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| coppice:
--- Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2023, 05:49:43 am ---How much explosive charge does a typical large rocket carry and what's left after it destructs? There are a lot of big, heavy metal components and it seems unlikely that they all just vaporize. The self destruct gets rid of all the fuel and oxidizer but there must be quite a few big heavy chunks raining down. --- End quote --- There's a reason most launch sites have a large expanse of sparsely populated land or sea to their east. Self-destructing the rocket is not about cleaning up the impact. Its about controlling where the impact happens. You don't need that much explosive. Rockets are generally destroyed while there is still considerable fuel on board. If the fuel is exhausted, blowing the thing up doesn't achieve that much. The explosive only needs to get the remaining fuel and oxidiser to mix and go pop. |
| David Hess:
--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 12:38:57 pm --- --- Quote from: Neutrion on April 21, 2023, 12:27:50 pm ---Is it true what David Hess wrote, that they are now suddenly abandoning completely the hydraulic steering and going for electronic? Its quiet a huge change. --- End quote --- This first launch was with a preliminary version of the ship. The others they have already assembled use electrically powered steering, and have numerous other substantial revisions. I think they learned a lot from building and ground testing this first one, so immediately they moved to building the second one they had already refined the design in numerous ways. --- End quote --- That is my understanding. It came down to either removing this one for disassembly without learning anything, or launching it just to get it out of the way for the newer one, and at least launching it will provide data, which is what they did. Now they know that the launch infrastructure needs to be significantly improved before launching the next one. |
| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2023, 05:49:43 am ---How much explosive charge does a typical large rocket carry and what's left after it destructs? There are a lot of big, heavy metal components and it seems unlikely that they all just vaporize. The self destruct gets rid of all the fuel and oxidizer but there must be quite a few big heavy chunks raining down. --- End quote --- It's actually not much explosive, typically just a linear charge to "unzip" the component. Aerodynamic stress does the rest. Depending how high the failure occurs, some of the components will burn up in the atmosphere, others won't. Launches are usually directed over water so falling components won't impact land--rockets are launched eastward from KSC and southward from Vandenburg, for example. Notice to mariners is given well in advance to avoid these areas. Shuttle SRBs came down on parachutes, while the Saturn V S-1C stage just fell into the ocean intact. |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 26, 2023, 06:47:22 pm ---Shuttle SRBs came down on parachutes, while the Saturn V S-1C stage just fell into the ocean intact. --- End quote --- The vast majority of rocket stages just fall out of the sky, either whole or in pieces. SpaceX are the first to start changing that. |
| wraper:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on April 26, 2023, 06:47:22 pm ---Shuttle SRBs came down on parachutes, while the Saturn V S-1C stage just fell into the ocean intact. --- End quote --- Shuttle SRB "reuse" makes so much sense that it actually does not. It's just an empty shell that gets rescued (in SRB engine burns itself), taken apart into segments, stripped of paint, refurbished, refilled and assembled back. Literally it would be cheaper to just not reuse them. From what I read it was estimated to be about 3 times cheaper to just use brand new ones. Also this segmented construction is the reason why Challenger exploded. |
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