The Space Transportation System goal of return to safe flight required that the Orbiter vehicle provide the crewmembers with a means of escape during controlled gliding flight. Because of its simplicity and safety the pole escape concept was selected for use during crew escape. To show that this concept would work in the Orbiter, wind tunnel tests, flight testing, and analytical simulation of the pole concept were pursued. This paper addresses each of these activities, showing how the wind tunnel test demonstrated the feasibility of the concept, how the flight testing was used to extract crew aero and Orbiter clearance margins, and how analytical simulations were used to verify Orbiter clearance margins. The analytical assessment of the Orbiter clearance margins shows that the pole concept will provide a minimum of 7-ft dispersed clearance for the NASA astronaut corps.
STS crew escape for steady state gliding flight
1989-01-01
Conference paper
No indication
English
STS crew escape for steady state gliding flight
AIAA | 1989
|Engineering Index Backfile | 1924
|Engineering Index Backfile | 1923
NTRS | 1984
Online Contents | 1995