Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!csli!jkl
From: jkl@csli.STANFORD.EDU (John Kallen)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: SRB question
Keywords: asynchronous firing
Message-ID: <7089@csli.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 13 Jan 89 02:43:23 GMT
References: <20600@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: jkl@csli.UUCP (John Kallen)
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
Lines: 18

I've been wondering about what would happen if, when launched, one of
the SRB's on the shuttle fires, say, a second before the other one
does. What prevents the whole orbiter assembly from somersaulting?
Also, does anybody know if the SRB's *do* fire asynchronously? What
are the safety precautions used to prevent the assmebly from spinning
out of control due to thrust mismatches?

I find the questions interesting since I read somewhere that once
ignited, a SRB is *very* hard to 'stop'...

TNX4info,

John.
_______________________________________________________________________________
 | |   |   |    |\ | |   /|\ | John Kallen       "The light works. The gravity
 | |\ \|/ \|  * |/ | |/|  |  | PoBox 11215        works. Anything else we must
 | |\ /|\  |\ * |\ |   |  |  | Stanford CA 94309  take our chances with."
_|_|___|___|____|_\|___|__|__|_jkl@csli.stanford.edu___________________________