CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Two ejection seats and a capsule in the cargo bay may allow a crew of astronauts to escape a crippled shuttle in a launch or landing emergency, a NASA study has concluded.
The commander and pilot, sitting in the orbiter's cockpit, would sit in ejection seats similar to those on military aircraft.
The remaining crew, usually five, would ride in a pod inside the cargo bay. The pod would be equipped with rockets of its own.
In an emergency, the pod would shoot out of the cargo bay and drift to the ocean on a parachute.
Significant problems remain, such as whether the capsule would be safe to use while the orbiter is on the pad or just after launch.
Also, the ejection seats would have to offer significant protection to the commander and pilot, who would shoot out the top of a craft going up to 3,620 mph during the most dangerous part of launch, more than 20 miles high.
Even if those questions are answered, the space agency still has to wrestle with whether the system will be too expensive or heavy to be practical.
Art Stephenson, director of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said the ejection seat, cargo bay capsule method may be the only way to efficiently modify the shuttle.
"It still may be better to put the money you would spend into making the whole vehicle safer," he said. NASA spokesman James Hartsfield said it wouldn't be practical to re-engineer the front portion so that it could separate from the rest of the shuttle.
"You might as well build a whole new shuttle," he said.
A more detailed study of the escape pod, its costs and other factors is under way, Hartsfield said. Results are expected in a couple of months.
A common factor in design of all the nation's early spacecraft, rocket towers and ejection seats that could lift astronauts out of danger were applied to the shuttle only as an afterthought.
The space agency focused instead on making the whole machine safer. The first four flights of the Columbia used ejection seats for the two astronauts. That was made impractical when the crews grew to up to eight astronauts on one mission.
The seven astronauts lost in the 1986 Challenger disaster were not even wearing parachutes when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, athough the chutes would not have helped. All shuttle crewmembers have worn parachutes since then.
The Rogers Commission investigating that accident insisted on an escape method for shuttle crews. Engineers have not been able to invent an escape mechanism they believe will work safely during a launch.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
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