Author Topic: How to rescue Dragon, Starliner, and Orion crews at sea  (Read 4261 times)

Offline Chris Bergin

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Online litton4

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Re: How to rescue Dragon, Starliner, and Orion crews at sea
« Reply #1 on: 04/28/2019 12:27 pm »
Great Article.

One thing not mentioned, however is the fact that Apollo capsules had 3 (iirc) flotation bags at the top, which were inflated after landing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think these had the ability to right the capsule if it did land in Stable II.
(or were they found not to be effective, given the picture of Skylab 4 shown - no bags in sight).

I've not seen this mentioned in connection with the 3 current capsules, so I assume they don't have these.
Dave Condliffe

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: How to rescue Dragon, Starliner, and Orion crews at sea
« Reply #2 on: 05/03/2019 09:49 am »
Orion has inflatables on top. On EFT-1, only two of them inflated properly.

« Last Edit: 05/03/2019 09:52 am by Steven Pietrobon »
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline woods170

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Re: How to rescue Dragon, Starliner, and Orion crews at sea
« Reply #3 on: 05/03/2019 01:16 pm »
Orion has inflatables on top. On EFT-1, only two of them inflated properly.

That's not the entire story. Four of the five airbags inflated properly, with one failing to inflate. Of the four inflated airbags two quickly lost pressure due to faulty plumbing inside the high-pressure Helium inflation system.

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