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It is known that at least some of Challenger's crew survived the explosion, while conscious. If the cabin had a parachute, they may have lived. This is despite the Space Shuttle stack being one of the largest rockets in history.

Extant spacecraft use launch escape rockets to pull away from a failing booster, followed by parachute deployment.

Is it possible for existing spacecraft; eg:- Soyuz, Dragon2 - to be designed to "ride out" an explosion? What would be the main problems; acceleration, debris, or fire?

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    $\begingroup$ Given unlimited money, any spacecraft could be retrofitted that way. But that's unrealistic. $\endgroup$
    – DrSheldon
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 13:50
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    $\begingroup$ Comment not answer b/c I have no evidence, but current crew capsules could ride out some catastrophic launcher failures, but it would be chancy. Fire: not nearly as hot or long as reentry, and the whole capsule is heatshielded (albeit relatively lightly on the front and sides). Debris: the primary heat shield should be a relatively good piece of armor. A bad scenario would be one stage's failure occurring in a way that turns the capsule sideways before another stage explodes, allowing debris to breach cabin or parachute systems. 1/2 $\endgroup$
    – Russell Borogove
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 16:15
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    $\begingroup$ Accelerations overall wouldn't be as bad as using the LES, but sideways jolts could cause neck and spine injury; this could be mitigated with a deep, densely padded couch -- I'm not sure how deep the Soyuz couches are already; I believe they're custom fit to the astronauts. 2/2 $\endgroup$
    – Russell Borogove
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 16:18
  • $\begingroup$ Crew Dragon does have the equivalent of a LES capability, as does Orion. Both will indeed give the crew quite the jolt if used. $\endgroup$
    – David Hammen
    Commented Aug 19, 2021 at 17:30
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    $\begingroup$ @paulmrest Chutes wouldn't be that big a problem--you wait as long as you can to deploy, that minimizes the chance that you're in a fireball or there is debris around. It's over the ocean, a simple barometer will do a pretty good job. $\endgroup$
    – Loren Pechtel
    Commented Aug 27, 2021 at 0:36

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This actually kind of happened during SpaceX CRS-7. The Falcon 9 booster exploded 136 seconds into the flight. The Dragon capsule was thrown from the disintegrating vehicle and plummeted back to the ground.

It was found later that the capsule stayed intact until impact. If the parachutes had deployed, the capsule and its payloads would have stayed intact. However, the flight software did not allow for the parachutes to be deployed until reentry.

Starting with CRS-8, SpaceX changed the flight control software such that the parachutes are also armed in the event of a launch failure.

Note that the new Dragon 2 based Cargo Dragon is derived from Crew Dragon, but one of the changes compared to Crew Dragon is that there are no SuperDracos, and thus no launch escape capability.

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    $\begingroup$ Here's a SFN report on cargo Dragon implementing chute deployment for emergency landing in case of launch failure formost of 10min. ascent phase. spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/07/… $\endgroup$
    – Ohsin
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 19:33
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks. Added the link and changed the paragraph to be more definitive. $\endgroup$
    – Jörg W Mittag
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 19:38
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The second attempted launch of the Soviet N1 demonstrated that even 1960s launch escape technology could safely carry a crew away from a massive explosion.

The N1 was the launch vehicle designed to take cosmonauts to the Moon. It had more thrust than the American Saturn V or Space Shuttle -- the largest of any rocket in history until the SpaceX Super Heavy later this year. The first stage had 30 engines!

There were 4 launches, and uncrewed and all which ended in failure. During the second launch, on July 3 1969, the LO$_2$ turbopump for engine #8 exploded a quarter-second before liftoff, severing the plumbing to other engines and starting fires. At T+10.5 seconds, the rocket had reached 100 m altitude, but the on-board computer was automatically shutting down all but one of the engines. Without thrust, the N1 fell back onto its launchpad.

The resulting explosion was one the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history. It obliterated the launchpad, created a giant red mushroom cloud seen 35 km away, and shattered windows 40 km away.

However, the launch escape system automatically triggered and pulled the (empty) crew capsule away from the doomed rocket. The crew capsule gently landed by parachute 2.0 km away, undamaged.

So it's completely possible for a crew to survive an exploding rocket, even with 1960s technology.

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    $\begingroup$ OP’s question is about riding out an explosion without an LES. $\endgroup$
    – Russell Borogove
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 5:17
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    $\begingroup$ Good answer, but I'm afraid for a different question $\endgroup$
    – Anton Hengst
    Commented Aug 25, 2021 at 7:05

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