General Question What Would Have Happened if the Apollo LAS Tower collided with the CM during Launch?

[Siliconaut]

One in a million shot, but I was just playing AMSO and launching Apollo 11. All Good, then the LAS shot free and zoomed off into the sky. All good. Not a few seconds later, for whatever reason It did not get enough outward velocity and the tower came hurtling back towards the stack and missed by mere meters. Maybe 3 or 4 at most. My mouth dropped as I considered the implications had that happened for real. I take it that would have been a catastrophic malfunction?

 

[C3PO]

Columbia was hit by a piece of foam, and the LES was much harder than foam.

 

[Quick_Nick]

The LES tower structure is apparently 500 lb, and I believe that's without the boost protective cover factored in.
At the time of jettison, the launch vehicle is accelerating at just under 1G. So imagine a 500+ lb chunk of titanium falling for multiple seconds and impacting your capsule. Bad day.
SpaceX's third Falcon 1 flight failed when residual thrust from evaporating fuel pushed the first stage into the second stage immediately after separation.
Rockets can be quite sensitive. I don't think the effect of your scenario would be subtle...

 

[Codz]

Likely loss of vehicle and crew.

 

[Dantassii]

One in a million shot, but I was just playing AMSO and launching Apollo 11. All Good, then the LAS shot free and zoomed off into the sky. All good. Not a few seconds later, for whatever reason It did not get enough outward velocity and the tower came hurtling back towards the stack and missed by mere meters. Maybe 3 or 4 at most. My mouth dropped as I considered the implications had that happened for real. I take it that would have been a catastrophic malfunction?

The Apollo LAS has a secondary motor at the top that tilts it to the side as after it completely clears the CM. Guess that feature isn't modeled in AMSO.

As a side note, from Apollo 15 onwards, they removed all the reverse thrusters on the Saturn V 1st stage to save weight and on Apollo 15 there was almost re-contact between the 1st and 2nd stage after the first stage was dropped due to thrust provided by residual propellants. I suspect they fixed that issue on Apollo 16 and on by letting the stages stay connected a little longer so that the residual thrust on the 1st stage was lower.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[indy91]

The Apollo LAS has a secondary motor at the top that tilts it to the side as after it completely clears the CM. Guess that feature isn't modeled in AMSO.

Are you talking about the Pitch Control Motor? Afaik that motor would have only been used during an escape at a low altitude. The Tower Jettision Motor itself was angled relative to the center of gravity to ensure that the LES follows a curved path and doesn't hit the rocket. The planned minimum distance to the rocket with this maneuver was 150 feet.

 

[Siliconaut]

Columbia was hit by a piece of foam, and the LES was much harder than foam.

I remember watching a documentary on that. Those scientists faces were pretty shocked looking when they fired that piece of foam and it tore through the tiles like a rock through a window. Amazing they had never considered that a possibility.

 

[C3PO]

Amazing they had never considered that a possibility.

Would you have?

 

[Siliconaut]

The Apollo LAS has a secondary motor at the top that tilts it to the side as after it completely clears the CM. Guess that feature isn't modeled in AMSO.

As a side note, from Apollo 15 onwards, they removed all the reverse thrusters on the Saturn V 1st stage to save weight and on Apollo 15 there was almost re-contact between the 1st and 2nd stage after the first stage was dropped due to thrust provided by residual propellants. I suspect they fixed that issue on Apollo 16 and on by letting the stages stay connected a little longer so that the residual thrust on the 1st stage was lower.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

Good Lord.. sometimes when I read stuff like this it makes me think how nuts we human beings can be and how nuts the men who sealed themselves inside those tin cans were. They were stark raving mad lunatics, the whole lot of them!

---------- Post added at 03:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:04 PM ----------

Would you have?

NASA SCIENTISTS ARE GOD! INFALLIBLE!

or at least that's the myth they let on. Until a Mars Probe disappears due to a math conversion error, or an orbiter burns up in reentry or a launch tower comes tumbling back towards the Apollo stack. How we managed to leave the cat infested savannah plains of Africa to land on the moon is beyond me.

 

[Urwumpe]

I remember watching a documentary on that. Those scientists faces were pretty shocked looking when they fired that piece of foam and it tore through the tiles like a rock through a window. Amazing they had never considered that a possibility.

They have - NASA engineers even wrote a software to estimate the impacts on the Shuttle. There had been really bad previous debris strikes in the past. Especially when a part of the SRB nose cone hit the Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-27.

(See the white damage to the black tiles?)

NASA managers had been badly shocked by that.

What they had to test is: How bad would the damage really be on RCC tiles, because the software did not calculate those. It was always assumed that an impact there could only cause minor damage on RCC.

The tests showed, that RCC can be badly damaged, if bad luck strikes. Most impact angles resulted in the expected behavior, the RCC remained intact or was only damaged within tolerance. But in some few angles and impact velocities, the RCC tiles had holes in them.

Still, the engineers who knew about the properties of RCC had been far less surprised than the managers.

 

[Izack]

Good Lord.. sometimes when I read stuff like this it makes me think how nuts we human beings can be and how nuts the men who sealed themselves inside those tin cans were. They were stark raving mad lunatics, the whole lot of them!

There is indeed an obscure line between brave and foolish, but really now. What about the hundreds of successes across the board? It's not like they had a one in three chance of a horrible death.

There were close calls and things never went completely according to plan, but the Saturn LV never did fail catastrophically.

NASA SCIENTISTS ARE GOD! INFALLIBLE!

or at least that's the myth they let on. Until a Mars Probe disappears due to a math conversion error, or an orbiter burns up in reentry or a launch tower comes tumbling back towards the Apollo stack. How we managed to leave the cat infested savannah plains of Africa to land on the moon is beyond me.

That's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it? I don't believe C3PO was suggesting that at all - in fact quite the opposite. NASA's employees are human, and not perfect. You however are holding them to impossible standards here - expecting them to be perfect.

Look again at the majority of successes over the failures. That's how we got off the plains to here, though I don't think we'll ever escape the cats. At least those tend to be smaller these days.

 

[C3PO]

I don't believe C3PO was suggesting that at all - in fact quite the opposite. NASA's employees are human, and not perfect. You however are holding them to impossible standards here - expecting them to be perfect.

Look again at the majority of successes over the failures. That's how we got off the plains to here, though I don't think we'll ever escape the cats. At least those tend to be smaller these days.

That's not an overreaction. It's sarcasm. :thumbup:

A few years ago the new wing of the local hospital was opened, and after a few weeks they realized that they had forgotten to install toilets for visitors. :facepalm:

Actually most successes are built on mounds of failures. We just tend to remember the "good times", and we're usually smart enough to know when it's safe enough to put lives on the line.

---------- Post added at 06:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------

How we managed to leave the cat infested savannah plains of Africa to land on the moon is beyond me.

Thousands of years of trial&error™ adds up.

 

[TMac3000]

Good Lord.. sometimes when I read stuff like this it makes me think how nuts we human beings can be and how nuts the men who sealed themselves inside those tin cans were. They were stark raving mad lunatics, the whole lot of them!

---------- Post added at 03:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:04 PM ----------



NASA SCIENTISTS ARE GOD! INFALLIBLE!

or at least that's the myth they let on. Until a Mars Probe disappears due to a math conversion error, or an orbiter burns up in reentry or a launch tower comes tumbling back towards the Apollo stack. How we managed to leave the cat infested savannah plains of Africa to land on the moon is beyond me.

Spaceflight is extremely dangerous. To say that is an extreme understatement would BE an extreme understatement.

These guys sit on a 30-story building full of explosives, get catapulted a hundred or more miles straight the hell up, travel at speeds that take them around the world and back in time for lunch, and if they survive that, they have to contend with weightlessness, radiation, micrometeorites, electrical malfunctions, computer malfunctions, and the psychological stress of living in cramped conditions with a handful of other guys for weeks or months on end.

The fact that people sometimes die is no automatic mark against the competence of the space agencies that send them up there.

And you know what? For them, it's worth it.

 

[Quick_Nick]

These guys sit on a three-story building full of explosives

Saturn V was over 30 stories tall altogether!

 

[TMac3000]

Saturn V was over 30 stories tall altogether!

Corrected:yes:
30 is what I actually meant to say

 

[Astro SG Wise]

All I could say if the launch abort system collided with the CM?

Pain.

 

[ISProgram]

Pain from who? The impact velocity would be so high that the CM occupants would more or less die instantly...

 

[Urwumpe]

Pain from who? The impact velocity would be so high that the CM occupants would more or less die instantly...

Not really - but would be high enough for badly damaging the primary structure and cause a fatal accident.

It would likely not even shake the crew much on impact. The remaining rocket weights much more than the impacting LAS and would not be slowed down much on impact. It would just fly through it and get badly damaged.

In the worst case, the crew would stay alive, but could neither reach orbit nor land on Earth.

 

[Andy44]

All I could say if the launch abort system collided with the CM?

Pain.

Sorry but you practically are begging for this vid:

 

[Siliconaut]

Not really - but would be high enough for badly damaging the primary structure and cause a fatal accident.

It would likely not even shake the crew much on impact. The remaining rocket weights much more than the impacting LAS and would not be slowed down much on impact. It would just fly through it and get badly damaged.

In the worst case, the crew would stay alive, but could neither reach orbit nor land on Earth.

Well in this case it was tumbling end over end vertically in relation to the spacecraft so it tumbled by harmlessly, and orbiter doesn't model collisions anyway. It would have missed the CM entirely and probably glanced off the side of the SIVB stage. That would have been real real bad.

*Choooom*

"Tower Gone"

"Roger Tower.."

"WTF! Something just hit us! I think it was the LAS Tower!"

Ironic ending to a mission for sure.