Fwd: SpaceX to test launch abort system

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: May 4, 2015 at 11:06:14 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: SpaceX to test launch abort system

SpaceX to test launch abort system

By Scott Powers Orlando Sentinel contact the reporter

 

SpaceX will test its astronaut rescue system on Wednesday by blowing a Dragon capsule off of the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center Wednesday, sending it 5,000 feet into the air and back to Earth on parachutes.

Inside will be an astronaut dummy named Buster, and SpaceX and NASA hope he comes back to Earth OK, because this is SpaceX's proposed new technology for saving astronauts once it starts ferrying them to and from the International Space Station in 2018.

"This is what SpaceX was essentially founded for, Human space flight. This test is going to show that we have delivered a revolutionary system for the safety of astronauts and this test is going to show how it works," Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX vice president for mission assurance, said at a press conference Thursday. "I'm really stoked about this. I'm really excited.

"I think this is going to be a good show. It's going to be a short test," Koenigsmann said.

The system is designed so that it can propel the capsule away from the rocket, either on the launch pad or at any time during an ascent into space, with side engines. Unlike old launch abort/rescue systems used for Mercury and Apollo capsules, or those being designed now for other rocket systems, the SpaceX system does not use a tower attached to the top of the capsule, with separate engines.

This strategy, Koenigsmann said, will give SpaceX more flexibility and time to use the system, compared with the tower technology, because the tower always had to be jettisoned at some point.

The test, a first for this system, will take place sometime after 7 a.m. Wednesday.

SpaceX will sit the Dragon capsule -- which one day will be used to ferry astronauts -- atop a simulated upper-stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, and that will rest on a steel grid at Launch Complex 40.

The Dragon's engines will fire for a six-second burn that will send the capsule up 5,000 feet. When it reaches its apex, parachutes will come out and the capsule will come down in the Atlantic Ocean, a little more than a mile east of the launch pad.

The whole test will take about a minute and a half, before splashdown.
Jon Cowart, NASA's partner manager for the Commercial Crew Program, said SpaceX's innovative approach is one of the things NASA was hoping for when it decided to promote private space industry.

"SpaceX came up with this way, which we see is fantastic. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with putting the rockets on the side. You get some benefit from that. Eventually, they hope to do a powered landing," Cowart said. "You can use the abort engines all the way to orbit. Whereas with the old Mercury and Apollo escape systems, you had to jettison it before you got to orbit."

 

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