SRB flight characteristics

[ryan]

Hey guys, i was wondering how would a shuttle SRB act if it had no shuttle and all, will it go off in directions and eventually crash head first into the VAB.
Thanks.
Ryan.

 

[tblaxland]

They won't even ignite unless they are attached to a properly integrated stack. Assuming you work around that, the SRBs have no internal guidance so the flight path would be unpredictable. The chances of hitting the VAB would be quite slim, though.

 

[Hielor]

Look at the SRBs on the Challenger after breakup.

 

[Urwumpe]

They won't even ignite unless they are attached to a properly integrated stack. Assuming you work around that, the SRBs have no internal guidance so the flight path would be unpredictable. The chances of hitting the VAB would be quite slim, though.

That is not absolutely true - they have guidance systems of their own, like Rate Gyros and thrust vector control. but I don't know if they also have any form of guidance computer to combine the two. I think this task is done in the Shuttle GPCs.

But installing a full guidance system into a SRB would be just a small box more..

 

[ripley1]

Here is a good source of information about the Shuttle SRB's and related systems.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/srb/