[cspags]

Interesting that they stated a passenger would have experienced a peak of 10 Gs, that seems excessively high for tourism. The space shuttle launches were around 3 Gs and Soyuz rockets around 4 Gs.

https://space.stackexchange.com/a/7857

[olex]

That's 10G during an abort motor firing. Shuttle didn't have those in the first place, and Soyuz's abort motors produced ~18G iirc.

[dsfyu404ed]

Fuck it. Deleted.

[gamblor956]

Based on a cursory view of the available history of failed Soyuz missions, and particularly those involving the abort mode, what you said is empirically false. The cosmonauts on the failed missions were not punished, and in those missions where they survived, many of them went on to crew later missions.

[calcifer]

You are being downvoted because you tried to introduce a "does anyone else think Soviets were nasty evil people?" rhetoric into what was previously a technical discussion.

[stcredzero]

Also, the gp commenter seems to misunderstand what 18g would do to somebody. For an extended span of time, that's a death sentence. For just a moment, it's likely going to knock you out, but it's survivable by healthy people and it's far better than being in a rocket explosion.

[vkou]

You're being downvoted because you have an incredibly poor understanding of the Soviet space program.

Yuri Gagarin's first flight was in 1961, 8 years after Stalin's death. The purges have long stopped. The constant hunt for wreckers did, too. Yes, there was still political repression, but it was for political action, not "Oh, the project went up in smoke, we're sending the entire team to Siberia."

There was both a disregard, and a regard for safety in the cosmonaut program. Disregard because of heavy political pressure on deadlines, regard because it looked really bad for a cosmonaut to die. The track record that resulted was... Mixed. Could have been much better, but not a complete horror show.

After the failure of Soyuz-11, for instance, the program was grounded for 2 years, the Soyuz capsule was redesigned, and the number of crew in it was reduced, for safety reasons.

[nabla9]

10 G is not sustained. 10 G max is not enough for airbag deployment in cars.

For a short time is nothing to talk about during emergency when it comes from the back (eyballs in) and you are protected from the whiplash.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_linear_acceleration...

[CaptainDecisive]

Agreed, I've read you get about 4g peak deceleration going down stairs. But people seem to survive that process on a regular basis. So a temporary 10g is not a problem, and the effects of gravity loads on the human body are well studied and understood by military and aerospace organizations.

[welikespace]

This test fired the emergency abort motor. Normally, the rocket peaks at around 3Gs:

https://www.blueorigin.com/new-shepard > Accelerating at more than 3 Gs to faster than Mach 3...

[bunderbunder]

This is testing an abort procedure, not something that's meant to be a part of your everyday ride into space.

[agildehaus]

This was a test of an emergency abort. You wouldn't experience that on a nominal flight.

[toss1]

true, but it is not sustained Gs, it's in a reclined & fully supported position (i.e., its more mechanical stress on the body than draining blood from the brain, which requires special training & G-suits to counteract). Also, this would an exceptional event, not the standard launch profile.

I'd call it a reasonable spec, though it does seem that each passenger should be medically cleared and, ideally, physically tested beforehand.

[dsfyu404ed]

This. It's like getting rear ended while siting in a racing bucket seat with a proper harness. Not comfortable but also no big deal.