Pad Abort Test Launch Video Compilation
Still no public pics of the LAS “lawn dart”, but there’s lots of fun eye candy in this video, especially the beautiful slow-motion footage at the beginning of the motor ignition:
A few interesting things to note:
- The impressively crisp black and white footage of the reorientation and jettison
- The docking-hatch-view of the forward bay cover jettison and chute deployment
- The amusing (but very brief) cameo appearance of the jettisoned LAS in the background of one of the chute deployment cuts, weathervaning into a point-down attitude
- The firing of the attitude control motor, which appears as eight skinny flames near the tip of the LAS stack
- The fact that there is NO visible plume damage on the capsule or the LAS adapter cone (especially surprising given the incinerated appearance of the cone after impact with the desert floor)
May 15th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Wow! That look like it would have been one hell of a ride. Any astronauts would have had the crap beaten out of them, but it looks like they would have survived. What are the odds of getting the lawn dart pictures?
May 19th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Not in the field so I don’t know.
But it just doesn’t look right. Seems like there is a lot of stresses coming in on the capsule all at once, shaking the living crap out of whoever is in the capsule.