Comments on: New video of Starliner pad abort test

By: wayne

wayne — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 12:03:31 +0000

An oldy but a goody….

“Toxic Propellant Hazards In Rocketry”
1966 NASA
https://youtu.be/ND2TeNfcmKA
21:56
“Hypergolic fuels include hydrazine and its derivatives including; mono methyl hydrazine (MMH), unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), and Aerozine 50, which is an equal mixture of NA and UDMH.”

By: pzatchok

pzatchok — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 02:47:36 +0000

They looked directly at the problem.
They even took a picture of the problem.

They never reviewed the pictures with the parachute team before launch.

To busy? Day off?

By: Questioner

Questioner — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 17:06:29 +0000

Correction: dinitrogen tretroxide (N2O4)

It is a shame that no safe, non-toxic and long time storable replacement for it was found after 50 years of research on this topic. This task seems to be more difficult as developing resusable rockets.

By: Andi

Andi — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 16:33:28 +0000

I think I found the problem! From the article Scott linked to:

“‘We’ll spend a week and a half and pour through’ that data, he said.”

Depending on what they intend to pour through the data (hopefully nothing stronger than coffee), I don’t think they’ll be too successful.

… or perhaps they just need a better editor.

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 15:09:56 +0000

Boeing is amateur hour. They act that the parachute not deploying is no big deal. Someone didn’t do their job. If crew had been on board, sorry, someone didn’t do their job. Sounds like NASA and the two lost shuttles. They didn’t think their problems were that serious to delay launches and make the engineers fix the defects. Peoples lives are at stake.

By: Scott M.

Scott M. — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 13:26:37 +0000

Well now I’m less sanguine about the parachute failure. Seems like they were able to tell that a pin wasn’t in place thanks to a photo taken before closing up the vehicle. And yet they didn’t find the problem because of a protective shroud over the pin assembly?

https://spacenews.com/missing-pin-blamed-for-boeing-pad-abort-parachute-anomaly/

IANARE (I Am Not A Rocket Engineer), but this seems like amateur hour. I thought Boeing was supposed to be the seasoned adult as compared with the SpaceX whippersnapper?

By: Scott M.

Scott M. — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 12:32:22 +0000

Diane, to add onto your comment…

The hosts of the livestream also mentioned that we might see a fire from the service module crashing and releasing its fuel. I guess the hypergolics didn’t mix enough to cause that, but we did get a nice Orange Cloud of Doom.

If the parachute foul-up was just a badly-connected line, that’s great news. I was worried that ‘leftover’ hypergolics from the abort motors firing had attacked the ‘chute lines.

By: Questioner

Questioner — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 09:52:18 +0000

This red cloud is nitrogen tretroxide (N2O4) vapor , the toxic and hazardous oxidizer used in service module propulsion system propellant combination.

By: Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 00:54:48 +0000

The red cloud was almost certainly from the service module crashing near by. I think the original real-time broadcast did mention, before the test occurred, the service module would crash nearby, something that wouldn’t be an issue in a recovery at sea.

But yeah, hypergolics. No question.