Well, the Columbia report did point a flaw in the seat design that resulted in the head not being properly restrained (broken neck) during tumbling of the crew compartment. (Don't know if that would apply to Challenger, since they where dressed differently).
Quote from: kevin-rf on 10/06/2010 03:45 pmWell, the Columbia report did point a flaw in the seat design that resulted in the head not being properly restrained (broken neck) during tumbling of the crew compartment. (Don't know if that would apply to Challenger, since they where dressed differently).I suspect the friend is right, in that a 200-g deceleration can be tolerated for a very short time. That time, however, is probably shorter than the time it takes for a human body or crew cabin falling from great height to decelerate to zero speed on impact with the water, putting survivability of Challenger's crew in grave doubt.If I remember correctly, by the way, there were signs that emergency oxygen supplies aboard Challenger had been manually activated following disintegration of the orbiter.
Having an argument with a friend. "200g acceleration on a human body wouldn't necessarily kill you, the time over which this acceleration occurs has to be taken into account."He's wrong, yes?
Here is an idea for a high (SSME-esque, at least in vac) performance GG engine.The engine runs on LH2/LOX. The GG exhaust, after expansion in the turbine, is used to cool nozzle parts. This heats it hot enough that it has an exhaust velocity equal to that of the main chamber gasses. The extremely low molecular weight should make this possible despite the low temp.Is this possible? If so, is it practical?
1) I just wanted to know, what is a good power to weight ratio for power systems for spacecraft? 2) What is it for say a small nuclear reactor? 3) What is it for a fusion reactor?
Not exactly fair, since it was pretty much just a proof-of-concept