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I've been watching the PBS American Experience documentary, and they showed a brief clip of some accidents at NASA. One involved a capsule being carried on the back of a truck, on some kind of crane. As the truck is driving along the capsule comes loose and crashes down onto the road.
What capsule was this and what are the circumstances surrounding the accident?
Screenshot:
According to Apollo Experience Report: Spacecraft Structure Subsystem, NASA Tech Note D-7780, pp. 15-16, that capsule was either Command Module boilerplate BP-1 or BP-2, in a "landing impact test" sometime between 1962 and 1964.
The Block I landing impact test program consisted of numerous impacts of boilerplate test vehicles on both land and water. These drop tests began in 1962 and used BP-1 and BP-2 as test articles. These boilerplate vehicles were not structurally similar to the spacecraft but could be classified as rigid-body vehicles. The drop tests had the following objectives.
- To evaluate crew shock attenuation system at land impact
- To evaluate vertical and transverse acceleration loads at land impact
- To determine and evaluate the stability and dynamics of the vehicle
- To evaluate g-forces on the primary structure and simulated crew couch
- To confirm preliminary criteria and determine if any new conditions existed
In the spring of 1964, it was decided that the spacecraft would only land on water. At that point, the impact test regime was changed to exclusively impacts with water, using boilerplate BP-28, which was a better model of the actual CM.
