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#76 2003-10-07 18:54:48

Ad Astra
Member
Registered: 2003-02-02
Posts: 584

Re: Orbital Space Plane by 2008 - Faster, Cheaper, Better?

NASA's requirment for crew escape looks to be a difficult hurdle.  I recently asked a NASA engineer who works in cockpit design and instrumentation what he thought about putting encapsulated ejection seats in the shuttle.  Essentially, he sid that there's just no room to put four seats on the flight deck.  The crew actually has to fold down the rear two seats just to access the aft crew station.  And any ejection system would have limited utility (below 100,000 feet or Mach 6.)  Essentially, the seats would be dead weight that prevents any actual work from being done inside the cabin (including docking the orbiter.)  I suspect that ejection seats for OSP will be rejected by the contractors for the same reasons.


Who needs Michael Griffin when you can have Peter Griffin?  Catch "Family Guy" Sunday nights on FOX.

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