Wednesday, January 16, 1987AThe Battalion/Page 7
World and Nation
NASA engineers devise
shuttle escape system
SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP)
— NASA engineers have concluded
that the only practical way for astro
nauts to escape from the space shut
tle in an emergency would be to use
small rockets that would yank them
out a side hatch and let them par
achute to Earth.
The method would work only un
der certain circumstances, and
would not have helped the crew of
Challenger. But it would give astro
nauts in the future "a chance where
there is none now,” a NASA official
said, and the astronauts corps has
endorsed the concept.
It has been presented to shuttle
chief Richard Truly, but NASA
leaders have not given their appro
val. A decision is expected by March.
Bill Chandler, the Johnson Space
Center engineer who directed the
escape study, said it could be in
stalled for the resumption of shuttle
llights, now set for February 1988.
The estimated cost: about $50 mil
lion.
NASA’s plans for an astronaut es
cape always have called for them to
ditch the shuttle in the ocean. Ex
perts now' believe ditching would
provide little chance for the crew to
survive. Chandler said.
Chandler said a parachute system
is practical only when the shuttle is
in controlled, gliding flight below
20,000 feet. The rest of the time, he
said, the craft is traveling too fast or
too high.
Challenger’s seven crew members
died when the spacecraft broke into
pieces while two solid rocket engines
and the shuttle’s three main engines
“A lot of people are going
to regard this system as
just paying lip service to
the problem, but I hon
estly don’t feel that way. ”
— Steven Nagel,
astronaut
were firing. The chance of surviving
such an accident, Chandler said, “is
almost nil,” and the astronauts know
it.
But Chandler said a parachute
system could provide a safe escape in
tlie event the spacecraft fails to reach
orbit, is forced to glide toward Earth
and is unable to reach a runway
landing site. This scenario, which
now calls for ditching, could happen
if the main engines shut down pre
maturely during the launch se
quence, one of the most likely fail
ures that could face a shuttle crew.
He said that the system, while of
limited use, would provide astro
nauts a “comfort factor.” “We owe it
to them to give them that.”
With the system, each crew mem
ber must move quickly to give those
who follow a chance to get out.
Astronaut Steven Nagel, who
worked with the escape engineers,
said, “You can’t fly someone who is
physically incapable of using this sys
tem because that would not only en
danger himself, but other crew
members as well.”
As a result, he said, psychological
and physical requirements for shut
tle crew members could be tough
ened. That could affect the Citizen
in Space program, where ordinary
people are to be chosen to fly.
“I’m in agreement with this sys
tem,” and so is the astronaut office,
Nagel said. “A lot of people are
going to regard this system as just
paying lip service to the problem,
but I honestly don’t feel that way.”
Nagel said the astronauts now
spend many hours practicing proce
dures that would land the shuttle on
the ocean.
“It’s rather ludicrous to do that if
you think you’re not going to survive
the impact with the water,” he said.
Radio reports
54 killed in
plane crash
LONDON (AP) — An Ethiopian
air force plane carrying 54 passen
gers and crew crashed in the Eri
trean provincial capital of Asmara
on Tuesday and killed everyone on
board, the official radio reported.
According to the report on the of
ficial Ethiopian Radio, monitored in
London by the British Broadcasting
Corp., the crash was due to a me
chanical failure.
The plane, carrying air force per
sonnel, was en route to the capital of
Addis Ababa when the plane sud
denly went out of control, the radio
said.
“It crashed while it was trying to
land after developing sudden prob
lems about three minutes after tak
ing off from Yohannes the Fourth
Airport (in Asmara),” the broadcast
said.
Ethiopian Radio gave no further
details of the crash, BBC said.
An official at the Addis Ababa
control tower said in a telephone in
terview with The Associated Press in
Nairobi, Kenya, that he knew of the
crash only through the radio report
and had no additional details. The
official refused to give his name.
Eritrean rebels have been waging
a guerrilla war for independence
against the country’s Marxist gov
ernment and its predecessor for
about 25 years.
Amtrak train was speeding at time of crash
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Amtrak train
that collided with three freight locomotives was
exceeding speed restrictions by 23 miles an hour,
and investigators are trying to determine if that
contributed to the severity of the accident that
took 16 lives, of ficials said Tuesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board in
vestigation, meanwhile, continued to focus on
why the engineer of the Conrail locomotives,
which also was speeding, apparently did not heed
a stop signal until he was almost on top of it, caus
ing the locomotives to skid into the path of the
Amtrak train.
Joseph Nall, an NTSB member, said the inves
tigation continues to focus on the “human per
formance” of the Conrail crew and that no evi
dence has surfaced to indicate a malfunctioning
of either the locomotives’ brakes or the track sig
nal system.
The death toll from the Jan. 4 accident at a
track junction near Baltimore rose to 16 as one of
the passengers, Connie Barry, 31, of Ridgefield,
Conn., died in a hospital. Another 175 people
were injured in the crash, which was the worst in
Amtrak’s 15 years of operation.
At a news conference, Nall disclosed that
speed recorders showed the Amtrak locomotive,
pulling 12 cars, was traveling 128 mph when the
brakes were applied. By the time it collided with
the locomotives its speed had been cut to 105
mph.
Normally the top speed on that section of track
would be 125 mph, but that particular train was
restricted to 105 mph because it was pulling a
number of older model “Heritage” cars, the offi
cials said.
Investigators emphasized that the collision
could not have been avoided even if the train had
complied with the speed restriction. Nall said,
however, the safety board wants to determine
whether the lower speed might have reduced the
force of the impact, making the accident — and
perhaps some injuries — less severe.
The speed recorders, in the meantime,
showed that the Conrail locomotives were travel
ing 63 to 64 mph before emergency brakes were
applied when the engineer noticed a halt signal
ordering him to give way to the Amtrak train.
Nall said the exact location where the Conrail
engineer, Richard Gates, applied his brakes has
yet to be determined. But he said “it’s obvious the
braking occurred close to the (stop) signal” that is
only 384 feet from the track interchange and site
of the collision.
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