NASA Abort Test July 2nd

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9 years from AA-1 to AA-2.

MR-3 to Apollo 11 took less time than that.

And no parachutes will be tested on this flight. Orion will hit the water at 500km/hr +.

Kind of hard to understand what NASA is even about these days.

And even harder to stay interested.
 
Went up at 7:00. Plume kind of just “ended” as seen in pic. Not sure if that was planned or what.
IMG_4710.jpg
 
The Spaceflight Now video was from a different angle - the plume ends in a big puffy ball from the jettison motors. You can see the booster, capsule and escape motor fall separately. It looks like the test flew as planned.
 
9 years from AA-1 to AA-2.

MR-3 to Apollo 11 took less time than that.

And no parachutes will be tested on this flight. Orion will hit the water at 500km/hr +.

Kind of hard to understand what NASA is even about these days.

And even harder to stay interested.

Seriously? They could throw caution to the wind and go full speed ahead.. and end up with another Apollo 1.

I see it as a great time to be into rocketry.

For those still interested.... to just see the actual launch go to the 31 minute mark.

The Minotaur rocket motor sure packed a hell-of-a punch for no bigger than it is :eek:

 
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9 years from AA-1 to AA-2.

MR-3 to Apollo 11 took less time than that.

And no parachutes will be tested on this flight. Orion will hit the water at 500km/hr +.

Kind of hard to understand what NASA is even about these days.

And even harder to stay interested.

Couldn't agree more, Gus...
 
Maybe this is a stupid question, but since they did the test without parachutes, does that mean that they will eventually need to repeat the test in order to certify the parachutes?
 
Maybe they dropped a boilerplate out of a plane somewhere to test the chutes... they're still going to have to do an all-up test at some point, I would imagine.
 
Maybe they dropped a boilerplate out of a plane somewhere to test the chutes... they're still going to have to do an all-up test at some point, I would imagine.

Probably the unmanned moon-circle mission. What are they calling it now? Artemis?
 
When it turns around that looks like a rough ride (better than the alternative).
I nearly lost my breakfast just watching.
 
The Minotaur rocket motor sure packed a hell-of-a punch for no bigger than it is

Haha, our motors pack a punch for their size. When a motor has a core you can sleep small child in, you've got some thrust

edit: Just heard the part where they had to add 100k lbs of weight so it didn't go too fast for the desired aerodynamic conditions of abort!
 
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Seems unconscionably wasteful to dump everything like that. I imagine the data from recovering the capsule would be worth the cost of the parachutes.
 
Seems unconscionably wasteful to dump everything like that. I imagine the data from recovering the capsule would be worth the cost of the parachutes.

They no doubt had the capsule instrumented to get readings of what loads are encountered in the nightmare scenario of no chutes. These folks are scientists and engineers... gathering data is what they do.

The only way to truly know how much force something will take before it breaks... is to break it.

a.k.a. Destructive Testing.
 
2018-09-12-145652.jpg


Much of the airplane in this photo I was responsible for.
 
No doubt to keep them safe. There were likely more modules that remained onboard to record the splashdown forces and accelerations.

Why would they need 'splashdown forces,, etc."? The boilerplate crashed as intended. What data would anyone want or need for a crashing dummy capsule?
 
Seems unconscionably wasteful to dump everything like that. I imagine the data from recovering the capsule would be worth the cost of the parachutes.
Primary sensor data feed was via telemetry. As Nyt said, backup was 12 floating data modules equipped with a tracker. And even those transmitted their data twice before splashing down.
BTW listening to how those were constructed it gives me ideas for our model rockets. It was mentioned that it was encased by a buoyant foam structure of microballoons and epoxy, weighted on one end so that the tracking antenna faced up out of the water. So maybe we could construct an e bay like that for rockets that might end up in water, like a lake or ocean?
 
Why would they need 'splashdown forces,, etc."? The boilerplate crashed as intended. What data would anyone want or need for a crashing dummy capsule?
It just seems like a wasted opportunity not to make some onboard measurements since the thing is going to hit anyway. At the very least I'd want to have stress and strain gauges mounted all over the capsule to see what the materials did. If they reacted differently than the calculations predicted that would be good to know now rather than later, wouldn't it?
 
It just seems like a wasted opportunity not to make some onboard measurements since the thing is going to hit anyway. At the very least I'd want to have stress and strain gauges mounted all over the capsule to see what the materials did. If they reacted differently than the calculations predicted that would be good to know now rather than later, wouldn't it?
Boilerplate capsule was made of aluminum, different material than the "real" operational capsule. I'm sure the Orion capsule will be tested for stress and strain in flight, if it hasn't already.
EDIT: Orion capsule was tested in flight including reentry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Flight_Test-1
 
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edit: Just heard the part where they had to add 100k lbs of weight so it didn't go too fast for the desired aerodynamic conditions of abort!
They should put that ICBM propellant in some Aerotech or Cesaroni motors! Oops, formula is probably classified. Never mind.
 
Who says we don't have things similar already? C-star is a high performance propellant. Warp-9 was developed out of the Pegasus project. V-max was discontinued due to process volatility, coincidentally just like certain military propellants that were "too hot" for intended purposes.
 
Still ridiculous they didn't use this as a test for the chute system. Test as you fly, fly as you test. They had a total chute failure disaster a few years ago. I can't think of any Apollo test flight that didn't use a parachute on the capsule, when the capsule separated (QTV Little Joe-II was not an Apollo test, but a test to qualify the booster rocket. The Apollo parts were all dummies and it crashed without separating anything, as planned).

A video of the flight from a different source and angle, including splash-destruct of the Orion. It tumbles like crazy, also not a good sign (if they didn't bother to get the CG and mass the same as for a crewed flight, again failure to fly as you test and test as you fly). There are some bright flame-like flashes that at first I thought maybe (?) were the data recorders being ejected by rocket power or pyrotechnics. But there are more and more flashes just before it hits, long after those recorders were to have ejected. May have been sunlight reflections as it tumbled. Sure looks flamey at times though. But was too slow for it to be aerodynamic heating.

 
This was not a test of Orion...just a partial abort system test to verify the ability to pull away from the booster during the driving aerodynamic case for the flights.

The complete abort system was tested during the pad abort test. Orion deployments were tested first with multiple drops, followed by Ares I, followed by EM-1.

No need to waste an operational test unit for Orion for this test. It’s a judicial use of taxpayer funds.
 
Why would they need 'splashdown forces,, etc."? The boilerplate crashed as intended. What data would anyone want or need for a crashing dummy capsule?

"If the chutes don't open, what's the point?"

-- Apollo 13

I'm not sure what useful information would come from having the boilerplate CM slam into the ocean at 300 mph.

But presumably they're pretty confident in the chute deploy system.
 
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