It amazes me just how Kerbal NASA was in its early days. The first test launch of a Mercury-Redstone rocket, which later took the first American Alan Shepherd into space, demonstrates this perfectly. At launch the main engines started, lifting the rocket an entire 4 in off the pad before shutting off, dropping the rocket down hard. Detecting that the main engines had failed the launch abort system fired but instead of pulling the capsule off the top of the rocket the launch abort tower flew away reaching an altitude of 4000 ft. A few seconds later the capsules parachute inexplicably fired and started catching the wind. The NASA controllers now had a fully fueled and pressurized rocket sitting on the pad, essentially a 66,000 lbs bomb waiting to explode. Not knowing how to handle the situation NASA controllers considered shooting the rocket (the 66,000 lbs one filled with explosives) with a rifle to poke holes in the fuel tanks thus depressurizing the rocket making it safe to approach. They chose to go with the safer option of letting the rocket sit on the pad until its batteries ran out at which point the fuel tank valves automatically opened venting the fuel and liquid O2. Fortunately the winds were not very strong that day and the rocket did not tip over or explode.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 01:42:06 +0000