As for Ares being close to the tower, it was programmed to swing the tail a little bit towards the tower, to cause the whole vehicle to actually pitch the opposite way to clear the tower (if you want the nose to move right, you have to move the tail to the left).
This was also done with the Saturn-V.
The shuttle does not have to do such a pitch-away-from-tower maneuver because due to the orbiter's SSME engine thrustlines, they cause the shuttle to "crab" away from the pad, in the direction of the "belly" of the orbiter. Watch a good close up side view replay sometime and it is very obvious. Now, the shuttle is not moving directly away from the tower, it is moving away at 90 degrees, but it is definitely moving sideways at launch more than any launch vehicle ever does (on purpose).
Back to Ares today.....
Glad to see that Ares 1X worked.
But it seemed strange that once the SRB separated, that the dummy upper stage went into a tumble too easily and quickly. If that was a real flight with a live upper stage, I would be concerned it would pitch or yaw many degrees before the J-2 engine came up to thrust enough to steer it.
But I have seen some news, not confirmed, by some knowledgeable observers that there seems to be a very good reason why the dummy upper stage started to tumble so relatively quickly.
Apparently, the SRB did not separate cleanly, despite the separation rockets at the base of the SRB ( 8 firing upwards as Retros, and 4 sideways to make the SRB tumble). That would likely be due to the fact that the SRB's do not cleanly shut "off", there is still stuff burning inside which produces some thrust. For the shuttle flights, the SRB's do not sep until the SRB chamber pressures drop to a pre-set value (like 50 PSI). But of course for the shuttle the thrust from the Orbiter SSME's are plenty to push the shuttle onwards (residual thrust in the SRBs is still too low to allow the SRBs to accelerate as much as the shuttle is), and also the SRB's have sideways firing sep motors on the noses that help to push the noses of the SRB's to one side (as well as motors in the aft skirts that also provide a separation vector force).
Interestingly, "re-contact" is an issue that there was concern about before for Ares 1, so apparently they did not fix it. And, "re-contact" is an issue that has plagued one or two new private launch companies in the last couple of years, Space-X's Falcon 1 failed on its third flight when the 1st stage ran into the 2nd stage after stage sep.
As I replay the flight again, that does not seem to be just a random aerodynamic tumble, due to the direction which is very unlikely to be a coincidence. The SRB starts to yaw to its right, SRB front end swinging from left to right, while the dummy upper stage base also swings from left to right. So there had to be some physical contact to make the dummy upper stage tumble in mirrored response to the SRB's tumble. If it was not "re" contact, then it would have to be something equally as bad such as one or more explosive bolts not blowing to let the two drift apart, but being sheared from the side forces (or some other goofy thing like an electrical cable disconnect that hung).
FWIW - check out this Youtube vid showing animation of what the Ares 1X flight would be like. Pay attention at about 50 seconds onwards when the base retro sep motors fire on the SRB and see how today's sep was nothing like that (Actually I question part of the animation since it seems to show the retro-sep motors firing almost to the point of burnout before the upper stage seps, which makes no sense. The upper stage explosive bolts should fire the same instant as the Retro-sep motors, or maybe just a hair after the Retro-Sep motors start to fire).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U4Zi9xJAcQ
I have been browsing around to try to find any onboard (or ground/sea based) video of the SRB chute deployment and landing. Have not found anything yet. The same sources that mentioned the recontact also say one of the three SRB chutes failed. But that alone is not a big problem (has happened before), it means the SRB landed harder than intended and might be an issue for refurbishing the Aft Skirt (now if two of three chutes failed, that would be a big problem).
OK, found an interesting Youtube vid. Here is one with replays from various angles. In this one, look at SRB burnout starting at about 5:46, and the sep. It seems as though it is already bending apart before the sep motors have finished. But if nothing else you can VERY clearly see how the SRB swings one way and the dummy upper swings the other way, a though semi-hinged from touching. You will notice the significant amount of residual flame (and some thrust) coming from the SRB long after the two have pivoted away from each other, that is not from the sep motors! There is also a replay from one of the onboard cameras, but the camera cuts out RIGHT when the Sep motors fire (Well, I did not see them fire before the video cut out, but I could tell the SRB was burning out, then no signal, then views of tumbling around which seemed to be from a different camera).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iiuFPgQKbo
There were two onboard cameras. Mostly the downward looking one was shown, camera 1, mounted on the dummy upper stage. But there was one looking up (camera 2), mounted on the SRB. That seems to be the camera that was working after the separation with the dirty lens. I have looked on Youtube but cannot find liftoff thru sep video of Camera 2. Have to figure that if indeed there was "recontact", the video from those cameras would show it. But since the video signals drop out so easily on those things, there might not actually be a recording anywhere. Well, I would hope the managers of this program would have though thru this enough to also have a hard-wired video feed to some Tivo/PVR type device stored in the part of the SRB that was recovered by parachute, so there would be uninterrupted hi-quality video available after retrieval. Heck, even the Saturn program had onboard cameras, but they had to jettison the cameras/film shortly after staging and it was very "iffy" to find them on the ocean's surface (some were found, many were not).
- George Gassaway