I disagree that no rocket ever carried crew more dangerously. The Shuttle was a marvel of suicidal flight. Mercury Atlas, at least, had an escape tower.
@starvingfilmcritic
7 жыл бұрын
I concur. There's only one launch platform where the designing agency said, "let's test one of the abort modes," on the first launch and the test pilot responded with, "Let's not practice Russian Roulette, because you have a loaded gun here."
@guidosarducci166
7 жыл бұрын
Good point. Though with both Falcon 9 failures, the failure occurred prior to staging. Certainly the incident on the pad would have been an outstanding example of the usefulness of a LES. The in-flight failure happened well into the flight and I don't know if an LES would have been effective in that instance. The Progress failure happened well after the useful envelope of a LES, but unless new information has been released in the last few weeks the cause and nature of the failure is unclear, except to say that the payload did not achieve orbit. If the failure was simply a failure of the second stage to light or even a navigation error, a manned crew might have been able to intervene to save the payload (themselves). A catastrophic failure of the second stage that would result in the destruction of the payload would be difficult to escape. As to the Shuttle, the second stage WAS the Shuttle itself, so any failure that would lead to explosion would be academic. Good discussion on this! Thanks!
@starvingfilmcritic
7 жыл бұрын
+Paul Jenkins It depends on how the LES was configured. If it were set up the way the Apollo LES was designed, then the escape tower would remain until second stage ignition +30 (Abort Mode 1) to provide a quick getaway if ignition went wrong. After that, the LES used the service module engine and RCS to get the crew away after that (Abort Mode 2). Abort Modes 3-4 and S-IVB to orbit all involved early stage drops and orbital insertion. Orion is planned to do something similar and, despite a lack of documentation, I suspect Mercury was designed to do something similar with the posigrade rockets filling in for the SME. For me, the argument of which is most dangerous comes down to whether or not a failure is survivable. NASA had contingency plans for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all the way from launchpad to orbit to ensure astronaut survival. The Space Shuttle had zero survivable contingencies for the first two minutes of launch because of the SRBs and the following two minutes required RTLS, an abort mode that had zero confidence in the astronaut corps. The fact that we only had one Shuttle loss during those first two minutes is a miracle and a tragedy, because if it had happened in the 1960s and 70s, our astronauts would probably survived.
@witchofengineering
7 жыл бұрын
The Mercury had no abort option after jettisoning side engines and LES, when STS had no abort option before separation of boosters. If for example, the sustainor engine in Mercury-Atlas failed at 6,5km/s velocity, the capsule would re-enter very steep, it would spent no time in the upper atmosphere and hit lower atmosphere at very high velocities and then it will just evaporate. If the engine on the STS failed at 6,5km/s, it would stiill be possible to reach orbit using 2 other engines. And even if all engines wodld fail, the STS had wings and it will be able to kill descent (becouse it had wings) and land in USAF base in Africa.
@starvingfilmcritic
7 жыл бұрын
Mercury had two in-flight abort modes for Atlas that allowed safe crew evacuation from service tower rollaway to orbit. Mode 1 used the Launch escape tower and was discontinued after the booster engines were staged. Mode 2 was designated for post-Escape Tower jettison and operated as follows: 1) Abort initiated by Ground Command, Astronaut, or Atlas Abort Sensing And Implementation System (ASIS or Booster Catastrophic Failure Detection system in McDonnell documentation). 2) Atlas Sustainer engine given cutoff command 3) at .25g acceleration Mercury capsule is separated from Atlas booster 4) Posigrade booster package is activated to push Mercury capsule away from Atlas booster. 5) Mercury capsule orients into heat shield forward attitude while ground control assess altitude and velocity. 6) Retrograde boosters are fired if necessary to decelerate capsule onto safe trajectory and the retro-package is jettisoned 7) landing and recovery operations begin at 10,00ft If you want to familiarize yourself with the operational design of the Mercury capsule, I suggest you read the available documentation on it here: www.scottcarpenter.com/Project%20Mercury%20Familiarization%20Manual.pdf The relevant sections are 5-11 to 5-17 and information on the launch escape tower are in section 6.
@reddeath4242
7 жыл бұрын
Great video, and a nice little tribute to John Glenn. I had no idea how quickly the Mercury Atlas went into orbit, thats almost Kerbal levels of fast! Though I am curious on what your criteria for naming this the most dangerous human launch system is, I wouls have thought that would have been the Voskhod missions.
@reddeath4242
7 жыл бұрын
***** Thats fair, I guess its all up for debate with these launch systems that only flew a handful of times. I would have said that Voskhod was the more dangerous system due to the lack of a launch escape system, but then again the R-7 was a far more reliable rocket than the Mercury Atlas. So I can see both sides
@rwboa22
4 жыл бұрын
Personally, the Gemini-Titan was more dangerous than Mercury-Atlas. Mercury and Apollo had launch escape rockets that was able to pull the capsule away from an exploding booster even on the launch pad; the Soviet Soyuz T-10a was the best example of such. Gemini had ejection seats (also used on the Space Shuttle for the ALT flights at Edwards AFB and from STS-1 to STS-4) and Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford on Gemini 6A almost had to use them when the Titan II (a second-generation ICBM using hypergolic fuel like that of the Soviet/Russian Proton rocket) abruptly shut-down on the launch pad. Unlike the Mercury and Apollo escape rockets, the astronauts ejecting from the Gemini on the launch pad would have ejected parallel to the ground and the parachutes would have had to open immediately. Even if successful, both Schirra and Stafford would have suffered career-ending injuries due to the seats. The only vehicles that were more dangerous would be the Soviet Voskhod (lack of escape system) and the Space Shuttle.
@GunnerHeatFire
3 жыл бұрын
dead commet section lol
@yannyyansen9743
5 ай бұрын
Thank you for your vids, as a studying rocket educator this really helps me visualize.
@braunblender
7 жыл бұрын
love this series. hope there's plenty more in the pipe line
@wildevixen7753
2 жыл бұрын
A very informative video. I found information about the launch sequence that several hours of searching other sources did not reveal. One point I would like to understand: what is the black adaptor-type section between the base of the Mercury capsule and the top of the Atlas? It is about 2/3 the height of the capsule, so if it is an adaptor, why is not like the much shorter equivalent section on the Mercury-Redstone?
@RaizSpace
2 жыл бұрын
I'm not sure about that, but if I had to guess, the diameter of the top of the early Atlas rocket was a bit different and the Atlas tank was a balloon tank and very thin, so they might have wanted to attach the Mercury capsule to a lower part of the conic section of the rocket where the weight of the capsule could be better distributed. The Atlas actually had to be reinforced to carry Mercury.
@ERROR-ho1lz
7 жыл бұрын
You could do the Vanguard rocket.
@makssachs8914
Жыл бұрын
You mean the flopnik.
@bingo8408
7 жыл бұрын
Hey! I love your Rocket Profile Series. Could you do the rocket profile of the Pegasus Rocket? It's probabely quite a challenge but I really like the Idea of the launcher.
@debott4538
7 жыл бұрын
5,5 mins to orbit? holy... I think I built rockets in stock KSP that took that long to make orbit.
@SuperMonkei
7 жыл бұрын
"stock" is the keyword there.
@debott4538
7 жыл бұрын
Nikita Dubrovskih And 'think'. They might have still been faster. Max acceleration about 2 g. I'm still tuning on it though and might get that even lower. :)
@SuperMonkei
7 жыл бұрын
What I'm saying is stock is 10 times smaller than real earth, getting to orbit doesn't take much. I don't keep track of my launches in RSS but around 7-8 minutes is probably average time to orbit, that is with optimal rocket.
@debott4538
7 жыл бұрын
Nikita Dubrovskih I know what you're saying. It's exactly what I was aiming for. :)
@blockvfive1196
4 жыл бұрын
@@SuperMonkei i always have extremely low thrust upper stages, sometimes even can take me 15 mins
@jaredleliefeld3330
3 жыл бұрын
this theme is from apollo 13 movie
@neyoezekiel123
2 жыл бұрын
does mercury atlas have a 2nd stage?
@RaizSpace
2 жыл бұрын
Depends how you count stages. U.S.-style: no, it's a 1.5 stage system because everything is lit on the ground, but there is a staging event. Soviet: yes, the sustainer is a second stage, because the Soviets based things on when the stage ended rather than when it started.
@albertpietrosanu2667
3 жыл бұрын
Use Bluedogs Ships Parts, are one of the best, evem more good as game stock paarts .
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