paper while I was doing my phys/astro degree on why the shuttle was bad for the US space program. This was a major reason for it because every accident was guaranteed death for the astronauts, which then guaranteed a shutdown of all manned launches for months. NASA has been cash-strapped since the 70s but they can still absorb and recover from lost rockets (with astronauts ejected vertically), whereas lost life leaves a scar on the organization.

[adamwong246]

I wonder if this maneuver could be performed in that Kerbal Space Program game?

[potatolicious]

Definitely. KSP doesn't really model aerodynamics, nor re-entry heat, and has a fairly simplistic model for stresses between components.

You can almost certainly RTLS successfully in a KSP version of the shuttle because the game conveniently doesn't simulate the hard parts ;)

Now, KSP with the Deadly Reentry mod and the FAR aerodynamics mod would make the exercise much harder.

[dlgeek]

If you're really serious about your simulator, check out this RTLS sim from Orbiter (a really realistic shuttle simulator): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjk8P6ba7oQ

EDIT: Ignore the mission audio after the alarm goes off - it's taped from a live flight and doesn't match the gameplay.

[canjobear]

I found it very difficult to picture what exactly was supposed to go on in each maneuver based on the text. It would help to have more diagrams and to move the diagram near the bottom up to the top. The simulation video also didn't help, because it was in a first-person view for all of the interesting parts.

[pdonis]

From the article:

"Of the 135 Space Shuttle launches, only one (STS-51F on 7/29/85) experienced an abort-inducing failure during ascent. In the case of 51F, they safely made a lower-than-planned orbit and carried out the mission. All of the other flights cleanly avoided the dubious honor of settling the RTLS bet."

All but one. Did the writer just forget about the Challenger mission, or did that one somehow count as "cleanly avoiding" an "abort-inducing failure"?

(Someone in the comments to the article has brought this up as well.)

[jychang]

Challenger never got to RTLS, so yeah, it cleanly avoided settling the bet.

[masklinn]

> Did the writer just forget about the Challenger mission

Challenger didn't even remotely have the occasion to try RTLS.

[Ankaios]

No abort options were available while the solid rocket boosters were burning, as they were in Challenger's case. (I agree, though, that a failure during SRB firing doesn't really count as "cleanly" avoiding demonstrating RTLS.)

[rplnt]

> Mind = blown.

What an unfortunate "sentence" in otherwise very informative and captivating article.

[geetee]

I hope you're able to recover and move on from this.