Working on safety detonation of the launch vehicle:
---------- Post added 05-28-11 at 11:44 AM ---------- Previous post was 05-27-11 at 09:15 PM ----------
is the LES system considered as a new vessel generated, with just an engine to escape from the stack? that would be wierd if it then gave you incredible speed...
LES system works almost as normal staging. After LES command (Ctrl+A) vessel detaches Core and SRBs meshes, ignites it's engines, and starts delay timer for explosion.
After 5 seconds spent stage explodes.
Explosion is done by 3 particle emiters working in 0.3 second pulses for creating fireball and few other to create a smoke cloud. Core and SRB meshes are replaced with derbis meshes that will free fall to the ground.
I'm planning to add some smoke and fire effect to derbis meshes as it falls to the ground.
In the mean time LES stage with shuttle attached accelerates with 7G for 4 seconds to clear explosion zone.
Another news. Shuttles would have custom reentry textures & reentry particle stream. I'm planning to achieve "Apollo 13 Movie" like effect during reentry. Maybe with less smoke bearing te fact that heatshield isn't ablative.
I'm not sure it is possible within DX7 rendering engine but my work on explosion and SRB flames filled me with real admiration to this engine.
Interesting concept; however, for a 13.000 kg spacecraft, this LES must be pretty heavy and can't be discarded during the flight as in a conventional design.
anyway, the 27.000 kg LEO payload capacity of the rocket seems sufficient for the job.
LES system in fact isn't that heavy. It has to burn for ~4 seconds so amount of fuel is minimal. I'll post detailed data later today.
Here is whole family with Energia launcher for size comparison.
