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by Yizahi 18 days ago
Hypothetical scenario - if the entire New Glenn rocket exploded up to highest point in under 4 seconds and if there was a passenger capsule on top with a SLS/Saturn size escape rocket, would it manage to escape in those 2-3 seconds? Would humans survive acceleration?
2 comments
redfloatplane 18 days ago
Probably yes. Humans can survive a lot of Gs for a short time. John Stapp survived up to 38 Gs with liveable injuries and some ejector seats are around 32 g [0]. They could fairly easily get 500m away within 3-4 seconds.

This has happened before on the Soyuz in 1983[1], hitting up to 17 Gs, and everyone was fine, modulo some bruising.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No.16L

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ceejayoz 18 days ago
Neither Starship nor New Glenn has such a system, nor plans to add one.
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mr_toad 18 days ago
If New Glenn ever launched people they’d build the escape system into the crew module, much as SpaceX does with Crew Dragon.
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ceejayoz 18 days ago
Maybe; SpaceX isn't taking that approach for Starship thus far.
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hgoel 18 days ago
SpaceX doesn't have the vehicle at a point that they can worry about the details of the crew compartment beyond concept renders and operations planning. As it stands they don't even have a plan for carrying large non-starlink payloads yet.
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NetMageSCW 18 days ago
That’s all pretty heavy assumptions considering all we have is public knowledge. Given that SpaceX already has some launch contracts that can be switched from Falcon to Starship I am sure they have plans and probably development for non-starlink payloads going on.
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NetMageSCW 18 days ago
Starship itself could potentially hot launch from the booster in the ground to get away. Hopefully the latching system is controlled by the Starship side.
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enragedcacti 18 days ago
It almost definitely cannot. It already has a far lower thrust-to-weight ratio than real launch escape systems (1.x at best versus 6-10+)[1][2], and it would only be able to light its three sea-level engines since the vacuum-optimized engines would be unstable and likely rip themselves apart at 1 ATM.*

*correction: Vac raptors can run at sea level in a test stand. Still doubtful that its safe/reliable and in either case it would still be far too slow.

[1] Note that the first G of acceleration is combating gravity, so Starship at e.g. 1.25Gs would accelerate away from the explosion at 1/20th the rate of Dragon v2.

[2]https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9067/how-do-the-g-...

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