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From: polish@garfield.columbia.edu (Nathaniel Polish)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: What price safety? (was: Escape tower for shuttle orbiter?)
Message-ID: <1418@garfield.columbia.edu>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 16:45:11 EST
Article-I.D.: garfield.1418
Posted: Fri Mar 14 16:45:11 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Mar-86 01:20:55 EST
References: <418@watcgl.UUCP> <627@bentley.UUCP> <2024@peora.UUCP> <635@bentley.UUCP>
Reply-To: polish@garfield.UUCP (Nathaniel Polish)
Organization: Columbia University CS Department
Lines: 13

It should be pointed out that in all these systems where relatively 
fragile cargo is riding on top of several million pounds of thrust that
we are dependant on EVERYTHING working.  All the senerios involve everyone
of thousands of components working perfecting with one or two non-critical
systems failing.  Virtually nothing will save you from a crit 1 failure
because of the forces involved and the speed.  This is why they are crit 1.
Ejection systems are only useful if they can realistically be used and 
rehersed with well defined parameters for their use.  One of the IEEE
rags mentioned recently that ditching is possable (release of the orbiter
during SRB thrust).  Ditching is considered so dangerous that it is not 
a practiced abort mode.  It is a simple fact that there are a class of failures
from which there is no reasonable escape.  An escape rocket might save you 
from a few failures but it hardly is obvious which ones.