Photos of crashed Orion test capsule
Pat Flannery
Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
Pat
Rick Jones
> http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907
> Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
*18* 'chutes for the test and 10 just to get it setup?!?
rick jones
--
No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause.
There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision. - Jobert
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...
Scott Stevenson
wrote:
>http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907
>Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
It's a small consolation, but I know they had a lot of problems with
the Apollo chutes as well...
take care,
Scott
"It's not the fall--it's the sudden stop at the end"
Pat Flannery
Rick Jones wrote:
> In sci.space.policy Pat Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
>> http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907
>> Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
>>
>
> *18* 'chutes for the test and 10 just to get it setup?!?
>
That hit me as very odd also, although it means it can probably land
safely with one chute undeployed, there's a real potential for chutes
tangling up with each other with that many involved.
My all-time favorite thing for parachutes was this Soviet shuttle design
that was a alternative to Buran:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/str124.htm
They had better hope that thing lands where intended, because if it ever
comes down on a mountainside...
Pat
John
OH NO . . . evidence that the blueprints for Fireball XL-5 fell into
their hands *S*
Take care all
John
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
they'll get this fixed.
But for all those that claims chutes are inherently safer than wings, I
think this provides a dramatic counter-example.
--
Greg Moore
SQL Server DBA Consulting Remote and Onsite available!
Email: sql (at) greenms.com http://www.greenms.com/sqlserver.html
"Pat Flannery" <fla...@daktel.com> wrote in message
news:ZZWdnYKFnf9gkDHV...@posted.northdakotatelephone...
Dr.Colo...@gmail.com
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907> Ouch! It's not as
from the time it left the drop. Watch the the whole drop
video..........Doc
Rand Simberg
Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_d...@greenms.com> made the phosphor
on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>I will say up front that I believe this is purely teething problems and
>they'll get this fixed.
>
>But for all those that claims chutes are inherently safer than wings, I
>think this provides a dramatic counter-example.
I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone make such a claim.
Jorge R. Frank
Right. But there are quite a few claiming capsules are safer than
spaceplanes.
Rand Simberg
R. Frank" <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:
>Rand Simberg wrote:
>> On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:57:24 -0400, in a place far, far away, "Greg D.
>> Moore \(Strider\)" <mooregr_d...@greenms.com> made the phosphor
>> on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>>
>>> I will say up front that I believe this is purely teething problems and
>>> they'll get this fixed.
>>>
>>> But for all those that claims chutes are inherently safer than wings, I
>>> think this provides a dramatic counter-example.
>>
>> I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone make such a claim.
>
>Right. But there are quite a few claiming capsules are safer than
>spaceplanes.
Yes, though that's a slightly different argument. Unfortunately, it's
one that seems to have infected NASA at high levels...
Jorge R. Frank
> I will say up front that I believe this is purely teething problems and
> they'll get this fixed.
Per Henry Spencer, it was caused by a flaw in the test setup rather than
a flaw in the design of the Orion parachute system:
(Henry doesn't post to s.s.* any more, but y'all can pretend he came
back and posted this:)
Spacecraft crash due to test setup, not design flaw
NASA has quietly released photos and video of a 31 July parachute test
for its future Orion astronaut capsule that didn't go so well: the
mockup capsule hit the ground pretty hard. Unsurprisingly, some have
jumped on this, claiming that NASA is trying to cover up a failure.
The full story is a bit more complicated than that. I'm sure NASA wasn't
eager to publicise this embarrassing episode, but it wasn't exactly a
failure. There was a problem, yes, but it was in part of the test setup,
rather than in the parachutes that would actually land an operational
Orion after a trip to the space station or the Moon.
Testing a parachute drop of a heavy object is not simple. In particular,
several auxiliary parachutes were used to help set up the right test
conditions, so that Orion's own three-part parachute system would get a
realistic test. Orion uses "drogue" chutes that ensure the capsule is
stable, as well as "pilot" chutes that pull its main chutes out.
Unfortunately, some of the auxiliary chutes failed, and as a result the
Orion parachute system was activated at high speed, in dense,
low-altitude air. The drogue parachutes failed instantly on deployment
in the unrealistically harsh conditions. Then the capsule began to
tumble, main-parachute deployment was hopelessly messed up, and hope of
anything resembling a soft landing was lost.
Foul-ups in testing are not uncommon, especially when the test setup is
being tried for the first time. One of the headaches of high-tech test
programmes is having to debug the test arrangements before you can start
debugging the things you're trying to test.
Sometimes a malfunctioning test setup actually gives the tested system a
chance to show what it can do in an unrehearsed emergency. During a test
of an Apollo escape-system in the 1960s, the escape system successfully
got the capsule clear of a malfunctioning test rocket.
But sometimes the test conditions are so unrealistically severe that
there's no hope of correct functioning. Unpleasant though the result
often looks, this isn't properly considered a failure of the tested
system. That seems to have been what happened here.
Properly speaking, the outcome of this test is best summed up not as
"failure" but as "no test". That's testing jargon for "the test setup
messed up so badly that the test told us nothing about the tested
system". Expensive and embarrassing, yes, but it doesn't indicate a
problem with the Orion design.
Jeff Findley
"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" <mooregr_d...@greenms.com> wrote in message
news:-6idnY0rBKHpxjHV...@earthlink.com...
>I will say up front that I believe this is purely teething problems and
>they'll get this fixed.
Most likely. Apollo had some problems with chutes, but nothing terribly
serious during actual flights.
> But for all those that claims chutes are inherently safer than wings, I
> think this provides a dramatic counter-example.
To be fair, the failure was with the chutes used to set up the test, not the
Orion chutes. So this wasn't so much an Orion failure as it was a failure
to test properly.
Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
"Jorge R. Frank" <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote in message
news:V6adnShgB9K0fjHV...@giganews.com...
> Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
>> I will say up front that I believe this is purely teething problems and
>> they'll get this fixed.
>
> Per Henry Spencer, it was caused by a flaw in the test setup rather than a
> flaw in the design of the Orion parachute system:
>
<snipping>
This was my guess also. It looks like it never properly left the vehicle in
the first place.
(to be clear, I'm not changing my position, since I think designing adequate
tests is part of teething problems :-)
That said, I still stick by my comments that capsules with chutes are not
necessarily any safer than spacecraft with wings.
Jeff Findley
> That said, I still stick by my comments that capsules with chutes are not
> necessarily any safer than spacecraft with wings.
True. But spacecraft with wings are almost always more complex than
spacecraft with parachutes (which tend to be capsules). Complexity almost
always drives up development and operational costs, so spacecraft with
parachutes are likely to be cheaper than those with wings.
Pat Flannery
That still wasn't as bad as Soyuz 1 going into the ground at few hundred
mph, and exploding on impact:
http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/s/soy1crsh.jpg
In that case you couldn't even tell it was a spacecraft at one time.
Still, the Orion drop was a major mess when you watch the video of it.
That's odd, as the military got competent at dropping Sheridan tanks out
of aircraft and having them stay right-side up till their main chutes
deployed and they landed.
Pat
Jorge R. Frank
> "Greg D. Moore (Strider)" <mooregr_d...@greenms.com> wrote in message
> news:bvCdnZrl0oyM9TDV...@earthlink.com...
>> That said, I still stick by my comments that capsules with chutes are not
>> necessarily any safer than spacecraft with wings.
>
> True. But spacecraft with wings are almost always more complex than
> spacecraft with parachutes (which tend to be capsules). Complexity almost
> always drives up development and operational costs, so spacecraft with
> parachutes are likely to be cheaper than those with wings.
Cheaper to build, yes.
Cheaper to operate? Depends on flight rate.
Pat Flannery
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone make such a claim.
>
> Right. But there are quite a few claiming capsules are safer than
> spaceplanes.
They are certainly a lot lighter for a given payload that you want to
orbit and return.
They also tend to be tougher if the Soyuz is anything to go by...despite
several abnormal returns, only one cosmonaut ever got killed during
reentry of a Soyuz (the Soyuz 11 crew died prior to reentry).
As Columbia showed, even small abnormalities in a Shuttle reentry can
lead to fatalities.
God help you if it ever came in wrong-end first like Soyuz 5.
BradGuth
Are we good at this kind of splat, or what.
Say again, as to where our physics and science smart wizards of our
Zionist/Nazi DARPA are these days.
Why not simply use a well proven fly-by-rocket method of soft-landing
Orion?
How about we outsorce our complex Orion to China, or India?
~ Brad Guth Brad_Guth Brad.Guth BradGuth
Derek Lyons
>Still, the Orion drop was a major mess when you watch the video of it.
>That's odd, as the military got competent at dropping Sheridan tanks out
>of aircraft and having them stay right-side up till their main chutes
>deployed and they landed.
I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
Orion.
D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Greg D. Moore (Strider)
news:48b08891.2132538828@news.supernews.com...
> Pat Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
>>Still, the Orion drop was a major mess when you watch the video of it.
>>That's odd, as the military got competent at dropping Sheridan tanks out
>>of aircraft and having them stay right-side up till their main chutes
>>deployed and they landed.
>
> I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
> Orion.
Or that the military got it right on the first try.
>
> D.
> --
> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>
> http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
>
> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
--
Scott Hedrick
"Jorge R. Frank" <jrf...@ibm-pc.borg> wrote in message
news:V6adnShgB9K0fjHV...@giganews.com...
This is one of the only two ways an experiment could truly fail. An
experiment that does not give you the data you *want* isn't necessarily a
failure.
The failure modes for experiments are: 1. Mechanical failure (as we saw
here) and 2. Design failure (where said experiment operates just fine and
produces data, but was improperly designed to test what the experimenters
wanted to test).
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Pat Flannery
Derek Lyons wrote:
> I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
> Orion.
>
No, but the Orion team should have gone to them and asked for advice on
how to do this, as they dump heavy cargo out of the rear of jet cargo
planes that then deploys chutes and descends to earth quite frequently.
They even managed to slide a Minuteman missile out the back of a C-5,
have it align nose upright under a parachute, then ignite and ascend on
its planned trajectory.
Pat
John
I agree Pat, and in way, both of your points are made here. Chances
are somewhere very early in all of this, the military had a lot of
"less than great" outcomes. But they do have a LOT of success
nowadays shoving things out of the backs of airplanes and getting them
extracted and to the ground in one piece, and a few riggers with the
right background could have made a difference . . . if . .. and this
is a big if in any human organization, if someone is willing to
listen.
best to you all
John
Derek Lyons
>
>Derek Lyons wrote:
>> I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
>> Orion.
>
>No, but the Orion team should have gone to them and asked for advice on
>how to do this,
And you know they didn't... how? *Precisely*.
Pat Flannery
Jeff Findley wrote:
>
> Most likely. Apollo had some problems with chutes, but nothing terribly
> serious during actual flights.
>
They did have the one on Apollo 15 where one of the three didn't inflate
due to damage from leaking RCS fuel.
At sea that was survivable; during a emergency landing on solid ground
that may not have been the case.
Pat
Pat Flannery
Derek Lyons wrote:
> Pat Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
>> Derek Lyons wrote:
>>
>>> I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
>>> Orion.
>>>
>> No, but the Orion team should have gone to them and asked for advice on
>> how to do this,
>>
>
> And you know they didn't... how? *Precisely*.
>
So did they or didn't they?
First you state that you find it very unlikely they did, then you state
that I can't prove that they didn't.
Pat
BradGuth
> http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907
> Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
>
> Pat
Like the “NASA test rocket explodes (ATK's ALV X-1)”, why is
mainstream media not giving this kind of spectacular and spendy event
full televised coverage?
Why is our mainstream media buying along with the usual DARPA/NASA
context of damage-control?
Clearly one of the ATK's ALV X-1 flight control thrusters wasn't
working, but all others seemed to be functioning. So why terminate
their flight so close to the ground?
Clearly the chute deployed method of performing a safe and reliable
deorbit/reentry technology is too complicated for our NASA to cope
with. But without a viable fly-by-rocket lander, what alternatives do
we have?
anonymousNetUser
Using a chute for the last stage of a deorbit/re-entry works just fine.
Witness all the successful landings of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
missions.
NASA's problem is just that they're having to relearn all of this from
scratch. All the guys that solved the problems the first time (50's,
60's and early 70's) are dead or long retired. There's no one left at
NASA that remembers how to do this. But I'm sure they'll figure it
out...just like they did the first time around.
BradGuth
But don’t they have to first get safely to that last deorbit/re-entry
phase?
Sure, why the hell not use rockets that’ll explode and/or having to be
destroyed, then using an as-built complex parachute fiasco that might
work unless any of several dozen things goes terribly wrong.
BTW; would the supposedly new and improved LES (launch escape system)
or LAS(launch abort system) have done it’s job, if the Orion had it’s
bigger and nastier as-built stick rocket(s) blown out from beneath
them?
Seems the vertical rate of uncontrolled rocket fuel burn is going to
outpace whatever LAS can muster. Are those parachutes and tethers
going to be fire proof?
How many all-inclusive Orion deorbit/re-entry tonnes are we talking
about?
Derek Lyons
BradGuth
>
> >>> Derek Lyons wrote:
>
> >>>> I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
> >>>> Orion.
>
> >>> No, but the Orion team should have gone to them and asked for advice on
> >>> how to do this,
>
> >> And you know they didn't... how? *Precisely*.
>
> >So did they or didn't they?
> >First you state that you find it very unlikely they did, then you state
> >that I can't prove that they didn't.
>
> In other words, you decline to answer.
>
> D.
> --
> Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.
>
> http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
>
> -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
> Oct 5th, 2004 JDL
Why didn't this kind of impressive "right stuff" of NASA make prime-
time news?
Wasn't it spectacular enough?
Wasn't it spendy enough?
Have they not yet informed the astronauts that are going to ride this
new and improved re-entry coffin?
Janitor_of_Lunacy
<mooregr_deletet...@greenms.com> wrote:
> "Derek Lyons" <fairwa...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:48b08891.2132538828@news.supernews.com...
>
> > Pat Flannery <flan...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
> >>Still, the Orion drop was a major mess when you watch the video of it.
> >>That's odd, as the military got competent at dropping Sheridan tanks out
> >>of aircraft and having them stay right-side up till their main chutes
> >>deployed and they landed.
>
> > I find it very unlikely the military designed the test equipment for
> > Orion.
>
> Or that the military got it right on the first try.
>
bouncing and ending up on its back.
Janitor_of_Lunacy
> I agree Pat, and in way, both of your points are made here. Chances
> are somewhere very early in all of this, the military had a lot of
> "less than great" outcomes. But they do have a LOT of success
> nowadays shoving things out of the backs of airplanes and getting them
> extracted and to the ground in one piece, and a few riggers with the
> right background could have made a difference . . . if . .. and this
> is a big if in any human organization, if someone is willing to
> listen.
>
> best to you all
>
> John
Different intended results. The military parachute rigging is designed
to result on payloads landing safely. The system that failed in the
NASA test was designed for a much more specific situation, it was
designed to get the capsule in an orientation and trajectory which
would match that of a launch abort at some point prior to Orion's own
chute deployment. You can't just drop it out the back of a C-17.
Janitor_of_Lunacy
> Rick Jones wrote:
> > In sci.space.policy Pat Flannery <flan...@daktel.com> wrote:
>
> >>http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28907
> >> Ouch! It's not as bad as Soyuz 1, but it's not good by any means.
>
>
> That hit me as very odd also, although it means it can probably land
> safely with one chute undeployed, there's a real potential for chutes
> tangling up with each other with that many involved.
> My all-time favorite thing for parachutes was this Soviet shuttle design
> that was a alternative to Buran:http://www.buran.ru/htm/str124.htm
> They had better hope that thing lands where intended, because if it ever
> comes down on a mountainside...
>
> Pat
From the article, it looks like Orion uses the same chute arrangement
as Apollo. (Two drogues, three pilots, three main.)
Pat Flannery
Janitor_of_Lunacy wrote:
> I once saw a video of a Sheridan test which resulted in the tank
> bouncing and ending up on its back.
>
Considering the tendency of the caseless ammunition to ignite when you
tried to reload the gun after firing it, this probably delighted its
intended crew. :-)
My older brother saw one fry itself that way at Fort Bragg during a
public demonstration back around 1970.
Luckily, the crew all got out in time.
Pat
BradGuth
wrote:
The test to see what happens when the Orion parachutes fail to deploy
properly and when the capsule isn't aerodynamically stable is what
went according to plan. Now we also know what happens when our DARPA
minions as resident village idiot morons are in charge.
Too bad that after all of these decades that we still have no viable
fly-by-rocket lander, not even on the drawing board.
BradGuth
wrote:
If it was a sphere, as it should have been, or perhaps as a wedge with
aerodynamic surfaces could have been easily accomplished.
Basically, they all screwed up rather badly, and here you are making
up excuses.
Same goes for having their latest rocket exploding shortly after
launch. But then perhaps the real intent was to see what happens when
more of those same village idiot morons are in charge. How about we
should listen to their step by step command center audio (including
background chatter), as I'm not convinced (being that it was of such
little altitude but still going strong) that it was even a controlled
destruction?
~ BG