Well, OK, Potemkin missile. I had a brief email exchange with Patrick Peterson over at Florida Today a couple weeks ago, and he apparently used it in this article on next week’s planned Ares-1X test. I should sit down and put together a list of things that half a billion dollars could have gone to that would have advanced us in space much farther than this flight.
I’m guessing that this article isn’t going to result in a flurry of consulting requests for me from Marshall and its contractors…
[Update a few minutes later]
As is often the case with newspaper comments sections, the comments are pretty uniformly idiotic. Except the one that agrees with me, of course. 😉
In the unlikely event Ares I-X were to fail on the pad, would it have enough force to take out the whole pad?
What if the Ares I-x “test” were to fail? Suppose it goes off course and the RSO has to destroy it? Or suppose the damn thing blows up or — better yet — shakes itself to pieces thirty seconds after launch? What would that prove?
Has anyone at NASA ever attempted to answer this question? Would NASA ever say that a catastrophic failure had any negative implications for the Stick? Or would it just demonstrate the need for another test?
Martijn Meijering asks “In the unlikely event Ares I-X were to fail on the pad, would it have enough force to take out the whole pad?”
No. The worst case explosive force is relatively small and the upper stage can’t contribute a H2/O2 blast.
The first stage has somewhere around 300 tons of TNT (assuming I calculated it right) in chemical energy and technically doesn’t explode even when the whole thing goes off at once.
The biggest danger from Ares IX comes from the false conclusions that the general public and policymakers will inevitably draw from it. If Ares IX meets all test objectives, they will likely conclude the design is sound, even though the real Ares I is almost 100% different from what’s going to fly next week. If Ares IX experiences some major anomaly, it may not be applicable to the real Ares I (again, due to Ares IX not testing much in the way of actual Ares I flight hardware.) But an Ares IX failure may sway policymakers towards either commercial capsules or towards the twin Ares V Lite scenario.
I witnessed the explosion of a Titan IV Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade (looked for video and pictures, but it was on April 1, 1991 so they’re hard to comeby online. I have an image in my office…) and while it looked spectacular, the test stand wasn’t damaged too badly. An on-pad failure for Ares I-X would basically mean a split pressure vessel, which would throw the propellant around to burn for a while. I’m guessing they’re going with a flight-proven casing, though it hasn’t been flight-proven with the mass on top…
I’ll be curious to see the initial acceleration and the roll control system in action, but not curious enough to think it was worth $500M.
I’ll be curious to see the initial acceleration and the roll control system in action, but not curious enough to think it was worth $500M.
But most of that $500M will already have been spent, so from that point of view going ahead with the test may make sense. I’m just afraid of anything that could give SDLV a boost.
True, it’s a sunk cost. And at this point it is cheaper to launch it than to roll it back, destack it, and inert it. So as long as the risks to the launch complex are worth the data that would be obtained, sure, launch it.
So as long as the risks to the launch complex are worth the data that would be obtained, sure, launch it.
Actually, taking out the launch complex would be one of the best things it could do since maintaining LC-39 is part of the high overhead of the Shuttle stack. As long as it does not take Atlantis with it that is, since ISS depends on it. But from comments above it seems taking out the pad is physically impossible.
Keep in mind that LC-39 was originally designed before the lunar mode decision was made and so had to accommodate any of them. EOR required salvo launches of Saturn Vs, and the spacing between the pads was dictated by a requirement that a Saturn V explosion on one pad not affect the vehicle(s) on the other pad(s).
Ares I-X is a lot smaller than a Saturn V. The only threat to Atlantis would be if a “smart” guidance failure caused Ares I-X to fly toward 39A before RSO could destroy it. That’s pretty unlikely.
Range safety destruction of the SRB first stage for whatever reason during the first minute of launch creates a large expanding cloud of hot burning solid fuel fragments according to the report on crew survival post such destruction that was released by the Air Force earlier this summer, which stated the capsule’s parachutes would melt in this heat and the crew would perish. Worst case scenario for the Ares 1X, I speculate, would be this debris cloud being formed with the Shuttle in its footprint and rain down upon it, severely damaging the Shuttle and its pad structure and perhaps sparking its own SRBs, which may have no armed destruct system at the time, to ignite. The ramifications of such an incident would likely be the immediate end of the Shuttle program, and perhaps the barring of SRBs from future launch vehicles.
The remaining ISS payloads could be launched on EELVs if such a path were pursued, for ULA proposed a cradle for such payloads that mimics the Shuttle Bay in the COTS competition, although this would no doubt entail a delay in their launch compared with the present schedule.
You’d think that any type of non-success in a vehicle that uses a major component of the Shuttle would result in a delay in the launch of the remaining Shuttles while the applicable danger of the situation is investigated.
That is ridiculously unlikely.
Potemkin missile is suitable for Potemkin politics. A pity, since the etymology of politics suggests far different than the processes that led to Ares I-X.
That is ridiculously unlikely.
Famous last words. 😉
Famous last words.
Please don’t confuse the foolishness of moving forward with Ares 1-X with the professionalism of people who understand the safety of the launch complex, personnel, and vehicles.
I jest.
On a positive note, the whole Ares 1/Ares 1-X project is an interesting exercise in technology development. It’s explored what it takes to produce a large solid rocket space booster. It’s going to produce some definitive answers regarding the trade-offs of a solid fuel vs. liquid fuel design, such as simplicity, reliability, cost, and performance. I’m not prepared to argue that the expense of the program is justified or not, but this is going to make a fascinating case study in engineering.