Like Orion, escape systems will be built into next generation of spacecraft
The Orion, NASA’s next manned space vehicle, as well as commercial spacecraft designed by Boeing and SpaceX will be equipped with escape systems enabling astronauts to quickly leave the scene of failed launches, such as the explosion of the unmanned Antares rocket on Tuesday.
These safety mechanisms, known formally as Launch Abort Systems, consist of towers on top of the main spacecraft. Rocket-powered, these towers can be separated from the main vehicle in the event of a launch failure.
Crew members on a doomed vehicle will be able to activate these systems in a fraction of a second, allowing the crew capsule to leave the scene and subsequently return to Earth safely. Similar escape systems were present in the Mercury and Apollo capsules of the 1960s. They were not installed in the space shuttles because NASA officials believed the shuttles were safe enough that such systems would not be needed.
That ended up being a tragic mistake, as two explosions took the lives of passengers, one that destroyed the Challenger in 1986, and the second that that blew up Columbia as it returned from orbit in 2003.
The Challenger explosion, only 72 seconds after launch, was caused by a gas leak from the solid fuel rocket.
The Russian Soyuz vehicle, which currently transports American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), is equipped with a launch escape tower, but it can be activated only by mission control, not by crew members. In 1983, it saved two cosmonauts, catapulting them away only seconds before a fire on the launch pad caused the Soyuz to explode.
The Orion will have a heavy capsule moved by a heavy rocket in the event of a disaster with the main vehicle, said former NASA shuttle program manager Wayne Hale. Even though it is being built for manned deep space missions, the Orion will be used to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.
Having learned its lesson from the two shuttle disasters, NASA is requiring all commercial taxis that will transport astronauts to and from the ISS to have escape systems.
Boeing plans to use a system similar to that of Orion, which the company is already using on its CST-100 vehicle. SpaceX plans to use a different system in which the steering thrusters in crew capsules can transport them away in the event of rocket failure.
Laurel Kornfeld
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