84
votes
Accepted
What safety protocols did this Pythom Space rocket crew ignore?
The easy-to-spot stuff:
(assumed) Improper transportation of hazardous materials. Both white fuming nitric acid and furfuryl alcohol are considered hazardous materials; none of the vehicles in the ...
- 14k
82
votes
Accepted
What makes Ada the language of choice for the ISS's safety-critical systems?
This Wikibooks link lists its strong points, some of which are:
An extremely strong, static and safe type system, which allows the programmer to construct powerful abstractions that reflect the ...
- 821
76
votes
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Why would a box full of 1cm balls released into LEO be so scary to an engineer supporting the ISS?
Well, gee, this question may as well have my name printed directly on it!
Spacecraft protection from the orbital debris threat comes in two flavors:
Shield and withstand
Detect and avoid
To start, ...
- 17.1k
60
votes
What makes Ada the language of choice for the ISS's safety-critical systems?
Timing. Ada was developed in the 1970s and 80s with the intent of replacing the plethora of languages used in the US Department of Defense's realtime systems. NASA (and also organizations from Europe) ...
- 71.9k
49
votes
Why is it assumed that space flights have to be safe?
But wouldn't it be better for space exploration if we inherently assumed space travel is incredibly risky and that astronaut deaths are to be expected?
NASA and Roscosmos do assume space travel is ...
- 71.9k
47
votes
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Is it safe to observe the ISS with the naked eye?
It's safe.
The ISS is about 100 meters across at its widest, and it's 400km away; this calculator tells me that makes an angular size of ~0.014 degrees. The sun's angular size is about 0.53 degrees....
- 165k
46
votes
Accepted
How did sloshing prevent the Apollo Service Module from moving safely away from the Command Module and how was this fixed?
Let's start with the "Statement of Problem" in the anomaly report.
...the service module, upon being jettisoned on a lunar return flight, should have entered the earth's atmosphere, then skipped ...
- 165k
42
votes
Accepted
Why does Blue Origin claim Virgin Galactic's spaceplane doesn’t have an escape system whereas Virgin Galactic's passengers are wearing parachutes?
First of all, it should be clear that this infographic is by no means objective; it's designed to put SS2 in the worst possible light, and New Shepard in the best.
That said, an "escape system&...
- 165k
40
votes
Accepted
What is the primary reason for SpaceX motion to have astronauts board Dragon before fueling up the rocket?
The Merlin-1D engines are now tuned to use the super cooled fuel and oxidizer. Thus you would be running the engines in an out of normal state, if not using it the same as all other launches with ...
- 78.9k
40
votes
Why is it assumed that space flights have to be safe?
I think you're mixing up public perception vs engineering reality. For example, you mention the space shuttle...
if the Challenger disaster was treated as a cost of doing business, the Space Shuttle ...
- 7,956
40
votes
Accepted
Wouldn't it make sense to use parachutes for aborting test flights rather than destroying the whole rocket?
The ability to successfully deploy a parachute still requires some level of stability or control, it's simply not an option for a badly out-of-control rocket. In cases where something goes wrong, the ...
- 3,587
33
votes
Accepted
Is the overall mortality rate for being in a spacecraft in space or bound for space about 4%?
It depends on how you count.
Flights or individual astronauts:
302 manned spaceflights, 4 of which ended with a total of 18 fatalities: 1.3% of flights.
544 people have been in Earth orbit, ...
- 123k
32
votes
Why would a box full of 1cm balls released into LEO be so scary to an engineer supporting the ISS?
There's a few pieces of information that are needed to explain why one might be wary of 1 cm objects:
Objects as small as 4 inches (about 10 cm) can be seen by radars or optical telescopes on Earth
...
- 23.9k
30
votes
Accepted
How dangerous are RCS thrusters?
For Shuttle EVA, the Space Shuttle Flight Rules show that the safe
distance for a suited crewmember was 27 feet for the main jets, 3 feet
for the vernier jets, and 3 feet for the APU exhaust. It's ...
- 174k
28
votes
Is it safe to observe the ISS with the naked eye?
No problem, even with a telescope
Not only is it perfectly safe with the naked eye, it's also not a problem at all with a large aperture telescope.
At first, I tried looking at the ISS with a 80-...
- 1,676
26
votes
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Engineering difficulties towards near-perfect rockets?
Practice.
It's unusual for the same fault to cause more than one rocket launch to fail. Flaws are found and corrected, and launchers get more reliable.
In all our history, there have been something ...
- 165k
26
votes
Why is dust such a problem in microgravity? Wouldn't proper air circulation and filtration take care of it?
When you have gravity heavy particulates like shavings, crumbs, large dust granules, etc. will fall to the ground where they can be cleaned or form part of the environment. In microgravity everything ...
- 19.2k
25
votes
Has any spacecraft had a way for the crew to escape during reentry?
The Space Shuttle Orbiter had a flight mode whereby, at or below ~50,000 feet of altitude during the reentry (or, in the event of an ascent abort, the gliding, unpowered phase of flight), the ...
- 4,125
25
votes
Tiny emergency propulsive device if stuck floating in a large volume in microgravity
I found a real world test of this. Dan Barry tried it when STS-96 was docked to the ISS. I've scanned his account from the book "Space Shuttle: the first 20 years."
tl;dr - he escaped by ...
- 174k
25
votes
Accepted
Did the U.S. Space Shuttles have a way for crew to bail out?
They did, but its use case was pretty narrow.
The shuttle hatch was modified to be able to be explosively jettisoned, and a telescoping escape pole (pictured below) could be deployed that would help ...
- 17.1k
24
votes
Accepted
August 30th 2018 Soyuz leak, any dangers for re-entry?
The leak is in the Orbital Module (OM), which is jettisoned prior to re-entry, so there is no concern there.
Source: link in the question.
Image source: spaceflight101.com
- 174k
23
votes
Accepted
How intrusive was the Apollo Master Alarm system?
The Apollo Operations Handbook, Caution and Warning section, identifies the alarm tone as "a square wave that is alternately 750 cps and 2000 cps, changing at a rate of 2.5 times a second"
Perhaps ...
- 174k
22
votes
What is the primary reason for SpaceX motion to have astronauts board Dragon before fueling up the rocket?
In addition to not wanting to change anything for crewed launches (as geoffc mentioned), adding crew to a fueled vehicle is a seriously dangerous move.
If you look at the AMOS-6 failure you'll see ...
- 340
21
votes
Accepted
What is the "ISS's Keep Out Sphere" and what is its radius?
NASA has made a list of requirements for spacecraft approaching the ISS.
SSP 50808 is an ITAR controlled document that identifies the requirements for rendezvous, proximity operations, and ...
- 123k
21
votes
What makes Ada the language of choice for the ISS's safety-critical systems?
I remember taking Computer Science courses in the late 90s. The professor of CS explained to our meager group of CS majors that he was going to teach us C, rather than COBOL or Ada, because it would ...
- 7,708
21
votes
Accepted
Was this a rapid SCHEDULED disassembly? How was it done?
No. I think this is actually the May 23, 1965 A-003 test, described in my answer to the question, Could a spacecraft spin so fast that it spontaneously deconstructs?
Notice that the rocket and Apollo ...
- 18.2k
20
votes
Accepted
How are cryogenic rocket propellants delivered to the launch pad?
Kennedy Space centre in Florida formerly had its own plant for the manufacture of cryogenic fuels and other liquids. This is now closed as noted earlier.
The procurement for cryogenic fuel for NASA is ...
- 6,153
20
votes
Accepted
What exactly does it mean to human-rate a rocket? As opposed to the escape system?
While the launch escape system (LES) is important for getting the crew away on ascent there are other thing required for human-rating a craft/launch system (and you do need to pay attention to the ...
- 7,216
20
votes
Engineering difficulties towards near-perfect rockets?
Just another analogy to maybe help explain why #EverythingIsTrickyNotJustRockets (in addition to the great answers already here).
Take Formula 1 racing. It's a sport with some extremely complex ...
- 301
20
votes
Accepted
Electronic Circuits for Safe Initiation of Pyrotechnics?
This excerpt from the Space Shuttle Systems Handbook Volume 2, drawing 13.1, (pdf page 200) shows a typical shuttle pyro circuit. (This one happens to be for the nose gear assist thruster, but they ...
- 174k
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